Table 3.

Themes, Subthemes, and Relevant Quotes.

Themes	Subthemes	Quotes
Parent definitions of stress	Responsibility and pressure	“Responsibility. Pressure. And just the feeling of, the feeling that responsibility can sometimes bring.”
	Overwhelmed	“When I hear the word stress, hmm, I guess it seems—I think of being overwhelmed or not being able to handle what’s going on in my life at that particular time.”
	A change in routine	“Stress would mean anything that affects my normal routine.”
Stress affects parent lifestyle behaviors variably	Perceived effects of stress on parent eating	“So yes, I would say that if I was—if I’m having a really busy, crazy day, I can go and pick up fast food”
		“So if it is stress, I’m the one that’s now running out to grab—I just need an ice cream cone”
		“For me personally, if I’m stressed, I don’t eat.”
	Perceived effects of stress on parent exercise activity	“I guess when you’re tired and you feel stressed out you don’t want to make time to exercise.”
		“No, no. I exercise even more when I’m stressed.”
Try to be healthy even with stress	Belief in being healthy	“I believe in being healthy, it’s something that I feel like it’s in line with your faith, your family, health all that.”
		“If we’re stressed, like I said it’s still in the forefront of our mind to eat something healthy. It may not be the best meal, but like I said, typically we’re gonna have a vegetable or some fruit during the day.”
	Make sure family has a healthy meal even if I don’t	“I won’t worry about what I’m eating. I’ll just make sure my son gets the food that he needs like say, a hot dog, vegetable, or something like that.”
		“I usually don’t eat when I’m stressed, I just don’t have the appetite to eat. But her, on the other hand, she still eats regardless, morning breakfast, you know, snack, lunch.”
	Protective factors for eating	“I normally make enough food that for one day I will have it—I will have enough to have it as leftovers the following day”
		“Because more so I try to prepare my meals sometimes before—the night before or I get up in the morning, before I go to work to prepare.”
	Protective factors for child structured activity	“Even though I’m stressed, they don’t have anything to do with my stress. So I have to make sure they get what they need as far as their sports and stuff like that.”
		“So for scheduled activities, she does go swimming on Friday’s and she’s been doing that for over a—2 years now. So those schedules are kinda on and I know she enjoys it and we keep that.”
Stress influences family’s cooking and food choices	Parents relied on fast food or other prepared or convenience foods.	“If I’m stressed and I don’t really feel like cooking, I’ll just say, okay, we’ll make sandwiches or hot dogs or we’ll order out pizza or buffalo wings. Cheese steaks. Hoagies. Stuff—something quick, fast, and in a hurry, if we don’t have time to really cook.”
		“If I’m pressured too much and it’s so overwhelming—I’ll go the market and get one of those ready entrees and I can just put it in the oven instead of just preparing something from scratch, I’ll just go and get something from the market, put it in the oven—a fast meal, or maybe a TV dinner or something.”
		“Like sometimes it is like the stuff that’s frozen that’s already made that I just want to pop in the microwave or put in the oven and have it already done so I won’t have to do it. So yeah it’s like, sort of you get a little lazy when you’re stressed and overwhelmed.”
	Children have less free-play outside	“ … if I’m stressed or just feeling that maybe I don’t—she doesn’t always get the time to go out and play.”
		“But for the things that are not planned and maybe where I would typically maybe let her go outside and play out for a while, I would say yes, if I’m stressed, she may not get to go out.”
	Financial pressures	“Yes, it does, because if you are low on money and you’re trying to make ends meet, you’re going okay, I can get a little bit of this just to last me through until I’m able to get some more income or get some other resources to be able to—and so that’s stressful, because sometimes you could find yourself literally planning your meals day by day. I’m grateful, because I do receive food stamps and so that helps us out tremendously with just my daughter and me being able to eat.”
Parent stress eating and parenting	Modeling behavior	“When she sees that I’m eating it (high fat/high sugar food), then she wants some too”
	Not eating in front of the child	“Like we can wait until she’s sleeping and we’re gonna eat those chips or that ice cream.”
	Permissive parenting	“So when I’m stressed, my kids get everything—the most fattening of foods that we could possibly eat and/or go out to eat.”
	Restrictive parenting	“You know, occasionally, any child—like, she may see somebody with candy or we have candy here in the store, she’ll eat that but I usually limit her intake of a lot of junk foods.”
Screen-time use to decrease parent stress	To decrease parent personal stress	“Well, when I feel stressed, a lot of times I like to go watch TV.” “Let me sit and watch this. I’ll kind of regroup and then it’s like all right, let me get back to what I’ve got to do. I use TV to de-stress sometimes”
	Increased screen-time to protect the child from parent stress	“I tell her the minute I’m stressed, go into your room and watch TV or go and play—and she does it.”
		“Yeah. Like when I’m stressed. It’s just I don’t want to take it out on him. That’s when I’m just, like, okay, just go watch TV or just go to sleep or … ”