“When parents use food to regulate their children’s behaviors and emotions, they may be increasing their children’s risk for overconsumption and missing opportunities to teach their children healthier regulation strategies”
By Maria Bolevich
Alison K. Ventura is a professor of Kinesiology and Public Health at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, she holds a Ph.D. in Human Development & Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University. She is one of the authors of the study “Associations between parenting stress, parent feeding practices, and perceptions of child eating behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic”, published in the journal Appetite.
“We were preparing to do an observational study of parent-child mealtime interactions wherein we would go into families’ homes to do in-person observations of parents feeding their preschool-age children. Unfortunately, COVID-related mandates and shutdowns occurred right as we started recruiting, so we had to shut down the originally planned study. However, we realized this was a great opportunity to shift our research focus to parents’ experiences with feeding their preschool-age children during the onset of the pandemic and also recognized that stress would likely be an important thing to study, too.” says professor Ventura for the Deepness. As she explains the biggest challenge was getting the study together as quickly as possible once they realized the need for it. “We really wanted to assess families during the onset of the pandemic and before COVID-related mandates and shut-downs were lifted, so it was a challenge to accomplish this. The lead author, Lupita Gonzales, should be given the majority of the credit for this, as she was the one who quickly developed the study protocol, selected questionnaires, set up the data collection website, and managed recruitment. She did an amazing job and ensured this important study was done!” adds Ventura.
The Deepness: “Parenting stress during the pandemic was associated with use of food for emotional and behavioral regulation and perceptions that children exhibited problematic eating behaviors.” Did you expect that?
Alison K.Ventura: Yes, we did expect this. Research conducted prior to the pandemic illustrates that food can be a very effective emotion and behavior regulation strategy in the short term — it can help calm down, distract, or reward children. However, this short-term benefit comes with potential long-term costs. When parents use food to regulate their children’s behaviors and emotions, they may be increasing their children’s risk for overconsumption and missing opportunities to teach their children healthier regulation strategies. We also know that parenting stress can impact how they view their children and that stressed parents are more likely to perceive their children to be more challenging. This may be because their children are indeed more challenging (thus, causing their parents to feel stress), but this may also be because the parents are feeling overwhelmed by their situation and perceiving it more negatively. So, based on this previous research, we hypothesized that parents who reported greater levels of parenting stress during the beginning of the pandemic would also report use of food for emotional and behavioral regulation and perceptions that children exhibited problematic eating behaviors.
The Deepness: What surprised you the most, and from your point of view what is the most interesting part of the study and why?
Alison K. Ventura: I was surprised to see that 47% of participants perceived that their family was moderately, emotionally affected by the pandemic (e.g., increased feelings of anxiety, stress, paranoia) and 43% indicated feeling the precautions put in place in response to COVID-19 (i.e., stay-at-home mandates) have been moderately problematic for their family. I would have expected these percentages to be higher given we conducted this study pretty shortly after the onset of pandemic-related mandates and shutdowns. But, these data likely speak to how varied families experiences were during the pandemic. For some, the extra family time and relief of other stressors (i.e., commuting) may have led to a relatively positive experience during this time. However, it is also possible that parents who were coping better were more likely to participate in our study. It was interesting to me to see how much variability there was in the sample related to parenting stress. Over 1/3 of parents reported their level of parenting stress had not changed since prior to the onset of stay-at-home mandates. It is interesting to me to think about how different the experience of the pandemic has been for different families and in ways that likely relate to factors such as family income, social support, race/ethnicity, and other broader factors that may either buffer or augment the negative impacts of the pandemic
The Deepness: “Further, 47% of participants perceived that their family was moderately, emotionally affected by the pandemic (e.g., increased feelings of anxiety, stress, paranoia) and 43% indicated feeling the precautions put in place in response to COVID-19 (i.e., stay-at-home mandates) had been moderately challenging for their family.” What is the long-term impact?
Alison K.Ventura: We can’t say from the present study since it was cross-sectional. I hope that further longitudinal studies emerge wherein researchers follow families both during and after the pandemic. It will be really interesting to continue to learn how the pandemic affected families with children and whether those impacts were long-lasting or acute (that is, specific to impacts of COVID-related mandates and shutdowns on day-to-day activities).
The Deepness: “The present study demonstrated that greater levels of parenting stress were associated with greater use of food for emotion regulation and as a reward.” Can this influence the eating habits of children?
Alison K.Ventura: Previous pre-pandemic research examining parent feeding practices suggests that parents’ feeding practices do shape children’s eating behaviors, so perhaps. We know these early experiences are important and that what parents model through their own behaviors (e.g., how they respond to stress) and through their parenting practices shape their children’s beliefs, behaviors, and understanding of the world. However, further research is needed to better understand how potential changes in parents’ stress and feeding practices during the pandemic impacted their children.
The Deepness: The study was conducted between March and April 2020, and on the question: “Someone in family has been diagnosed with COVID-19” 99.6% answered “No”, it makes me wonder do you plan similar research with those who were directly affected, do you think that the results might be worse in that case?
Alison K.Ventura: We don’t currently have plans to do additional research with families who were more directly affected by COVID-19 because they and their children contracted it. It is possible that contracting COVID-19 would lead to even greater levels of stress for families and may impact parent feeding practices and child eating behaviors; it would be interesting to see the results of a study examining this to broaden our understanding of families’ experiences with the pandemic and how we can support families, especially when they are also struggling with illness due to COVID.
The Deepness: Can studies like this one help us prepare for some future pandemics?
Alison K.Ventura: I would like to think so, but it’s hard to say given we don’t know what future pandemics look like. But, our hope is that this study contributes to the larger body of literature that has looked at parents’ experiences during the pandemic so we can identify the best ways to support parents during times of stress, transition, and social change.
