Parents’ feeding stress and pressure: Family mealtime dynamics with preschoolers across one week

Abstract

Parents of preschool-age children report that mealtime is a particularly stressful parenting context. Because stress often leads to compromised parenting quality, we examined mothers' and fathers' perceived feeding stress with their 3- to 5-year-old child related to their own and their partner's controlling feeding practices, specifically pressure to eat. We also tested whether these associations were moderated by child age and body mass index. Sixty-five mother-father dyads provided daily reports of their feeding stress and were observed during dinners for their use of pressuring feeding practices with their child for seven consecutive days. Using multilevel models, we found that on days when mothers reported higher feeding stress, they were rated as using more instances of feeding pressure and their partners were also rated as using more feeding pressure. The partner effect was moderated by child age; higher daily maternal feeding stress related to more paternal feeding pressure with older children compared to younger children.