Parental feeding practices as a response to child appetitive traits in toddlerhood and early childhood: a discordant twin analysis of the Gemini cohort

Alice R. Kininmonth*, Moritz Herle, Kristiane Tommerup, Emma Haycraft, Claire Farrow, Helen Croker, Abigail Pickard, Katie Edwards, Jacqueline Blissett, Clare Llewellyn

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Parental feeding practices (PFPs) have been implicated in the development of children's eating behaviours. However, evidence suggests that feeding practices may also develop in response to their child's weight or emerging appetitive traits. We used the twin design to test the hypothesis that parents develop their feeding practices partly in response to their child's appetite. METHODS: Data were from Gemini, a population-based cohort of 2402 British families with twins born in 2007. Psychometric measures of PFPs and appetite were completed by parents when their twins were 16-months and 5-years. Within-family analyses including all twins with available data in the sample (n = 1010-1858 pairs), examined if within-pair differences in PFPs were associated with differences in appetitive traits, controlling for differences in birth weight-SDS, early feeding method and child sex. In a subsample of twin pairs who were considerably discordant for appetitive traits by ≥ 1SD (n = 122-544 pairs), the direction and magnitude of within-pair differences in feeding practices was explored. RESULTS: Within-family variation in parental feeding practices in toddlerhood and early childhood was low (discordance ranged from 0.1 to 6% of the sample), except for pressure to eat (toddlerhood: 19%; early childhood: 32%). Within-pair differences in all appetitive traits were associated with differential use of 'pressure to eat' at both 16-months and 5-years. In the subsample of twins most discordant for appetitive traits, parents used more pressure with the twin expressing lower food responsiveness, lower emotional overeating, lower food enjoyment, higher satiety responsiveness, slower speed of eating, higher emotional undereating and greater fussiness in toddlerhood and early childhood (p-values < 0.001). Effect sizes were small to large at 16-months (η2=0.02-0.09) and 5-years (η2=0.05-0.21). CONCLUSION: Parents rarely varied their feeding practices between twins in toddlerhood and early childhood, except for pressure. Parents exerted greater pressure on their twin who expressed a poorer appetite compared to their co-twin, suggesting that parents develop a pressuring feeding style when their child expresses a poorer appetite or lower interest in, and enthusiasm for, eating. These findings could be used to guide interventions seeking to support parents in feeding their children in a way that nurtures the development of healthy eating behaviours.

Original languageEnglish
Article number39
Number of pages11
JournalInternational Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Volume20
Issue number1
Early online date4 Apr 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2023. The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.


Funding Information:
This work was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research grant (ES/V014153/1). The funding organizations had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of data, and preparation, review or approval of the manuscript.

Keywords

  • Research
  • Discordant twin
  • Discordance
  • Sibling
  • Eating behaviour
  • Child
  • Toddler
  • Feeding practices

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