Impact of Asian American Mothers' Feeding Beliefs and Practices on Child Obesity in a Diverse Community Sample

Asian Americans suffer from childhood obesity yet are a particularly understudied population. Objective was to examine the impact of ethnicity on child feeding practices believed to be associated with childhood obesity in a community sample of mothers and their children. Prior research with White samples indicates a positive relationship between parental overcontrol of child feeding and child adiposity. Participants were 425 mothers (66 Asian/Asian American, 218 Hispanic/Latino, 26 Black/African American, 115 White/Caucasian) with children between the ages of 2 and 11. Participants provided demographic and height and weight information, and completed the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ). Analyses focused on associations between ethnicity, parental feeding attitudes (factors of the CFQ) and child Body Mass Index (BMI). Results indicated significant ethnicity by CFQ factor interactions for 2 of the 6 CFQ factors examined (pressure to eat and restriction). Post hoc tests demonstrated that for these 2 CFQ factors, there was a significant association between child BMI and the CFQ factor score only within the Asian group; among Asians, for each of these 2 CFQ factors, children from families with above-median factor scores had significantly lower BMI (p < .05). As predicted, for Asian Americans there was an inverse relationship between mothers' control of feeding and child BMI. These findings suggest that lower levels of parental control over feeding may contribute to childhood obesity in Asian populations. The relationship between parental control over eating and child BMI found in middle-class White families does not generalize to populations with diverse ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds.