A mother's core beliefs, which determine the way she perceives herself, the world, and her relationships with others may affect her perception of whether her child has any feeding problems. Certain core beliefs may make mothers more vulnerable to anxiety about parenting, which may manifest as either increased perception of feeding difficulty or as failure to resolve feeding problems when they arise. Research has shown that mothers' mental health is important in the management of childhood feeding problems. Such studies have focused on diagnoses, however, rather than other factors that may influence how mothers perceive their environment. To investigate the role of mothers' core beliefs, researchers from the University of Birmingham, UK, studied 103 mothers of girls and 93 mothers of boys. The age of the children ranged from 7 months to just over 5 years. Forty-five percent of the mothers reported that their child had a poor appetite, ate only a limited variety of foods or had some other feeding problem, and, as it turns out, the mothers' core beliefs were related to their child's feeding problems. Among the mothers of girls, those who reported feelings of abandonment and inadequacy, as well as dependence/incompetence tended to give their daughters higher scores on all four aspects of feeding difficulty studied, including food fussiness and food refusal. A mother who perceives greater threat and risk from feeding, who perceives herself as incompetent at managing daily life independently, who feels destined to fail at everything she tries, who is over involved with her family, or who fears autonomy in her daughter is likely to become anxious in the presence of feeding difficulty or to exert control over her daughter's intake. Any imposition of control over children's food intake is likely to exacerbate negative mealtime interactions and, as a result, feeding problems may become established. For mothers of boys, feelings of disconnection from the child, powerlessness and lack of support may contribute to the use of maladaptive problem-solving strategies in response to feeding difficulty, which increase food refusal and perceptions of fussiness, the researchers noted. The researchers concluded that strategies aimed at curbing children's feeding difficulties may need to take into account the potential role of mother's core beliefs.
International Journal of Eating Disorders,
April 2005