Parenting Styles Apparent In Regulation Of Children’s Diet
A study of almost 250 parents showed that parenting styles can be seen through the approach to a child’s diet.Â
Researchers found that parents who were strict in general also tended to have an "authoritarian" approach to their children’s eating — banning certain foods, for instance, or using pressure to get them to eat fruits and vegetables.
Conversely, “permissive” parents who let their children eat whatever they wanted tended to be permissive in their parenting styles as well.
Dr. Laura Hubbs-Tait and colleagues at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, found that parents who fell somewhere between permissive and authoritarian were those who set limits on their kids’ diets and enforced them through more positive approaches, such as leading by example, to get their kids to eat well. Researchers call this approach “authoritative.”
Researchers said that an authoritative effort was the best way to influence a child’s diet.
Both the strict and permissive parents typically failed to serve as good dietary role models for their children in the study.
Parents’ general styles are important in their children’s diets, Hubbs-Tait and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Their findings also indicate that parents’ efforts to get their children to lose weight are "not likely to be successful" unless the underlying family dynamics are addressed.
“Due to the infrequency of healthy eating modeled by both permissive and authoritarian parents," the researchers write, "food and nutrition professionals might encourage both to begin more healthy eating — for the sake of their own health and that of their children."
"Food and nutrition professionals who are implementing dietary change or obesity treatment programs need to include more complex approaches to behavioral change that include parenting styles and family dynamics," they conclude.
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