Parents have a strong influence on their children’s eating behaviors and attitudes toward food. In early childhood, parental influence is overarching. Yet even in adolescence, parental approaches to regulating their children’s eating behaviors can have a strong bearing on their children’s health outcomes, psychological health, and predilection towards eating disorders. Moreover, parents may exhibit different attitudes and beliefs regarding their female children than their male children to reflect different gender norms about eating behaviors, etiquette, and body image. In “Why do mothers encourage their children to control their weight?” Schreiber, Kesztyüs, Wirt, Erkelenz, et al (2014) found that mothers more strongly encourage their female children to control their eating or to lose weight than they do to their male children. However, the results were only true for mothers with children of normal weight. Interestingly, mothers who had boy or girl children who were either underweight or overweight did not exhibit differences in the ways they addressed their children’s eating or weight. Mothers encouraged their female children who were underweight, normal weight, or overweight to control their eating to discourage weight gain, whereas they did not do the same for boys. The Schreiber, Kesztyüs, Wirt, Erkelenz, et al (2014) study focused...
References
Parletta, N (n.d.). The role of parents and schools in promoting healthy dietary behaviors. Nutridate.
Schreiber, A. C., Kesztyüs, D., Wirt, T., Erkelenz, N., Kobel, S., & Steinacker, J. M. (2014). Why do mothers encourage their children to control their weight? A cross-sectional study of possible contributing factors. BMC Public Health, 14(450), 1-7.
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