Preschool-aged children are at high risk for obesity; thus, parents play an important role in obesity prevention. Family-based interventions can be effective in reducing childhood obesity risk, particularly when multiple family members work toward the same goal. Despite this, most interventions to treat childhood obesity only focus on one parent, typically the mother. Family systems theory suggests that when family members are unsupportive or undermine treatment goals (e.g., resist healthier diets) the effectiveness of family-based programs for child weight loss is reduced. Maternal, and to a much lesser degree paternal, feeding practices have been linked to childhood obesity. Yet, little is known about how fathers and mothers navigate their joint parenting (i.e., co-parenting) around child feeding. Positive co-parenting (e.g., supporting a spouse's parenting decisions) is associated with better child psychosocial outcomes and health in other domains, yet no studies have examined feeding-related co-parenting in the context of childhood obesity. Further, most food parenting studies consider feeding behaviors during mealtime, with little attention to parenting behaviors around other feeding tasks such as meal planning, grocery shopping, and meal preparation. Given that children who consume more food away from home have a higher risk of obesity and co-parenting efforts may be required to effectively plan and implement meals, this is a notable oversight. Understanding feeding-related co-parenting behaviors and beliefs would allow us to inform the development of family-based interventions that effectively engage fathers and mother in childhood obesity prevention efforts. Extant co-parenting literature has identified three co-parenting styles (cooperative, disengaged, and conflicted); the goal of the proposed work is to identify feeding-related co-parenting styles in mothers and fathers of preschool-aged children, considering the extent to which both parents are engaged in feeding tasks (dyadic engagement) and how much parents support or disagree with each other regarding child feeding. Prior work suggests that individual parent characteristics (e.g., family of origin experience) are associated with co-parenting and that discrepancies in spouses' characteristics and attitudes are associated with poorer co-parenting. It is unknown how such parent characteristics may relate to feeding-related co-parenting. The proposed study will use qualitative methods to identify feeding-related co-parenting styles and correlates in fathers and mothers of children between 3 and 5 years of age.
AIM 1 : To identify feeding-related co-parenting themes in fathers and mothers of preschool-age children using focus group methods.
AIM 2 : To identify feeding-related co-parenting typologies in fathers and mothers of preschool-age children using individual semi-structured interview methods.
AIM 3 : To examine individual differences (parents' own weight status, child eating behavior, and parent feeding style) in relation to feeding-related co-parenting typologies.
Parents play an important role in childhood obesity prevention, yet interventions to curb child obesity tend to only focus on one parent, typically the mother. Family-based interventions that involve multiple family members can be more effective in reducing child obesity risk. It has also been shown that family members can either facilitate or mitigate the effectiveness of such programs; for example, mothers and fathers could disagree on child feeding behaviors. Despite this, surprisingly limited research has examined how fathers and mothers jointly navigate their parenting around child feeding (i.e., feeding-related co-parenting). The proposed work will use qualitative methods to identify co-parenting in the feeding domain. Better understanding feeding-related co-parenting (e.g., how parents negotiate child feeding and meal preparation) between father-mother dyads can directly inform the development of effective family-based interventions to prevent childhood obesity.
