Percepções de mães adolescentes sobre a formação do hábito alimentar de seus fi lhos

Perceptions of adolescent mothers about the habit formation of their children

Abstract

Objective: Identify the perceptions of adolescent mothers in respect to the infl uences on the eating habits formation
of their children under two years. Methods: This is an exploratory-descriptive study with a qualitative approach
with primiparous adolescent mothers whose children were less than two years old. It was applied a semi-structured interview,
and the data was explored from the thematic content analysis. Results: The interviewed mothers perceived favorable and
unfavorable infl uences on the consumption of healthy foods. The adolescents expressed to notice their own infl uence on the
child's eating behavior, recognizing their food as unhealthy. However, this perception proved to be incipient and focused
on biological aspects, highlighting that none of the interviewed reported favorable changes in their own diet and on the
process to provide nursing care to their child. In addition, the adolescents did not perceive the negative infl uence on the
confi guration of their children's feeding behavior as the use of gratifi cation strategies, coercion and replacement of main
meals by feeding bottle. Conclusion: We conclude that teenage mothers signal they do not realize the magnitude of various
infl uences that affects their children's eating habits formation, including their own, beyond the biological level.