Maternal Eating Styles and Restrictive Feeding Practices: Indirect Effects through Perceived Child Appetite and Weight Concern

Background: Parents play a central role in shaping children’s eating behaviors. While previous research has documented associations between parental attitudes and feeding practices, fewer studies have examined how mothers’ own eating styles may contribute to their perceptions of their children’s eating attitudes and behaviors and how these may influence subsequent feeding practices. Objectives: To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether mothers’ eating styles predicted their self-reported restrictive feeding practices indirectly through their perceptions of their children’s appetite and subsequently through their concern about their children’s weight. Methods: A total of 488 mothers (M_age = 33.87 years, SD = 4.81, range = 20–49) of children aged 2–7 years (M_age = 3.85 years, SD = 1.33) completed self-report measures, including the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) for maternal eating styles, the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) for parental concerns and restrictive practices, and the Children’s Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ) for perceptions of child eating attitudes. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test the hypothesized mediation model, with model fit evaluated using CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR indices. Results: Our proposed model demonstrated good fit (CFI = .94, RMSEA = .07) and showed that maternal eating styles were positively associated with perceived child appetite (β = .44, p < .001). Perceived appetite predicted both maternal concern about child weight (β = .39, p < .001) and restrictive feeding practices (β = .28, p < .001), while maternal concern strongly predicted restriction (β = .65, p < .001). The total indirect effect from maternal eating styles to restriction was significant (β = .23, p < .001), and the model explained 56% of the variance in restrictive feeding. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that maternal eating styles may bias mothers’ perceptions of their children’s appetite and indirectly influence restrictive feeding practices primarily through increased concern about child weight. Given the cross-sectional design, reliance on maternal self-report, and online convenience sampling, results should be interpreted cautiously. Nonetheless, the study provides the first evidence for a sequential pathway linking maternal eating styles, child appetite perceptions, and weight concern to restrictive feeding, highlighting cognitive and perceptual processes as intervention targets.