Commentary: Parental sensitivity and feeding pressure at family mealtimes: future directions and clinical implications

Family mealtimes can promote children’s health and well-being (Snuggs & Harvey, 2023) and are influenced by parental feeding practices (Scaglioni et al., 2018). Feeding pressure, a practice involving coercive actions by parents to increase food intake (Norton et al., 2021), has been consistently linked to negative outcomes, including reduced interoception, unhealthy weight-control behaviors, poorer nutritional quality (Gregory et al., 2011), and negative affect (Galloway et al., 2006). While stress and depressed mood have been associated with increased feeding pressure (Berge et al., 2017; Norton et al., 2021), less is known about how broader aspects of the parent–child relationship influence feeding behaviors. Heinrich and colleagues (this issue) address this gap by examining the connection between parental sensitivity—the recognition and response to child hunger and fullness cues—and feeding pressure during mealtimes. They conducted naturalistic home observations of 100 families with preschool-aged children over seven days, including 100 mother–child dyads and 69 father–child dyads. Using a multilevel modeling approach, they found that higher parental sensitivity predicted lower feeding pressure at both the between-family and within-person (daily) levels, indicating that parental sensitivity is a dynamic state influenced by daily factors that, in turn, affect feeding behaviors (Heinrich et al., this issue).