Permissive Parenting Style Analysis

Parental practices and behavior play a crucial role in children’s eating habits as well as in children’s weight outcome. The type of parenting style, authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, parents decide to implement with their children at home leads towards the type of eating habits children will construct. Authoritative parenting style has been linked towards children having a greater intake of healthier foods on a daily basis, such as having a higher consumption of breakfast, fruits, and vegetables. Permissive parenting style has been linked towards children having a greater intake of unhealthier foods on a daily basis, such as having a higher consumption of sweets. Three aspects towards the development of obesity among children have

been associated with parenting styles, which have been maternal weight, food restrictions, and physical activity. Maternal weight gain, such as a mother being obese prior and during pregnancy has a higher risk towards the outcome of obesity among children. Food restrictions, such as parents restricting and monitoring children’s consumption towards unhealthy foods have an increase risk towards obesity among children, which leads children to increase their attraction and desire for these types of foods. Physical activity also plays a part in obesity among children, especially if children lack the support and encouragement from their parents. The best interventions for the reduction of obesity among children are for parents to incorporate and preform positive parental practices, such as modeling healthier eating, providing healthier foods in the home, encouraging physical activity, limiting screen time and using covert control.

Introduction
Obesity among children is a significant health issue. The percentage of child obesity has been increasing at a startling rate worldwide, with 1 out of 3 children being considered obese (Overweight and Obesity, n.d.). Obesity among children has significantly multiplied in the past 30 years (Childhood Obesity Facts, 2015). There is presently much controversy over what factors constitute obesity among children. The most significant factor relates to a specific parenting style. Parents who practice permissive parenting style performed lower levels of restriction and monitoring among children who consumed unhealthy food (Blissett, & Haycraft, 2008). Families with children who run with a greater risk of becoming obese are more common among families who practice permissive parenting (Morawska, & West, 2013). Therefore, children who have parents who practice permissive or authoritarian parenting are likely to have obese children as opposed to parents who practice authoritative parenting (Kakinami, Barnett, Séguin, & Paradis, 2015).
A number of studies addressing the development of child obesity have pointed towards certain aspects of parenting styles, maternal weight, food restrictions, and physical activity. Maternal weight leads to the weight outcome of a child, such as children’s birth weight increases when mothers gain weight (Averett, & Fletcher, 2015). Restriction of unhealthy food intake has a high outcome of obesity among children, leading to children’s desire for forbidden food to increase as well as their intake to increase once allowed to consume (Jansen, Mulkens, & Jansen, 2007). The amount of physical activity children perform in their daily routine demonstrated a strong association with obesity, with children lacking physical involvement was due to the lack of praise and support parents gave them (Langer, Crain, Senso, Levy, & Sherwood, 2014). This paper reviews the existing literature related to a specific parenting style significantly affecting child obesity, in particular authoritative parenting being the parenting style that is associated to healthier children whereas permissive parenting being the parenting style associated with obese children. It reviews other factors that are also linked to obesity, like maternal weight, food restrictions, and physical activity. Baumrind’s parenting styles are constructed in order to portray parent’s level of responsiveness and demandingness, which takes part in the relationship parents’ form with their children, especially when it comes to specific food intake. Parenting styles set an essential effect towards children specific food intake by trying to seize the display of approaches and child rearing that are communicated to children.
Effects of Parenting Styles
A parent’s view on the level of warmth and nurturance, disciplinary, communication and expectations, and control can be measured through Baumrind parenting styles which are, authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, that has consequences for the intake of a child. Baumrind (1971) established two dimensions of parental behavior to define parenting, which are responsiveness or warmth and demandingness or control over children. A parent’s responsiveness is defined as the amount parents’ allow their children to be independent by acknowledging awareness, providing support and encouragement, as well as providing flexibility to children’s demands and desires (Hennessy, Hughes, Goldberg, Hyatt, & Economos, 2010). A parent’s demandingness refers to parental requests made on children to incorporate into the world through adjusting their behaviors, such as their ability to manage confrontations, develop maturity, and manage children’s actions (Hennessy et al., 2010). In other words responsiveness measures how much a parent is nurturing and warm towards their children and demandingness establishes and enforces boundaries.
Authoritative parents (high on responsiveness/warmth and high on demand/control) are considered to be high on warmth and sensitivity as well as being high on expectations. Parents who practice authoritative parenting provide encouragement towards independence and open communication as well as establishing clear boundaries (Hubbs-Tait, Kennedy, Page, Topham, & Harrist, 2008). Authoritarian parents (low on responsiveness/warmth and high on demand/control) are considered to use strict discipline and be insensitive towards children’s emotional needs. Parents who practice authoritarian parenting try to control children’s behavior without taking the needs of the children into consideration as well as expect children to always be obedient to the parent (Hubbs- Tait et al. 2008). Permissive parents (high on responsiveness/warmth and low on demand/control) are considered to establish little to no limits as well as having little to no expectations towards self-control. Parents who practice permissive parenting demonstrate huge parental acceptance towards children, but provide little to none boundaries as well as place few to little demands on the child (Hubbs- Tait et al. 2008).
Each parenting style, authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, contributes to the ways on how children view and solve problems such as the decisions, ideas, opinions and beliefs the children construct towards food. Hughes, Power, Fisher, Muller, and Nicklas (2005) demonstrated that authoritative parents had the tendency in being more supporting and had a high likelihood of monitoring children’s intake as oppose to authoritarian and permissive parents. Authoritarian parents had a greater outcome of applying pressure towards their children’s intake, whereas permissive parents had low outcomes of applying pressure, restriction, and monitoring their children’s intake. Authoritative parents balance their concerns when it comes to children’s healthier food preferences. Authoritarian parents tend to be strict with specific foods such as unhealthy snacks, which lead parents into controlling children’s food preferences and intake. Permissive parents are more easygoing, which gives children complete control over what, where, and how much they want to consume (Hubbs-Tait et al., 2008).
Overall, these results reflecting parental behaviors among the three parenting styles, are similar to those reported by Hubbs-Tait et al.

