Correlation between Children's eating behaviors and caregivers' feeding behaviors among preschool children in China.

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between caregivers' feeding behaviors and children's eating behaviors among preschoolers in China. From April to July 2016, a cross-sectional survey was administered to 912 preschoolers' caregivers in China. The Chinese Preschooler's Caregiver Feeding Behavior Scale (CPCFBS) and Chinese Preschooler's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CPEBQ) were used to assess caregivers' feeding behaviors and children's eating behaviors, respectively. Pearson correlation and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) based on principal component analysis were performed to explore the relationships between them. Two interpretable canonical variables and structures were yielded through CCA. The first canonical variable could explain 35.1% and 29.0% of the total variance of the caregivers' feeding behaviors and the children's eating behaviors variable groups, respectively, with a canonical correlation coefficient of 0.659 (rU1,V1 = 0.659, P < 0.001). The second canonical variable could explain 17.6% and 14.9% of the total variance of the caregivers' feeding behaviors and the children's eating behaviors variable groups, respectively, with a canonical correlation coefficient of 0.309 (rU2,V2 = 0.309, P < 0.001). According to the canonical structure, higher performance behaviors of the caregiver, such as encouragement of healthy eating, responsibility for feeding, supervision of eating, behavior restricted feeding, content restricted feeding and lower weight concerns, were associated with reasonable behaviors of children, including lower emotional eating, food responsiveness, unhealthy eating habits and higher initiative eating. Our results demonstrated that caregivers' feeding behaviors were the major influencing factors of children's eating behaviors, and caregivers' encouragement of healthy eating, responsibility for feeding, supervision of eating, restricted feeding and lower weight concerns were associated with reasonable children's eating behaviors, especially low children's emotional eating, low food responsiveness, infrequent unhealthy eating habits, frequent initiative eating, infrequent satiety responsiveness and food fussiness behaviors.