Emotion Regulation Moderates the Associations of Food Parenting and Adolescent Emotional Eating

Abstract

ObjectiveTo explore parental feeding practices and eating behavior as predictors of the child's emotional eating (EE) and child's emotion regulation (ER) as a potential moderator. DesignParental eating behavior (emotional, external, and restrained eating), 9 parental feeding practices (restriction, food as reward, food as ER, monitoring, healthy modeling, healthy environment, child control, and child involvement), ER, and EE were analyzed cross-sectionally and 5 parental practices longitudinally (subsample, n = 115). SettingBelgium. ParticipantsTwo hundred eighteen adolescents (aged 13.7 ± 1.77 years) and parent dyads. Main Outcome MeasuresChild's EE. AnalysisLinear regression and moderation (cross-sectional) and linear mixed models (longitudinal). Models adjusted for multiple testing with a false discovery rate of 10% (Benjamini-Hochberg), age, sex, body mass index, socioeconomic status, and cohort. ResultsCross-sectionally but not longitudinally, there was a positive association between predictors restriction and monitoring with the outcome child's EE (β = 0.19, P = 0.006; β = 0.17, P = 0.01, respectively). Restrained eating of the parent was negatively associated with the child's EE (β = −0.22, P = 0.003). The child's maladaptive ER significantly moderated the associations of 5 feeding practices and parental EE with the child's EE. Conclusions and ImplicationsParents continue to play a role in the eating behavior of their adolescent offspring, not only through their feeding practices (restrictive parenting was most detrimental) but also by displaying restrained eating (beneficial). A child's ER appears as an important moderator of the established associations; however, more research is needed to better understand these observations.