Maternal Feeding Strategy used by Working Mothers of Children 4-6 Years Old

摘要

The Study of Parental feeding strategy is still limited in Indonesia. Most working mothers have a time constraint in feeding their children. This causes working mothers to choose ways that are easy to do in feeding children. The ways that are often used by working mothers include feeding while playing, watching TV / videos to pressure children to eat. This study aims to explore the strategies used by parents in feeding early childhood. Respondents are working mothers who have early childhood. This research was conducted in three stages of data retrieval. The first stage is a survey with multi-response open questions. The number of respondents who filled out the questionnaire was 348 people. The second stage is focus group discussions with ten respondents, and the third stage was in-depth interviews with four informants who used various maternal feeding strategies. The results of data analysis indicated that the maternal feeding strategy is often used by working mothers who have children aged 4-6 years covering eight dimensions. Eight of those dimensions; (1) divert attention, (2) providing healthy food at home, (3) the Variety and creativity (4) teaching about nutrition, (5), (6) reward involvement, (7) pressure to eat, and (8) restriction for health. Time constraints cause respondents to use coercive strategies. Conclusion; Most working mothers use a diversion strategy, Dimensions of diverting attention include counterbalance dimensions so that effective strategies need to be improved.