Cognitive and affective factors linking mothers' perceived weight history to child feeding

Abstract

Background/objectives: To explore whether mothers' lifetime experiences with their own weight status and related cognitive and affective factors influence child feeding behavior.

Subjects/methods: Overweight mothers (N = 221) of 4-5 year olds recalled their weight at four time points, and were grouped into weight history trajectories: recently overweight, always overweight, and steady-gain-obese. Objective food choice behavior was assessed in a virtual reality buffet and subjective food restriction for the index child was assessed using a psychometric measure.

Results: Mothers' observed food choice was not associated with weight trajectory, but mothers who spent more time being overweight and who weighed more at present were more restrictive of their child's eating. Mothers' concern about child weight increased with more time spent being overweight. Concern for child weight and mothers' body guilt differentially mediated the relationships between weight trajectories and perceived feeding restriction.

Conclusions: Considering mothers' lifetime weight experiences may suggest that parental influences on child feeding are amenable to intervention that would otherwise be obscured by static weight measures.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01087346.

Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1.

Trajectories based on mothers’ recalled weight history at four time points (3-group model).

Figure 2.

Mothers’ feelings of body-related shame and guilt depending on their weight history trajectory. Scales range from 6–24 with higher values indicating more shame and guilt. Groups with different letters are significantly different from each other.

Figure 3.

Mediation models testing for concern for the child’s weight and mother’s body-related guilt as mediators of the relationship between the weight history trajectory group and perceived child feeding behavior (restriction). Reference group: Recently overweight mothers; Mediating analysis of concern covariates: mothers’ education level and perception of the child’s weight; Mediating analysis of guilt covariates: mothers’ education level and ethnicity.