Maternal Experiences of Parenting Girls who are Perceived as Overweight or at Risk for Becoming So: Narratives of Uncertainty, Ambivalence and Struggle

Abstract

This work explored U.S. mothers’ experiences of parenting young adolescent girls who are perceived by their mothers as overweight or at risk for becoming so. Data were collected via in‐depth interviews with 13 mothers and were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Many mothers experienced socializing their daughters about issues of the body, weight, diet, and health as marked by uncertainty, ambivalence and struggle, particularly relative to four subthemes: mothers’ embodiment as challenge to ‘good mothering’, negotiating a dilemma of the ‘healthy mind’ versus the ‘healthy body’, managing discipline: how much to intervene?, and the challenge of interpersonal dynamics.

Development and Validation of the Parental Food Choice Guilt Scale

“…Indeed, parents’ food-related guilt is often intertwined with time and cost constraints, as well as uncertainty about appropriate levels of control to implement in monitoring children’s diet (Noble et al, 2005; Pescud & Pettigrew, 2014). Our results with respect to self-efficacy are consistent with qualitative findings linking food-related guilt to less parental knowledge about nutrition (Ogle & Park, 2018). However, it is also important to note that guilt and shame may be particularly difficult to disentangle among parents (Scarnier et al, 2009).…”

“…The PFCG was negatively correlated with the healthfulness of the child's diet and positively correlated with the child's food fussiness. These findings align with past work linking guilt with poorer child eating and feeding habits at the moment (Hagerman et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2011;Noble et al, 2005;Pescud & Pettigrew, 2014;Pocock et al, 2010), supporting the idea that, rather than driving adaptive behavior, parental food-related guilt is a correlate of relatively unhealthy parent and child behaviors. Our study, alongside most prior work, was cross-sectional, so the directionality of these relationships is unclear.…”

“…First, this approach is unlikely to successfully capture parents’ propensity for lived experiences of food-related guilt. Many food-related situations may elicit guilt, including choices made during grocery shopping, eating out, and cooking (Ogle & Park, 2018; Pescud & Pettigrew, 2014); therefore, a more comprehensive set of items is needed to achieve validity and reliability. Indeed, other instruments that measure parents’ feelings about child feeding (e.g., the Child Feeding Questionnaire [CFQ]; Birch et al, 2001) contain many items designed to span the range of situations that may elicit the construct under study.…”

“…The food choices that parents make for their children are linked to many important outcomes, including children's self-regulation of food intake (Birch et al, 2001), food preferences and attitudes toward eating (Savage et al, 2007), and weight (Birch & Fisher, 2000). Efforts to elucidate the affective and contextual precursors to parents' food decisions have identified guilt as an important construct to consider for mothers (Johnson et al, 2011;Noble et al, 2005;Pocock et al, 2010) and, according to emergent evidence, fathers (Harris et al, 2020). However, it remains unclear whether guilt is helpful or harmful in this domain; guilt may motivate intentions to make better food choices in the future, but may also trigger the self-gratifying behavior of appeasing one's child with less healthy foods (Hagerman et al, 2019).…”

“…Many studies of parental guilt regarding child food choices have been qualitative. In discussions of child feeding, child weight, and child eating habits, guilt and shame are core themes expressed by both mothers (Jackson et al, 2007;Johnson et al, 2011;Noble et al, 2005;Pocock et al, 2010) and fathers (Harris et al, 2020). Content analyses show that guilt arises from many aspects of child feeding, including factors within one's control, such as a desire to secure one's child's affection by providing unhealthy foods, and outside one's control, such as time and cost constraints (Jackson et al, 2007;Pescud & Pettigrew, 2014).…”