The relationship between parents' anti-fat attitudes and restrictive feeding.

Abstract

Anti-fat prejudice is a common attitude in our society, and it has implications for those who hold and are targets of this prejudice. Little is known, however, about how parents' anti-fat attitudes impact the ways they feed their young children. We hypothesized that parents' attitudes about weight would predict parents' restrictive feeding practices above and beyond the effects of the child's actual weight and the parents' concern about child overweight. A total of 126 mothers and 102 fathers returned surveys about anti-fat attitudes, feeding practices (restriction for weight and restriction for health), and concern about child overweight. Parental concern about child overweight was related to higher restrictive feeding practices for both mothers and fathers. Parents' anti-fat attitudes also predicted restrictive feeding above and beyond the effects of parent and child BMI and parental concern about overweight. These findings suggest that parents' anti-fat attitudes impact the way they feed their children.