Impact of Parental Behaviour on Children's Food Intake

Critically evaluate the impact that parental behaviour can have upon children’s food intake

With the current obesity epidemic being widely publicised of late, the childhood obesity scourge has been at the forefront as it has become increasingly omnipresent, with the pervasiveness rates doubling during the past two decades (Troiano & Flegal, 1998). Ways to combat the problem have been very prominent within news headlines, this is due to the detrimental health effects which may be experienced in later life, including: Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, all of which lead to a decreased quality of life and a financial strain on health services. There has been a great deal of research conducted into this area, revealing some of the major factors that effect food intake, including: environment, culture, availability, price and convenience (MacFie & Meiselman, 1997 BOOK) and factors that more directly effect children: family, peers and media (Samour, Helm & Lang, 2004 BOOK).

Parents are widely seen by their children as the most influential people in their lives, so by assessing parental behaviour and interaction around their children, it can be used as a tool to explain childrens food intake.

Birch and Fisher (1998) recommended that great consideration should be paid towards factors which impact children’s food preferences and consumption patterns. It has been suggested that children’s preferences are shaped by early experiences with food and eating (Birch and Fisher, 1998) therefore it is important to look at the family environment and parental practices deployed which may permanently effect dietary practices of children (Berdanier, Dwyer and Feldman, 2007). Research has identified that children often adopt unhealthy dietary behaviours which extend into their adult lives (Mikkila et al. 2005; Wang, Bentley, Zhai, & Popkin, 2002).

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In the first few years of life, children as homosapians make their transition from milk (breast milk providing immunological essentials; water, sugar lactose and fat, protecting children from disease and promoting energy growth) to solids, where autonomous feeding massively varies across and within both cultures and families. During this time individual differences tend to appear in the control of children’s food intake. This is where it is thought that children’s predispositions are modified by external surroundings, and parental feeding behaviour begins to emerge, having an influential impact on children’s food intake.

Children are born with innate predilections, and there has been consistent evidence which suggests newborns innately prefer certain foods. Newborns develop gestation within 6 to 7 weeks which stimulates sweet, sour and bitter tastes in infants. In 1973 Desor, Maller and Turner found that babies preferred sweeter tastes by studying facial expressions and sucking behaviour as an index of preference, and dislike bitter tastes (Geldard, 1972). Davis (1928) proposed that it is this innate regulatory system that allows children to select a healthy balanced diet, she went onto explain that this balanced diet could only be maintained if the healthy food was readily available to them, arguing food preference will change over time, but the extent to which this is determined by parental behaviour remains unclear.

Children are born with their own instinctive predispositions, and by constantly overriding a child’s satiety or hunger mechanisms, this may lead to negative effects on a child’s natural appetite regulation. This may suggest that although innately programmed to eat to satiety, parental behaviours and pressures may negatively influence this leading to an individual based unbalanced diet. This was supported by the work of Birch et al. (2003) who found that parents who enforced restrictive feeding methods on their children, caused their children to desire these foods leading to children possessing an unhealthy diet.

Mullen and Shield (2003) have stated that parental modelling and feeding practices have been shown to affect a child’s food intake. This modelling effect has also been supported by the work of Dunker (1938) who revealed that children will often adjust their diet and food preference from observing older children, friends or even fictional super heroes. This evidence supports the process of observational learning and its significant impact of parental behaviour acting as a stimulus for similar behaviour in their children. This suggests that parents act as role models and gate keepers to the food that their children are eating, and therefore critical to the development of childrens eating.

According to the developmental model, social learning acts as a crucial aspect of children’s food intake. A child’s eating habits; likes and dislikes are all established during the first few years of the child’s life and are majorly influenced by parents and siblings who act as primary models in the way that they initiate meal time behaviour (Samour, Helm and Lang, 2004). They also go on to state that the atmosphere surrounding meal times can strongly influence a child’s food intake.

