Childhood Overweight and the Relationship between Parent Behaviors, Parenting Style, and Family Functioning

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between parent behaviors, parenting style, and how a family functions with respect to the development of childhood overweight. Parents can influence a child's weight through specific feeding and activity practices and perhaps more broadly through their parenting style and management of family functioning. These more global influences of parenting style and family functioning provide a framework in which specific parent behaviors can be interpreted by the child. Therefore, understanding the impact of specific parent behaviors within the context of parenting style and family functioning needs to be explored. This article highlights the pervasive influence of parents around the development of dietary habits, and suggests that additional efforts to examine the interaction between specific feeding behaviors and parenting style/family functioning should be promoted to better inform the development of interventions that may help stem the growing prevalence of obesity among our children.