• Feeding Practices and Family Eating Patterns of Low-income, African American Parents
  Presented by: Lauren A. Messina, Stephanie K. Grutzmacher

• Everyday Challenges for Refugee and Immigrant Families: The Primacy of Resources
  Presented by: Clea McNeely, Katharine Sprecher, Denise Bates

• Social Support as a Resource for Mexican-American Mothers of Toddlers
  Presented by: Melissa Ann Barnett, Jennifer Mortensen, Elizabeth Tilley

• Food Insecurity and Maternal Depression: A Latent Growth-curve Analysis
  Presented by: Dawn Browder

Abstracts

Feeding Practices and Family Eating Patterns of Low-income, African American Parents

Presented by: Lauren A. Messina, Stephanie K. Grutzmacher

Research links parental feeding practices to the development of healthy eating behaviors and children's weight. A shortcoming of this literature is its exclusion of low-income African American parents and children, despite high rates of obesity among African Americans and limited access to healthy foods for low-income families. This qualitative study uses interviews with twenty low-income, African American parents to explore family eating patterns and behaviors. Preliminary findings indicate that parents navigate several barriers to promote children's healthy eating, including reliance on federal food programs and other adults. The implications of this unique context of parental feeding are explored.

Everyday Challenges for Refugee and Immigrant Families: The Primacy of Resources

Presented by: Clea McNeely, Katharine Sprecher, Denise Bates

The nation's foreign-born population has reached 38 million, and one in four children under 18 have at least one foreign-born parent. Each year the U.S. admits approximately 80,000 refugees. This paper documents the everyday challenges faced by refugee and Latin American immigrant youth from the perspective of their parents and the adults who work with them. This voice has been lacking in research guided by the dominant theoretical frameworks used to study refugee and immigrant adaptation: the trauma model, the acculturation model, and resource-based models. Findings are used to critique the relevance of these frameworks.

Social Support as a Resource for Mexican-American Mothers of Toddlers

Presented by: Melissa Ann Barnett, Jennifer Mortensen, Elizabeth Tilley

The present study draws data from an ongoing quantitative study consisting of a community sample of Mexican American mothers with two year-old children.  We apply an ecodevelopmental stress process model to examine the extent to which mother-reported perceived global social support and parenting specific social support interacts with economic disadvantage, difficult child  temperament and negative life events in the prediction of elevated maternal depressive symptoms and parenting stress.  Social support may be a particularly important resource among Mexican American families with young children.  Implications for intervention and program design will be addressed.

Food Insecurity and Maternal Depression: A Latent Growth-Curve Analysis

Presented by: Dawn Browder

This study examined depression among rural Latina, African American, and Caucasian women using data from a multi-state longitudinal project. Latent growth curve modeling was used to test for influences of ethnicity on relationships between food insecurity and depressive symptoms. Ethnicity directly and indirectly influenced depressive symptoms; Latinas were most food insecure. African Americans were the least food insecure and experienced higher food insecurity rates over time than Latinas and Caucasians. Latinas exhibited lower levels of depressive symptoms at all three interviews. Implications are discussed and recommendations made for programmatic and policy changes.