PROJECT SUMMARY
Parents' feeding practices (i.e., controlling versus autonomy-promoting) are associated with child obesity risk.
Yet extant work examining factors such as parent obesogenic eating behaviors and concern about child weight
in relation to child feeding has only focused on one parent, typically the mother. The potential influence of the
parent's partner in shaping family feeding practices is rarely considered. In other words, the current conceptual
model is limited to an individual-level, instead of a dyadic conceptual or analytic approach. This limitation
prevents us from conceptualizing the family as a complex, integrated whole in which both parents' child feeding
practices are interdependent and thus possibly influenced by each other's characteristics. For example, a
parent whose partner is concerned about a child's unhealthy eating may engage in more controlling feeding in
response to his/her partner' concerns, despite not having such concerns him or herself. Interdependence
theory offers a novel way to model these interactive processes in child feeding. According to interdependence
theory, any given individual outcome (e.g., child feeding) in a relationship should be conceptualized as the
independent and conjoint effects of the two members' characteristics. When these ideas are applied to parent
dyads in relation to child feeding, it is reasonable to hypothesize that parents' feeding practices should be
related to their own characteristics (actor effect), partner characteristics (partner effect), and the interaction or
mutuality between two parents' characteristics (interaction effect). More nuanced understanding of how
individual parent own obesogenic eating behaviors and concern about child weight dyadically interact to shape
their own and their partners' child feeding practices may be critical in order to design and implement
intervention strategies that address the development of adaptive feeding practices across the entire family
system to reduce child obesity risk. Thus, we will use the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to examine the
independent and interdependent contributions of parent characteristics in relation to their child feeding
practices. Aims are, among couples (opposite-sex parents and same-sex parents) with children from 3 to 5
years of age:
Aim 1: To examine actor and partner effects of parent obesogenic eating (i.e., restrained, external, and
emotional) and concern about child weight on child feeding practices (i.e., controlling vs. autonomy-
promoting feeding). We hypothesize that individual parent factors will relate to their own (actor effect) and
their partner's (partner effect) feeding practices.
Aim 2: To examine the interaction effect of parent obesogenic eating and concern about child weight
on child feeding practices. We hypothesize that the interaction effect of parent factors will independently
relate to feeding practices over and above actor and partner effects.