Background: Research suggests that parents use specific child-feeding strategies to influence their child's weight based on perceptions and concerns about their child's overweight risk, but limited data are available on ethnically diverse low-income populations.
Objective: This cross-sectional study examined associations between mothers' perception and concern about children's weight, child-feeding strategies, and child overweight in an ethnically diverse population.
Subjects: Mothers of preschool children (n=967) who participated in a federally funded nutrition program were asked how they fed their child, how they perceived child's weight, and whether or not they were concerned about their child becoming overweight.
Statistical analyses performed: Logistic regression to calculate odds of maternal perception/concern given child weight, feeding strategy given maternal perception/concern, and child overweight given feeding strategy.
Results: Only 21% (n=23/108) of overweight preschoolers were perceived as overweight. Maternal perception of overweight was not associated with feeding strategies. About 53% (n=76/144) of Hispanic, 42% (n=23/55) of African-American, and 29% (n=223/768) of white mothers reported concern about their child becoming overweight. Mothers reporting concern were more likely to restrict child's intake of select foods (odds ratio 5.94; 95% confidence interval 1.74 to 20.28) and less likely to pressure child to eat (odds ratio 0.39; 95% confidence interval 0.15 to 0.99); however, these strategies did not predict child overweight.
Conclusions: Mothers concerned about their child becoming overweight were more likely to restrict children's intake of specific foods and less likely to pressure their child to eat; however, this study did not detect an association between feeding strategies and child overweight.