The Impact Of Parental Feeding Practices On Their Children’s Appetitive Traits: A Study Among Children Aged 5-11 Years Old In Dubai Private Schools

Abstract

This study explores associations between parental feeding practices and childrens appetitive traits, putting to test the hypotheses that a) parental “restriction” is associated with having a child with stronger food approach tendencies (food enjoyment (FE) and food over responsiveness (FR)), and b) parental pressure to eat is associated with having a child with food avoidance tendencies (satiety responsiveness (SR),slowness in eating (SE) and food fussiness(FF)).The participants from 55 nationalities, targeting 1083 parents of 5-to 11-year-old children from 7 private schools in Dubai, UAE, who completed self-reported questionnaires over the 2011-2012 school year. The questionnaire has been a tailored amalgamation of CEBQ and CFQ in order to measure the children’s appetitive traits and parental feeding practices, respectively. The findings of this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional analysis confirmed the hypotheses in that “parental restriction” was positively associated with child food responsiveness (r, 0.183), and food enjoyment (r, 0.102). On the other hand, parental pressure to eat was positively associated with child satiety responsiveness (r,0.265), slowness (r, 0.253), and fussiness (r, 0.174) and negatively with food enjoyment (r, -0.214) and food responsiveness (r, - 0.142). To conclude, as far as the figures depict, the parents controlling their children’s food intake would seemingly a reverse impact on their eating behaviour in the short term.