Maternal Self-Regulation and Early Childhood Obesity

PROJECT SUMMARY
Young children are dependent on their parents to create family environments that support healthy weight, yet
many parents do not consistently parent in ways that protect their children from obesity. Further, several
interventions to improve parenting as a means to address early childhood obesity have struggled with parent
engagement and adherence. In adults, poor self-regulation, or limitations in an individuals' capacity to regulate
emotions, thoughts, and behavior, is a robust, yet modifiable, risk factor for obesity. Poor self-regulation may
similarly interfere with parents' ability to parent in ways that support their children's healthy weight, but there
are no robust data to directly support this conjecture. Further, while improving children's self-regulation has
been identified as a promising method to address childhood obesity, we do not currently understand how
parent and child self-regulation work together to impact children's growth. This lack of information precludes us
from identifying whether targeting child self-regulation alone, parent self-regulation alone, or both together,
may be the most effective means to prevent or treat childhood obesity. Our long-term goal is to identify
strategies to sustainably improve parents' use of practices that support children's healthy weight. The objective
of this study is to identify the interrelationships between mothers' self-regulation, their weight-related parenting
practices, child self-regulation, and child adiposity from ages 3 through 5, a critical period for preventing the
onset of long-term obesity. Our central hypothesis is that poor self-regulation impedes mothers' engagement in
parenting practices that support children's healthy weight, leading to excessive gains in adiposity among young
children. We also expect that in families where both mothers and children have poor self-regulation, mothers
have even greater difficulty engaging in effective weight-related parenting, and children will experience the
most rapid gains in adiposity. To test this central hypothesis, we will conduct a prospective cohort study
enrolling a socio-demographically diverse sample of 300 mother/child dyads, collecting data 3 times over 2.5
years to address the following specific aims: (1) Identify relationships between mothers' self-regulation and
weight-related parenting practices, (2) Identify relationships between mothers' self-regulation and changes in
child adiposity, and (3) Identify how child self-regulation modifies relationships between mothers' self-
regulation, weight-related parenting, and child adiposity. This project is conceptually innovative in its focus on
mothers' self-regulation, its recognition of the dyadic interactions between mothers and children, and the use of
rigorous methods to measure self-regulation and parenting. This research is significant because it will elucidate
when, how, and among whom deficits in mothers' self-regulation contribute to their young children's obesity
risk. There are known strategies to improve self-regulation and enhance behavior change among adults with
poor self-regulation. Findings will provide essential guidance for the development of novel intervention
approaches to target mothers' self-regulation as a mechanism to prevent and treat childhood obesity.

Grant Number: 5R01HL150848-05
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Katherine Bauer