Associations of maternal stress and maternal feeding practices at child aged 6 years
Open Access
- Author:
- Aluquin, Lindsay
- Area of Honors:
- Nutritional Sciences
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Jennifer Savage Williams, Thesis Supervisor
Alison D Gernand, Thesis Honors Advisor
Amy Moore, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Feeding Practices
Mother-Child Relationship
Childhood Obesity
Maternal Stress
Household Chaos - Abstract:
- Parent feeding practices, or specific goal-oriented strategies used by parents when feeding their children, play an important role in healthy development during childhood. Promoting structure-based parent feeding practices and reducing control-based feeding practices may help children develop healthy food preferences and eating behaviors. The aims of this study were: 1) To examine the association between maternal stress and maternal feeding practices at child aged 6 years; and 2) To examine the potential moderating effect of household chaos on the association between maternal stress and maternal feeding practices at child aged 6 years. This study was a secondary analysis of data from the Intervention Nurses Start Infants Growing on Healthy Trajectories (INSIGHT) randomized control trial. Participants for the current study included 169 mother-child dyads who were recruited for INSIGHT from a Central Pennsylvania maternity ward just after birth and participated through child aged 6 years. Mothers reported sociodemographic characteristics and completed the Structure Control and Parental Feeding questionnaire, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale at child aged 6 years. Linear regression models examined the associations between maternal feeding practices and maternal stress, and the potential moderating effect of household chaos on this association. Mothers were on average age 29.4 years, 88.2% were married, and 83.0% had annual household incomes >$50,000. Maternal perceived stress was significantly associated with maternal use of restriction, a control-based feeding practice (B = 0.023, SE = 0.011, p = 0.04) in adjusted models. There were no other significant relationships between maternal perceived stress and their feeding practices. Household chaos did not moderate the effect between maternal perceived stress and maternal use of restriction. Maternal feeding practices play a significant role in child health and development and more research is needed to examine which parent and household factors are associated with structure- versus control-based feeding practices. Future studies should investigate these relationships in more diverse samples that often experience more stressors placing them at risk for higher stress.