Mothers are of particular interest

Mothers are of particular interest on children’s eating behaviour,
as they have been shown to spend significantly more
time than fathers in direct interactions with their children
across several familial situations, including mealtimes(15).
Mothers who exert a greater degree of control over their
child’s food intake had children who demonstrated less ability
to regulate energy intake. External parental control of the
child’s dietary intake may indirectly foster the development
of excess adiposity in the child.
Birch and colleagues(16,17) point out that mothers, who were
preoccupied with their own weight and eating, reported higher
levels of restricting daughters’ intake, encouraging daughters
to lose weight over time. In this study, mothers’ encouragement
of daughters’ weight loss was linked to daughters’
restrained eating behaviour. This relationship was partially
mediated by daughters’ perception of maternal pressure to
lose weight. These findings suggest that mothers’ preoccupation
with weight and eating, via attempts to influence daughters’
weight and eating, may place daughters at risk for
developing problematic eating behaviours.
The predictors ofmaternal child-feeding style arematernal and
child characteristics. Birch and colleagues(5) affirm that mothers
reported using more restrictive feeding practices when they perceived
daughters as overweight and reported usingmore pressure
in child feeding when they perceived daughters as underweight.
Mothers’ child-feeding practices were related to mothers’
own investment in weight and eating related issues, daughters’
observable weight status, mothers’ perceptions of
daughters’ weight status, and mothers’ concern for their
daughter developing a weight problem in the future. This
model held for maternal restriction, in that mothers reported
greater use of restriction in child feeding when they had
greater weight and eating concerns of their own, when
daughters were overweight, when they perceived that their
daughters were at risk for developing a weight problem,
and when they had concerns about daughters’ weight