By Dinah Torres Castro
Your parenting style could be the key to creating a successful or poor feeding relationship with your child. Parenting styles are how parents raise their children and can be categorized into four patterns based on two aspects of parenting behaviors: control (how much parents make demands on their children) and warmth (responsiveness). Parental control (demands) refers to the degree to which parents manage their children’s behavior and can range from being very controlling to setting few rules or demands. This control is measured by the parent’s high expectations of maturity, high parental supervision and willingness to confront inappropriate behaviors in children. Parental warmth refers to the degree to which parents are accepting and responsive of their children’s behavior as opposed to being unresponsive and rejecting. Responsiveness is measured through emotional support, warmth and meeting the child’s needs. When the two aspects of parenting are combined in different ways, four primary parenting styles emerge: Authoritarian, Permissive (Indulgent), Uninvolved (Indifferent) and Authoritative.
In the feeding relationship we see these parenting styles demonstrated in different ways. Let’s take for example a parent who is trying to get their young child to eat their broccoli. An Authoritarian parent would display little warmth and be highly controlling. This parent is a strict disciplinarian, uses restrictive, punitive styles and insists that their children follow parental directions. They might put a lot of pressure on a child to eat certain foods, finish what’s on the plate, restrict the less healthy foods and generally disregard the child’s food preferences. These parents believe leaving food on the plate is wasteful and might resort to threatening the child:
If you don’t eat your broccoli you will get no dessert!
Research shows that feeding your child using this style of parenting results in children who
- can’t tell if they are still hungry or if they have had enough
- consume less fruits and vegetables
- are more likely to be overweight or underweight
- have decreased enjoyment of food
- have increased fussiness at mealtimes
- eat slowly
- tend to eat more of the restricted foods when they have access to them
The next time you want your child to eat their broccoli, think twice before prompting or pressuring your child as this may actually discourage them from eating these foods and lead them to dislike vegetables because they were “forced” to eat them.
More on this topic to follow as we look at the impact of parenting styles on the feeding relationship.
Dinah Castro is a Bilingual Family Well-Being Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County’s Family Health and Wellness Program. She can be reached at 631-727-7850 ext. 351 or at dc258@cornell.edu.