Who decides? Mothers' and children's beliefs about food disagreements

Who do mothers and children believe is in charge of what and how much a child should eat? We explored beliefs about the scope of parental authority over food decisions, by integrating quantitative and qualitative methods. Mothers and their 5- or 7-year-old children responded separately to 4 hypothetical scenarios where a child disagreed with a mother who requested them to: eat a healthy food, eat an unhealthy food, eat an equally healthy but different food, and eat a different amount of food. Mothers were also interviewed about actual family food disagreements and resolution strategies. In healthy scenarios both mothers and children viewed what children ate as the mothers' decision; however, in all other scenarios mothers viewed what to eat as the child's choice. In contrast, children more often judged food decisions as up to the parent, only reliably categorizing the unhealthy scenario as the child's choice. Justifications differed by scenario, but overall children were more focused on health and parental authority while mothers often discussed children's personal choice. The proportion of mothers' reported use of rule-like strategies for real-life food conflicts was correlated with children's authority-based answers. No other self-reported strategies were related to children's reasoning patterns. Exploratory analysis showed mothers' political position also predicted children's decisions, with children of conservative parents more likely to focus on authority.