Nutritional style of parents and examination of the effective factors.

Aim: This study was performed to determine the nutritional style in parents who had children aged between 3 and 6 years and the effective factors.

Material And Methods: The sample number of this descriptive study was calculated with the sample formula for unknown population and the parents of 300 children aged between 3 and 6 years who attended a nursery school in the province of İzmir constituted the sample. The sample was reached in two periods. "The Sociodemographic Data Form" and "the Parent Nutritional Style Scale" were used as data collection tools. Written approval was obtained from the scientific ethics committee of the Ege University, Faculty of Nursery (B.30.2.EGE.0.82.00.00/29-288). The heights and weights of the children were measured by the investigators with certain measurement tools. The body mass index standard deviation score (BMI SDS) was calculated for each child. The children whose body mass index standard deviations were between +2 and -2 standard deviation were considered to have normal weight. The Auxology program was used to obtain these data. The body mass indexes of the parents were calculated according to the height and weight values stated by themselves. In analyses of the data, student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used for comparison of two groups. Variance analysis and Kruskal-Wallis variance were used for multiple comparisons; Bonferrroni corrected Mann-Whitney U test and Shefee test were used for advanced analysis.

Results: It was found that the variables including the age, education level, number of children, working status of the mothers and the perception of the child's weight by the mother affected the nutritional style of the parents. The mean "emotional" and "instrumental" nutrition subdimension scores of the mothers who were young, who had an education of primary school and who were housewifes, the mean "encouraging nutrition" subdimension scores of the mothers who had small for gestational age babies and the mean "emotional" nutrition sub-dimension scores of the mothers who perceived their babies' weights as lower than normal were found to be higher (p<0.05). No significant difference was found in the nutritional style in relation with the child's BMI SDS and the mother's own BMI.

Conclusions: The nutritional styles of parents are affected by some sociodemographic and anthropometric properties, but the relation with the child's weight should be demonstrated by observational studies.