The research team, led by Audrey Nantel and Véronique Gingras of the Department of Nutrition at Université de Montréal and the Research Center of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what determines how parents introduce their babies to solid food? To do so, they recruited twenty-four mother and father dyads in Quebec, deliberately splitting the sample between first-time parents and parents who had already raised a child through this stage. Each parent, forty-eight individuals in total, completed a phone questionnaire assessing breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, and then sat for a semi-structured qualitative interview when their child reached nine months of age. The interviews were structured around the Socio-Ecological Model, a framework that organizes influences on behavior into individual, interpersonal and environmental levels, and the team used a directed content analysis to extract the salient determinants of feeding behavior from the transcripts.

The technical details of the sample matter for interpreting the findings. Most participants came from households with favorable socio-economic status, holding university degrees and reporting high incomes, and forty-two percent identified as first- or second-generation immigrants. The first complementary foods in these families were introduced at a median age of 5.5 months, with an interquartile range of just one month, a figure that sits close to international recommendations but reveals considerable variation in practice. The World Health Organization and national bodies recommend introducing solids around six months while continuing breastfeeding, yet adherence to such guidelines remains variable worldwide, which is precisely why the researchers argue that understanding the lived experience behind the numbers is essential for designing effective interventions.

One of the most striking findings concerns the emotional texture of the feeding experience. Parents across the sample described looking forward to creating pleasurable first experiences with food and were strongly motivated by the perceived health and developmental benefits for their children. But beneath this positive framing, the researchers detected meaningful differences between groups. First-time mothers, in particular, showed a strong adherence to official guidelines, and some expressed feelings of anxiety about getting every detail right. This anxiety-driven compliance represents a double-edged phenomenon: it may drive closer adherence to recommended practices, but it also signals a psychological burden that current support systems may be failing to relieve. The study suggests that the very precision of feeding guidelines, intended to help parents, can become a source of stress when parents feel solely responsible for executing them perfectly.

That burden has a name in the study’s findings: the mental workload. Many mothers reported feeling weighed down by the cognitive and organizational labor that complementary feeding demands, from planning meals and tracking allergen introductions to anticipating textures, timing and safety. This invisible labor, largely shouldered by mothers even in households where fathers were engaged, adds a dimension that quantitative studies of feeding practices rarely capture. The researchers note that experienced parents took a markedly different approach. Non-first-time parents tended to seek simplicity and practicality, streamlining the process based on what had worked before, while first-time parents leaned heavily on external guidance. The contrast suggests that confidence, accumulated through experience, changes not only what parents do but how they feel while doing it.

Fathers emerged as a distinct and underexamined group within the data. Across the interviews, fathers typically adopted a supportive role in the feeding process rather than a leading one, and they reported lower levels of both confidence and knowledge regarding the introduction of complementary foods. This asymmetry has practical implications. If fathers are less informed and less confident, they are less likely to make independent feeding decisions, reinforcing a division of labor that concentrates both expertise and stress in one parent. Interventions that treat the parental dyad, rather than the mother alone, as the unit of support could redistribute this workload and potentially improve consistency in what and how babies are fed across caregivers.

The interpersonal level of the Socio-Ecological Model revealed where parents actually turn for help. Mothers in the study tended to seek information and support from close friends and sisters, from online support groups and from parent-baby activities such as community classes and meetups. These informal networks functioned as parallel knowledge systems, often more accessible and more trusted than official channels. Meanwhile, although governmental resources were generally appreciated by participants, guidance from in-person healthcare providers was frequently perceived as insufficient. Many parents reported filling the gap by consulting social media and other non-governmental sources, a pattern that carries obvious risks in an information environment where evidence-based advice competes with commercial marketing and unqualified influencers.

The environmental findings carry particular weight for public health policy. The gap between what parents want from healthcare systems and what those systems currently deliver represents a clear intervention target. If clinical encounters during the complementary feeding period provided more structured, more detailed and more accessible guidance, parents might rely less on social media feeds of variable quality. The researchers also point to the diversity of the sample, with its substantial proportion of immigrant-background families, as evidence that support strategies must account for cultural food practices, family structures and varying levels of familiarity with Canadian feeding guidelines. A one-size-fits-all campaign, the findings imply, will miss the specific anxieties of first-time mothers, the knowledge gaps of fathers and the practical shortcuts of experienced parents simultaneously.

Methodologically, the study distinguishes itself as the first to identify individual, interpersonal and environmental determinants of complementary feeding practices specifically in Quebec. The use of dyads, interviewing both members of each parental couple separately, guards against the common bias of relying solely on maternal reports, and the nine-month timing of the interviews placed parents close enough to the introduction period for their recollections to be fresh. The team acknowledges the limitations inherent in qualitative work with a relatively affluent sample, and the findings may not generalize to families facing food insecurity or other structural constraints. Still, the directed content analysis anchored in the Socio-Ecological Model provides a systematic map of where leverage points lie.

The ultimate significance of the research lies in its implications for intervention design. By documenting the anxiety of first-time mothers, the mental load carried by mothers broadly, the supportive but underconfident role of fathers and the insufficiency of professional guidance relative to informal and online sources, the study provides an array of concrete opportunities for evidence-based programs. Support that builds paternal confidence, distributes the mental workload, reassures guideline-adherent parents and strengthens the clinical voice in a crowded information landscape could reshape the complementary feeding period for thousands of families. As the authors note, this window of opportunity for healthy child development is too important to leave to social media algorithms and parental guesswork.

Subject of Research: Determinants of complementary feeding practices among mothers and fathers in Quebec, Canada

Article Title: Determinants of complementary feeding practices – a qualitative study exploring mothers and fathers’ experiences in Canada

Article References: Nantel, A., Bégin, S., Van Hulst, A., Desroches, S., Pelaez, S., & Gingras, V. (2026). Determinants of complementary feeding practices – a qualitative study exploring mothers and fathers’ experiences in Canada. BMC Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-026-07689-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12887-026-07689-3

Keywords: complementary feeding, infant nutrition, qualitative research, parenting, Socio-Ecological Model, breastfeeding, baby-led weaning, mental workload, fathers, public health, Quebec, child development