Browsing by Subject "Parent-Child Relations"
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Item A Cross-Cultural Examination of Parenting Style and Feeding Practi(2011-02-01T19:34:27Z) Hinton, Leilani Kaulana; Holub, ShaylaChildhood obesity is an issue of great concern to health professionals in the United States. Past research has emphasized the role parenting styles (e.g., the global parenting environment) and parents? practices (e.g., specific parent behaviors) play in shaping childhood weight status. This study is the first to examine the associations of parenting style, feeding practices and children?s self-regulation of food intake in a South Asian population. Self-report data was collected from a community sample of South Asian parents with children between the ages of 3 to 9 years old (N = 54). Participants were 75% mothers and 25% fathers. Feeding practices were compared between South Asian mothers and data from a control group that was collected from an ongoing study. Survey items measured parenting style dimensions of warmth, psychological control, and behavioral control. Parents? controlling feeding practices of pressure, restriction for health and restriction for weight were also assessed. Self-regulation was measured by parent?s report of child?s external eating and food responsiveness, as well as satiety responsiveness. Results of this study revealed South Asian mothers used more pressure in feeding than Caucasian mothers, but did not use more restriction. Acculturation was not associated with parenting style dimensions or feeding practices, but was associated with external eating. The parenting style dimension of psychological control was positively correlated with restriction for health and pressure. Psychological control and restriction for health were associated with external eating, while these variables and restriction for weight were associated with food responsiveness. Regression analyses suggest that restriction for health was the best predictor for both of these variables. Restriction for weight was related to satiety responsiveness, but this variable was not significant after controlling for child weight status. The results of this study are consistent with previous research on feeding practices and self-regulation. Parenting interventions targeting child obesity should consider teaching parents to employ less controlling feeding practices, as these methods were associated with lower self-regulation ability in children.Item The Relationship Between Maternal Psychopathology and Acute Treatment Outcomes of Children and Adolescents Diagnosed With Anorexia Nervosa(2006-8-11) Spector, Sarah M.; Kennard, BethRecent studies have suggested that maternal psychopathology influences the psychiatric status of children. However, there is a lack of research in the eating disorder literature pertaining to the impact of maternal psychopathology, specifically related to depression and eating disordered cognitions, on a child or adolescent diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between maternal psychopathology and eating disorders. Specifically, this study examined the relationship between maternal eating disordered cognitions and depression and severity of child's psychopathology, as well as the relationship between maternal eating disordered cognitions and acute treatment outcomes of a child or adolescent diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. The sample consisted of 43 children and adolescents between the ages of ten and seventeen years of age, with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa or eating disorder not otherwise specified. All subjects were being treated at Children's Medical Center psychiatric unit as an inpatient or partial hospitalization patient. At entry to treatment, all patients were administered a structured clinical interview to obtain comprehensive psychiatric diagnoses. Additionally, subjects and their mothers or female caregivers completed self-report measures of eating disordered cognitions and depressive symptomatology. The relationship between maternal psychopathology, child eating disordered psychopathology, and relationship to treatment outcome was assessed. Results revealed a significant relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and the severity of the child's eating disordered cognitions. However, despite the expectation that the degree of maternal eating disordered cognitions at admission would predict the child's outcome over an acute period of treatment, no significant relationship was found. Results from this study suggest that maternal depression may play a more influential role in the child's eating disorder psychopathology than maternal eating disordered cognitions.Item The Use of an Observational Measure to Examine Family Characteristics in Children and Adolescents with Eating Disorders(2005-08-11) Housson, Wells Gibbons; Kennard, Beth D.This study evaluated families who had a child diagnosed with an eating disorder compared to those with a child diagnosed with depression. Both groups were assessed at entry to a treatment regime: the ED group was assessed upon admission to inpatient treatment for an eating disorder, and the MDD group was assessed at admission to a research study evaluating the use of psychotropic medication and therapy for children with MDD. The groups were compared on global family functioning as well as on specific aspects of family functioning. While the ED and MDD sample were similar in terms of ethnic breakdown, they did differ significantly in terms of age and gender, with the ED group being significantly older and having a significantly greater number of females than males. In this study, the MDD group and the ED group did not differ significantly in terms of global family competence on an observational measure of family competence, nor did they differ in terms of conflict or closeness. The inappropriate parent-child coalition subscale distinguished ED from MDD, with the ED families scoring in the more dysfunctional range on this subscale. Age was a significant predictor of this construct, such that the older the child, the less healthy the score on this subscale. Conflict did not distinguish the groups; however, severity of illness and gender (female) were significant predictors of healthier scores on the conflict subscale for the ED group. There were no significant predictors of conflict for the MDD group. The relationship between child report and rater observation of family functioning was assessed and found to be significant, such that there was a significant correlation between child self-report of overall family competence (Self-report Family Inventory) and rater observation (TCFES). The relationship between mother and child self-report of family functioning was also found to be significant, such that mothers and children in this study rated their families in a similar fashion. The relationship between maternal eating disordered cognitions and family functioning was not significant, nor was the relationship between mother and child report of eating disordered cognitions.