Parenting styles, communication and child/adolescent diets and weight status: let's talk about it

Abstract

Parenting styles have been associated with health-related behaviours in children and adolescents. We present a series of studies. Study 1 investigated parenting styles and parent–child communication styles as cross-sectional predictors of dietary patterns in children, and study 2 as cross-sectional predictors of weight status in adolescents. Data were collected from parents of 382 children aged 2–12 in study 1, and from parents of 72 adolescent children aged 12–18 in study 2. Controlling for confounders, laxness and over-reactivity predicted lower fruit/vegetable and higher non-core food consumption in study 1. Incendiary parent–adolescent communication predicted higher adolescent body mass index in study 2. These findings suggest that different parent–child parenting styles are associated with diet and weight in children and adolescents. Improving ways in which parents communicate with their children may be an important consideration in the development of effective parent-targeted treatment programmes for child diet quality and subsequent adolescent overweight/obesity.

Keywords:

• children
• adolescents
• parenting
• body mass index – BMI
• communication
• obesity treatment
• diets
• overweight

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Australian Technology Network of University's Centre for Metabolic Fitness for funding the Adelaide trial of the Choose Health project, Prof. Peter Howe, A/Prof. Jon Buckley, Denise Skinner, Dr Alison Coates and A/Prof. Jeff Walkley for their contributions to the Choose Health project, Dr James Dollman for his contribution to study 1, and all parents who assisted us with these projects.