Parental and Child Characteristics Predicting Asian immigrants’ Feeding Practices

Abstract

Objectives To explore parenting style, child effortful control and parenting stress and their associations with maternal use of pressure to eat among Asian U.S. immigrant families with preschoolers. Methods One hundred and nine Asian immigrant mothers with 3-to-5-year old children in Maryland, U.S. rated their authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles, frequency of pressuring their child to eat, perceived parenting stress, and child’s effortful control. Two proposed moderated mediation models were tested using conditional process modeling. Results Effortful control partially mediated the association between authoritative style and pressure to eat, αβ= -.07, p < .05, but fully mediated the association between authoritarian style and pressure to eat, αβ = .12, p < .05. Moreover, parenting stress moderated the association between child effortful control and maternal pressure to eat in the authoritarian style model, but not authoritative style. Specifically, higher effortful control was associated with less use of pressure to eat at low and mean levels of parenting stress. Conclusions Our findings revealed potential mechanisms underlying the associations between parenting styles and controlling feeding practices. Importantly, information learned from the present study may guide transdisciplinary efforts to design and implement culturally sensitive and family-based interventions targeting Asian immigrants’ wellbeing and obesity in the U.S