Intergenerational transmission of appetite self-regulation

Parents and other primary caregivers affect the development of children's self-regulation in myriad ways, including via the parent's own self-regulation abilities. Ample evidence supports the association between mother and child self-regulation, yet this has never been experimentally assessed with regard to appetite self-regulation, the self-regulation of food intake. This study sought to explicitly test the associations between mother and child self-regulation across 3 domains: (1) appetite, (2) attentional control, and (3) inhibitory control. A community sample of 88 mother-preschooler dyads (ages 3–5) participated in this cross-sectional, experimental study. Results demonstrated that maternal self-regulation was significantly positively associated with child self-regulation in the appetite domain, b = 0.52, t(63.54) = 2.39, p = .020, but not for attentional or inhibitory control. These results add to the literature on parental influences on self-regulation development in early childhood and suggest that patterns of mother-child associations may vary across domains of self-regulation.