Abstract Knowledge and understanding of risk mechanisms associated with pediatric feeding disorder (PFD) remain limited. We aimed to investigate factors associated with PFD and their relation to specific PFD types according to the recent consensus WHO-based definition. We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of children with PFD and retrieved their demographic and clinical characteristics. Healthy age- and sex-matched children served as controls. Included were 254 children with PFD [median (interquartile range) age 16.4 (9.5–33) months at diagnosis] and 108 children in the control group [median age 24.85 (14.5–28.5) months]. According to the WHO-based definition, disturbances in oral intake were predominantly related to nutritional dysfunction in 118 (46.6%), feeding skill dysfunction in 83 (32.3%), medical conditions in 42 (16.7%) and psychosocial dysfunction in 11 (4.4%). In multivariate analysis, children with PFD had a higher risk for lower socioeconomic background (P