The findings of Brown and Ogden (2004) exposed significant correlations between snacks consumed, eating motivation and dissatisfaction between parents and their children, therefore revealing an important role for modelling. The study also revealed that children’s dietary intakes were affected by the variety of foods consumed by their parents, (Klesges et al., 1991; Olivera et al., 1992; Wardle, 1995.) and therefore indicates that parents` eating behaviours and attitudes closely respond to those of their children. These results at face value provide strength to the modelling theory of parental influence, however when critically evaluating the data it apparent that many faults did arise. Brown and Ogdens’ (2004) study focused purely on snack foods when representing childrens’ food intake instead of providing a comprehensive description of all aspects of a child’s diet, the study also relied on self report which was not backed up by objective scientific assessments. The work of Kesges et al. (1991) also had numerous flaws as the sample was taken predominantly from Caucasian families with high socio economic status providing a very narrow set of results. The study also only assessed one meal provided in laboratory conditions which failed to act as a clear representation of eating in a natural environment. Olivera et al. (1992) lacks validity as the study isn’t cross sectional as all the participants were the same race, socio economic class and age. Bias may have also arisen in this study as parents filled out their children’s food diaries, and therefore may have given socially acceptable answers.

Further scientific studies into parental behaviour affecting food intake have been conducted within the area of eating disorders psychopathology, where there is strong evidence suggesting that adults suffering from psychopathology have detrimental effects on the eating development of their children (Stein, 1994). This has been exposed by the work of Stein (1995) who reveals how young children rely heavily on the feeding practices off their parents; however the attitudes and behaviours of those who suffer from eating disorders find it particularly difficult to feed their children, and particularly challenging to respond to the food related cues of their children. Wardles (1995) believes ‘Parental attitudes must certainly affect their children indirectly through the foods purchased for and served in the household…, influencing the children’s exposure and…their habits and preferences.’

Although the majority of evidence is supporting the view that parental behaviour effects children’s food intake, there is research to suggest that children hold more responsibility than some results may predict. According to Birch & Deysher (1986) self regulation in children is extremely accurate, therefore possessing a higher ability to regulate satiety. The influence of parent’s behaviour on child food intake is therefore questioned. Shepard (1989) also proposed that there are other contributing factors that influence children’s food intake: external factors (the social and cultural context) or internal to the individual (personality and cognitions etc). The recent work of Wang (2009) has hi-lighted numerous problems in past research papers, mainly describing how not all the data produces a representative sample of results and therefore limiting the ability to produce national population estimates. The work of Wang and Beydoun (2009) suggested that the child-parent resemblance in the US was relatively weak, and believed that the results from previous studies depended greatly on social demographic characteristics, including: age, gender and family income. Also that American children’s dietary intake was in fact contributed to by community, school (Fitzgibbon & Stolley, 2004; Jahns, Siega-Riz, & Popkin, 2001), food environment , peer influence ( Salvy, Romero, Paluch, & Epstein, 2007 )and television viewing (Ayala et al., 2007; Boynton-Jarrett et al., 2003; Matheson et al., 2004), in comparison to a purely parental behaviour influence. This was a large study conducted on a national scale, unlike some of the previous studies conducted. There have also been numerous other studies conducted which have failed to find correlations, or that of a weak nature at all (Cullen et al, 2002; Feunekes et al., 1997, 1998).

It is difficult to define the contributing factors influencing children’s food intake, especially from the perspective of parental influence due to parents providing both genes and environments for their children (Birch and Fisher, 1997). It is believed that a child’s food intake is influenced by both the child’s genetics, in conjunction with their micro and macro environments. However, there is a great deal of research that provides support for parental behaviour influencing food intake as shown in this essay. Therefore it is important that this is addressed within the family environment. As well as monitoring other potential influential factors. The macro environment surrounding a child is essential to the foundation of a child’s food intake, as social learning also plays a influential role in a child’s food intake as their has been a significant impact from television and food advertisements on children’s food intake (Ogden, 2003).

Due to a strong influence of childhood eating experiences on later life, it is essential that influential factors are firmly understood. This is important as metabolic phenotypes may be modified at certain critical periods in life compared to behavioural phenotypes which may continuously be adjustable (Hill 1994).

By addressing the research conducted into this topic and the influential factors, they can then be used to attempt to combat the increasing obesity epidemic.

It is clear to say that the jury on whether parental behaviour plays a primary role in influencing child food intake is still out and we must ensure that we don’t always take results of studies at face value; as if we delve deeper it can become apparent that in fact not all results are representative of the population. However, we can conclude that there are other factors which should be taken into consideration as well as parental behaviours and these should be addressed carefully in order to provide our next generation with a healthy outlook on their diets.

References

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