Positive parenting mitigates the effects of poor self-regulation on body mass index trajectories from ages 4-15 years.

The most recent prevalence statistics from 2009–2010 indicate that approximately 17% of children aged 2–19 in the United States were considered overweight or obese. More so, the prevalence of obesity is greater among boys (18.6%) than it is among girls (15%) (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2012). Though previously rising rates of childhood obesity have been flattening over the last decade, the existing rate of childhood obesity and overweight is alarmingly high and a definite cause for concern (Ogden et. al., 2012). There is a need to understand the factors that set certain children along a path to rapid weight gain in order to inform programs to prevent further weight gain and treat existing weight concerns. One factor that has been identified as setting children on this upward trajectory is self-regulation failure. Results from several studies document a link between children’s ability to self-regulate and obesity. Self-regulation is often defined as a purposeful process originating from within the person whereby one exerts control or makes an adjustment with the aim of replacing one response with another to either achieve a certain goal or conform to set rules or ideals (Vohs & Baumeister, 2010). Children with self-regulation in the eating domain are able to recognize satiety cues and stop eating when full (Birch & Fisher, 1997), which is an important protective factor for obesity. However many overweight and obese children tend to lack this ability and eat past the point of satiety (Faith, Berkowitz, Stallings, Kerns, Storey & Stunkard, 2006; Fisher & Birch, 2002; Hill, Llewellyn, Saxton, Webber, Semmler et al., 2008). Results from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies show that high levels of self-regulation even outside of the eating domain are protective against rapid weight gain in children and result in a lower incidence of obesity in childhood (Graziano, Calkins & Keane, 2010) and adolescence (Francis & Susman, 2009;; Seeyave, Coleman, Appugliese, Corwyn, Bradley et al., 2009; Tsukayama, Toomey, Faith & Duckworth, 2010). Two of these studies specifically looked at children’s ability to delay gratification in order to delineate the effect of this aspect of low self-regulatory capacity on increased weight gain (Francis & Susman, 2009; Seeyave et al., 2009). Additional studies also provide evidence that difficulty delaying gratification is highly prevalent among obese children (Bonato & Boland, 1983; Bruce, Black, Bruce, Daldalian, Martin & Davis, 2011). Delay of gratification refers to a child’s ability to delay receiving an immediate reward in return for a larger, later reward (Mischel, Shoda & Rodriguez, 1989). This is thought to be related to self-regulation and self-regulation of energy intake; an important correlate of weight gain and obesity (Frankel, Hughes, O’Connor, Power, Fisher & Hazen, 2012). It is argued that delay of gratification translates to eating behavior and obesity with respect to food choices, portion control and food motivation (Bruce, Martin & Savage, 2011). While the ability to delay gratification is a risk factor for obesity in childhood, there are children who cannot delay but do not develop obesity. It follows then, that there are moderating factors that may distinguish between children who are most at risk for obesity, even when they fail to delay gratification and as such exhibit low levels of self-regulation. Parenting style is one such moderator that is examined in this paper. Multiple studies confirm an association between parenting styles and overweight status in children (Rhee, Lumeng, Appugliese, Kaciroti & Bradley 2006; Olvera & Power, 2010; Hughes, Shewchuk, Baskin, Nicklas & Qu, 2008). In this paper parenting style was operationalized using Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) expanded definition of parenting typologies which include: Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive (Indulgent) and Neglectful (Disengaged). These four parenting styles characterize parents based on their responsiveness and demandingness. Responsiveness reflects parental warmth, autonomy granting and emotional involvement with the child; while demandingness reflects disciplinary style and expectations for child self-control. Some studies indicate that authoritarian parenting is related to pathological weight gain (Rhee et al., 2006); other studies with low-income and minority children indicate that authoritarian parenting did not have any impact on weight status, rather, permissive parenting was predictive of overweight and obesity (Olvera & Power, 2010, Hughes et al., 2008). These mixed findings suggest that there is a need to better understand which specific parenting styles confer either protection or risk, and if certain child characteristics may alter this risk/protection. Parenting style is thought to moderate the link between parenting practices and child outcomes (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Darling & Steinberg’s contextual approach to parenting suggests that the effect of any given parenting practice on the socialization of the child is dependent upon the context in which it is delivered. While this study does not focus on any one specific parenting practice, it instead highlights the overall attitude toward and interaction of the parent with the child. The aim is to understand how parenting style interacts with delay of gratification to produce differential BMI growth patterns in childhood and adolescence. Several studies to date point to the idea that general parenting style moderates the effects of certain parenting practices on children’s weight status (Wen & Hui, 2010); and that parenting plays a moderating role with respect to various child characteristics and the subsequent effects of those characteristics on weight status (Sleddens, Gerrards, Thijs, de Vries, & Kremers, 2011). With respect to self-regulation, the limited resource theory posits that if constraints are placed on one’s ability to self-regulate in a particular domain, the ability to self-regulate in other domains may be limited. Applying Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) definition of parenting styles, the kind of constraints a parent might place on their child’s ability to self-regulate could include: insufficient autonomy granting (i.e. low responsiveness) thus not giving the child the opportunity to exert self-regulation; and too many expectations for child self-control (i.e. unresponsive demandingness). The latter is important given that this theory suggests that self-regulation is a fixed resource affected by the existing demands on the person for self-control (Baumeister et al., 1998). Using the theory and the definitions of parenting style, it is expected that parenting styles characterized by high responsiveness (authoritative) would be optimal for the child in terms of how parenting might moderate existing child self-regulation. It is also anticipated that parenting characterized by demandingness with a lack of responsiveness to the child would be detrimental (authoritarian parenting). At present, few studies examine the interaction of parenting and self-regulation in the context of obesity. There is evidence that insensitive parenting coupled with a child’s difficult temperament results in a greater likelihood of obesity and overweight (Anderson, Gooze, Lemeshow & Whitaker, 2012; Wu, Dixon, Dalton, Tudiver & Liu, 2011; Zeller, Boles & Reiter-Purtill, 2008); yet very little is known about the interaction between parenting and objectively-measured indicators of self-regulation, such as the ability to delay gratification. The purpose of this study was to examine how specific parenting styles moderate the effects of children’s ability to delay gratification on BMI changes from early childhood through adolescence. This paper specifically tested the hypothesis that there would be an interaction between parenting and delay of gratification, such that in children who fail to delay, authoritative parenting will confer protection against pathological BMI gains. Conversely, it was hypothesized that when more parent-centered parenting styles (authoritarian, neglectful) are coupled with children who fail to delay we will see the steepest BMI trajectories from age 4 to 15 years. Due to known gender differences in the prevalence of obesity, the rate at which children grow (Kuczmarski, Ogden, Grummer-Strawn, Flegal, Guo, Wei, Mei et al., 2000), patterns of weight gain with respect to body composition (boys gaining muscle and girls gaining fat) (Boot, Bouquet, de Ridder, Krenning & de Muinck Keizer-Schrama, 1997), ability to delay gratification (Silverman, 2003) and differences in the calculation of BMI (Kuczmarski et al., 2000) this interaction was also examined by gender.