DescriptionChildhood obesity has become increasingly prevalent in today's society. Children are more likely to participate in sedentary activities than they are to engage in active behaviors. Children are also eating processed or fast foods at younger ages, due to convenience over health considerations. Parents are purchasing less nutrient-dense foods and teaching their children poorer eating habits early in life when their eating behaviors are just developing. Today, 17% of children aged 2-19 years are overweight and almost another 17% are at risk for becoming overweight, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The objective of this study was to investigate twenty mother-child pairs to examine if self-reported, as well as observed, maternal feeding styles had any predictive results for the childrens energy intake and Body Mass Index (BMI), depending upon the mothers' weight status. Results showed that mothers, regardless of their normal or overweight status, were more like each other than different. On the whole, however, mothers differed significantly in feeding styles and level of weight concern. Overweight mothers were found to have a higher concern for their own weight status than normal weight mothers. Maternal weight did not play a significant role in child BMI, yet how the mothers fed was more significant relative to a child's weight status. It was also found that observed restriction scores, how much a mother was observed to restrict during feeding, were predictive of the child's energy intake before the laboratory lunch. Overall, a larger sample size may provide different results. Future studies may find it advantageous to look deeper into maternal feeding styles, reported and observed, to better understand the importance of how a mother feeds her child and how his or her eating behavior develops.