(2008), which found that authoritative parenting demonstrated responsibility, modeling, and monitoring towards healthy eating habits. Authoritarian parenting projected pressure and restriction towards eating as well as lacking modeling practices. Permissive parenting on the other hand, demonstrated parental monitoring but was low on modeling. Permissive parenting style has been associated to children obesity risk being higher, compared to the authoritative and authoritarian parenting. Permissive parenting decreases the probabilities of daily breakfast consumption, daily fruit and vegetable as a consequence increases the daily use of soft drinks (Vereecken, Legiest, De Bourdeaudhuij, & Maes, 2009). Permissive parenting tends to let children decide what and when they want to eat unhealthy foods which leads them into eating less healthy meal such as eating breakfast, vegetables and fruits. When parents decrease the application of pressure towards the day-to-day consumption of fruit and vegetables, the day-to-day consumption of foods with a higher sugar substance raised (Vereecken et al., 2009). Additional work by Blissett and Haycraft (2008) found that children who had parents that practiced permissive parenting had higher consumption of unhealthy food due to having none to little control over their children’s intake. Permissive parenting was linked towards the increase of restriction usage by mothers and an increase of pressure usage by fathers, which caused for children to acquire a higher body mass index (BMI) due to the usage of pressure towards eating decreasing and the desire of slimness increasing. Therefore, parents who practice permissive parenting had children with a higher BMI than children who had parents that practice authoritarian or authoritative parenting (Blissett & Haycraft, 2008). Parents need to be aware that the

lack of monitoring and the usage of pressure lead to higher risks of child obesity. Three important areas of parenting styles have received attention: maternal behaviors, food restrictions, and physical activity.
Results of Maternal Weight
Maternal weight has been associated with children’s weight outcome. Obesity has been a common condition among children from ages 2 through19 years that have a BMI above the 95th percentile, which is the percentile that is considered for being obese (Olson, Strawderman, & Dennison, 2009). There are several research studies that highlight the role of children’s prenatal development towards childhood obesity state that maternal obesity whether it was prior or early on their pregnancy, there was an increase of danger towards children becoming obesity with a BMI above the 95th percentile (Olson et al., 2009). Studies conducted by Olson et al. (2009) demonstrated that mothers who gained weight during pregnancy had a huge impact towards the risk of childhood obesity, which was determined by mothers BMI prior to pregnancy. In the first 3 months of pregnancy, maternal obesity had a tendency to double the possibility of obesity among children in their preschool years. In the first 3 months of pregnancy, maternal weight gain also increased the possibility of children in their preschool years to have a BMI above the 95th percentile by about 40%, as opposed to children whose mothers had a normal BMI percentile (Olson et al., 2009). For children, in the age of 3, whose mothers were obese in during pregnancy had a significant increase towards the risk of having an obese child, which for each unit that increased in a mother’s BMI, there was about a 10% possibility that the risk of children becoming obese increased.
Similar work by Whitaker (2004) demonstrated that obese children during their preschool years had a strong association with a mother’s BMI percentile prior to pregnancy. Children, who had mothers that were obese in the first 3 months of their pregnancy, had a 2.4 to 2.7 chance of becoming obese during their toddler and preschool years who’s mothers fell in the normal BMI percentile. In other words, the relationship between mothers BMI levels in the first 3 months of pregnancy and children in the preschool age who were obese increased along with the increase of a mother’s BMI. Whitaker (2004) also stated that during early pregnancy, mothers who were obese had double the chances for their children in their preschool age become obese. In other words, children by the age of 4 years who were born to obese mother would become obese, which is 1 in 4 children as oppose to 1 in 10 children who were born from mothers who were considered to be normal weight. Therefore, his study concluded that obese mothers are more likely to have obese children (Whitaker, 2004). Mothers need to be aware that their lack of healthy intake is carried onto their children weight outcome regardless of the children’s food consumption.