Do parental feeding practices predict authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles?

Study objective was to evaluate links of parenting styles to feeding practices. Participants were 239 parents of first‐grade children (134 boys; 105 girls) enrolled in rural public schools. Measures included parental responses to Encouraging and Modeling questionnaires and parental responses to Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ); parenting styles were measured by the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ). Regression analyses revealed that feeding behaviors explained 21%, 15%, and 8% of the variance in authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting, respectively. Hypothesis 1: Responsibility, restriction (negative), monitoring, and modeling were significantly related to authoritative style ( p < .00001). Hypothesis 2: Restriction, pressure to eat, and monitoring (negative) were significantly related to authoritarian style ( p < .00001). Hypothesis 3: Modeling (negative) and restriction were significantly related to permissive style ( p < .001). We conclude that parental feeding practices with young children are linked to general parenting styles and successful interventions to change parental feeding practices should address underlying parenting styles. This research was supported by United States Department of Agriculture Grant 2004‐05545.