Feeding Styles and Child Eating Behaviors: A Multi-Method Approach

During the early twentieth century, research on child eating targeted the type of food children ingested and the adequacy/deficiency of nutrients in their diets. Simultaneously, psychologists were studying how parents socialize their children into becoming adults. Subsequently, a multidisciplinary field emerged regarding the development of child eating behaviors grounded in the idea that parents play an important role in socializing children’s eating. Early studies showed that patterns of general parenting were associated with child eating and obesity risk. However, subsequent studies focusing on feeding children provided a more proximal target for studying eating behaviors in the family context. Consequently, the construct of feeding styles emerged in the literature. Numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that feeding styles are differentially associated with child outcomes, with the most consistent relationships found between the indulgent feeding style, problematic child eating, and higher weight status. Interest in feeding styles led to the question of the stability of feeding styles over situations and time. Whether parents exhibit the same feeding behaviors across meals and situations or whether feeding varies over time is an important question for prevention research. This chapter covers the stability of common self-reported and observed feeding in studies among families with low-income levels. Additionally, the direction of effects—whether child weight predicts parental feeding or if parental feeding predicts later child weight—is also presented. Intervention programs may choose to target parental feeding behaviors at young ages to prevent the development of childhood obesity.