Abstract
The prevalence of childhood obesity continues to rise in the United States. This review article explores the parental influence on the appropriate parenting styles in preventing childhood obesity. Several research studies focused on the relationship between parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglecting) and parental feeding practices. The parental feeding practices such as over control, restricting, pressure to eat may interfere with the child's ability to regulate the intake of food. This lack of ability to regulate food intake may be related to obesity later in life. A correlation has been found between the parental feeding practices and the parenting styles in controlling the child's weight. It has been reported that parents who practice the authoritative behavior have less chance of having overweight children.