Sibling eating behaviours and parental feeding practices with siblings: similar or different?
Little is known about whether siblings have similar or different eating behaviours or whether parents tailor their feeding practices to different siblings. The main objectives of the present study were to examine similarities and differences in child eating behaviours and parental feeding practices with siblings and to determine whether child eating behaviours and parental feeding practices differ depending on sibling concordant (i.e. both siblings overweight or healthy weight) or discordant (i.e. one sibling overweight and one sibling healthy weight) weight status.



Cross-sectional, mixed-methods study.



In-home visits were conducted by research staff. Surveys were conducted with parents and anthropometry was collected on parents and siblings.



Children (n 88) aged 6-12 years (mean age 9 (sd 2) years), their parents (mean age 34 (sd 7) years) and near-age siblings (mean age 9 (sd 4) years) from diverse racial/ethnic and low-income households participated.



Results indicated that siblings with higher BMI engaged in higher levels of emotional eating compared with siblings with lower BMI. Additionally, results indicated that when families had sibling dyads discordant on weight status, the sibling who was overweight had higher food enjoyment and lower levels of food satiety. Additionally, within siblings with discordant weight status, parents were more likely to use restrictive feeding practices with the overweight sibling and pressure-to-eat and encouragement-to-eat feeding practices with the healthy-weight sibling.



Family-based childhood obesity interventions may need to assess for sibling weight status when researching the home environment and intervene with parents to avoid using restriction or pressure-to-eat feeding practices when siblings are discordant on weight status.
1Department of Family Medicine and Community Health,University of Minnesota Medical School,717 Delaware Street SE, Room 425,Minneapolis,MN 55455,USA.
Jerica M
JM
Berge
2Division of Epidemiology and Community Health,University of Minnesota,Minneapolis,MN,USA.
Allan D
AD
Tate
1Department of Family Medicine and Community Health,University of Minnesota Medical School,717 Delaware Street SE, Room 425,Minneapolis,MN 55455,USA.
Amanda
A
Trofholz
3Department of Human Ecology,University of California-Davis,Davis,CA,USA.
Katherine
K
Conger
2Division of Epidemiology and Community Health,University of Minnesota,Minneapolis,MN,USA.
Dianne
D
Neumark-Sztainer
D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001835:Body Weight; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D010290:Parents; D035781:Siblings
Child eating behaviours; Childhood obesity; Parental feeding practices; Siblings; Weight status