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Dr. Leslie A. Frankel is an associate professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and director of the Parent-Child Interaction Lab at the University of Houston. Her work is focused on parent-child relationships and the ways in which those relationships and interactions affect early child development. Much of her research has examined parental interactions with their children around eating, including how parents’ responses to children’s cues around hunger and feelings of satiety affect their children’s eating habits and obesity. More broadly, she studies the impact of stress and mental health on parenting.
Certified as a Family Life Educator by the National Council on Family Relations, she has developed interventions for parents to help children develop healthy eating habits and avoid obesity; as an example, she has developed workshops for Harris County Public Health aimed at teaching parents to respond to children’s fullness cues, deal with picky eaters and other common eating issues.
Frankel has published widely in journals, including Appetite, Pediatrics, Current Psychology and Frontiers in Public Health on such topics as parent mental health and children’s emotional eating, how children’s food allergies affect family mealtimes, and how Covid-related parental stress affected children’s eating behaviors. She also has shared her expertise on parent-child relationships, the impact of parental stress on children’s eating habits, and other related topics with local and national media, including National Geographic.
She serves on the editorial board of Appetite and has served as a reviewer for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Childhood Obesity, Public Health Nutrition, Women’s Health, Obesity and PLOS ONE. She has served as an invited early career reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and has received numerous teaching awards during her time at UH. She received the 2023 Lane Powell Mentorship Award from the Texas Council on Family Relations; the honor recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution in family life education, practice and research through mentoring students and early career professionals. She was also recognized in 2022 by the Provost’s 50-in-5 program for UH faculty with the highest impact factors in peer-reviewed journal publications.
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Over 30 Publications Located: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4pXA4rUAAAAJ&hl=en
* = student author
Sampige, R.*, Kuno, C. B.,* & Frankel, L. A. (2023). Mental health matters: Parent mental health and children's emotional eating. Appetite, 180, 106317.
Frankel, L., & Sampige, R.* (2022). Supporting Families: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Human Development, 66(3), 163-166.
Frankel, L., Umemura, T., Pfeffer, K. A*., Powell, E. M.*, & Hughes, K. R.* (2021). Maternal Perceptions of Infant Behavior as a Potential Indicator of Parents or Infants in Need of Additional Support and Intervention. Frontiers in Public Health, 1499.
Frankel, L. A., Kuno, C. B.*, & Sampige, R.* (2021). The relationship between COVID-related parenting stress, nonresponsive feeding behaviors, and parent mental health. Current Psychology, 1-12.
Pereira, S., Smith, H. S., Frankel, L. A., Christensen, K. D., Islam, R., Robinson, J. O., ... & Timothy, W. Y. (2021). Psychosocial Effect of Newborn Genomic Sequencing on Families in the BabySeq Project: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA pediatrics.
Frankel, L. A., & Kuno, C. B.* (2019). The moderating role of parent gender on the relationship between restrictive feeding and a child's self–regulation in eating: Results from mother-only samples may not apply to both parents. Appetite, 143, 104424.
Frankel, L. A., Powell, E.*, & Jansen, E. (2018). The Relationship between Structure-Related Food Parenting Practices and Children's Heightened Levels of Self-Regulation in Eating. Childhood Obesity, 14(2), 81-88.
Frankel, L. A., Pereira, S., & McGuire, A. (2016). Potential psychosocial risks of sequencing newborns. Pediatrics, 137 (S1), 24-29.
Frankel, L. A., Umemura, T., Jacobvitz, D., & Hazen, N. (2015). Marital conflict and parental responses to infant negative emotions: Relations with toddler emotional regulation. Infant Behavior and Development, 40, 73-83.
Frankel, L., Fisher, J. O., Power, T. G., Chen, T.A., Cross, M. B., & Hughes, S. O. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Feeding Emotions Scale. A measure of parent emotions in the context of feeding. Appetite, 91, 107-113.
Frankel, L. A., Thompson, D., Power, T. G., & Hughes, S. O. (2015). Correspondence between Maternal Determination of Child Fullness and Young Children's Self-Determined Fullness Level: Results from a Standardized Laboratory Protocol. Childhood Obesity, 11(2), 209-214.
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