Feed with Love and Respect

Much of the research related to feeding tended to focus on infancy, and much of that focused on the most vulnerable groups most likely to experience challenges in attaining and maintaining adequate nourishment for survival and growth.

Though the research related to feeding normally developing children is limited, it was clear that what API promotes is well-reflected in the feeding literature. Indeed, one of the papers presented not only links parenting and feeding but also places the entire feeding relationship inside the overall parent-child relationship. Papers also examined relationships between parenting, emotional eating, obesity and attachment quality. Almost every study noted a dearth of research in the area of feeding and called for more work to be done.

Breastfeeding and Its Relation to Maternal Sensitivity and Infant Attachment

Breastfeeding for longer was associated with more maternal sensitivity, more attachment security, and less attachment disorganization, but bottle-feeding did not necessarily harm the mother-infant relationship.

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Sample

  • N: 675
  • Subject Ages: Children 2 to 6 months old at T1, mean maternal age at intake was 32 years
  • Location: Netherlands, Rotterdam
  • SES: Not available
  • Eligibility: Children born between February 2003 and August 2005 with two parents and four grandparents born in the Netherlands
  • Additional:
    • White Dutch
    • 49.2% girls
    • 63.8% of the children were born with spontaneous deliveries
    • Average birth weight was 3517 g, 3.7% of children had a low birth weight (2,500 g or less)
    • Mean five-minute Apgar score was 9.6, and only 0.9% had a score at or below 7, which is considered pathological
    • Educational level was generally high - 35.7% of the mothers had completed education beyond the bachelor’s degree

Objectives

  1. Investigation into whether breastfeeding duration during the first 6 months is associated with maternal sensitive responsiveness, attachment security and attachment disorganization in a large prospective birth cohort.
  2. Examined the potential mediating or moderating roles of maternal sensitive responsiveness and maternal oxytocin receptor genotype.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Breastfeeding -
    • initiation data from delivery reports
    • continuation data from postal questionnaires at 2 and 6 months after birth
  • Maternal sensitive responsiveness - observed using Ainsworth’s rating scales
  • Attachment security and disorganization - the Strange Situation Procedure
  • OXTR Genotype - mothers were genotyped for polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor gene, OXTR

Design—Cohort, prospective

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Findings

  1. Longer duration of breastfeeding was associated with more maternal sensitive responsiveness, more attachment security and less attachment disorganization.
  2. Longer duration of breastfeeding was not related to the risk of insecure-avoidant or insecure-resistant versus secure attachment classification but was predictive of a lower risk of disorganized versus secure attachment classification.
  3. Maternal sensitive responsiveness did not mediate the associations.
  4. Maternal oxytocin receptor genotype was not a significant moderator.
  5. Breastfeeding initiation: About 10% of the mothers never initiated breastfeeding, about 22% started breastfeeding but stopped before the child was 2 months old, 36% continued beyond the second month but stopped before the child was 6 months old and 31% of the participating mothers breastfed their child for at least 6 months.
  6. When the infant was 2 months old, 35% of the mothers were bottle-feeding the child, 18% were combining bottle-feeding and breastfeeding, and 47% exclusively breastfed.
  7. Attachment classification distributions: 49.8% secure, 13.2% insecure-avoidant, 14.7% insecure-resistant and 22.4% disorganized.

Limitations

  • Inability to make inferences about the causality of the associations of breastfeeding duration with maternal sensitive responsiveness, attachment security and attachment disorganization found in this study. For example, it may be that more sensitive women are more likely to breastfeed their child (and to continue breastfeeding to an older age) than less sensitive women. It has also been suggested that maternal personality characteristics account for the association between breastfeeding duration and maternal sensitivity, affecting both the decision to breastfeed (and continue to breastfeed) and maternal behavior toward the child. The continuation of breastfeeding may also be influenced by external factors, such as policy regarding maternity leave.
  • This study population was relatively homogeneous: Only white Dutch women and children were eligible for this study, socioeconomic status (SES) was relatively high and the level of other risk factors, such as parental psychopathology, was low. This reduces the effect of potential confounders but may limit the generalizability of our results to Western low-risk populations.
  • Even in dyads who never breastfed, maternal sensitive responsiveness was high and attachment disorganization scores were well below the clinical cutoff of 5. Categorical analysis revealed no differences in attachment classification. These results concur with earlier findings that although breastfeeding predicted better interactions between mothers and their 1-year-olds, bottle-feeding did not harm the infant-mother relationship.
  • It cannot be concluded that there was a mediating role of maternal sensitivity between breastfeeding duration and attachment security from the findings, because maternal sensitivity was not related to attachment security in this study. This lack of an association between maternal sensitive responsiveness and attachment security was unexpected but not inconsistent with earlier findings. The somewhat unusual setting of the assessments used in this study (infant sitting on the mother’s lap) might partly explain the lack of an association.

 

Parenting Styles, Parental Response to Child Emotion, and Family Emotional Responsiveness are Related to Child Emotional Eating

Child emotional eating is correlated with minimizing and non-reasoning, punitive parental responses, which are in line with authoritarian and permissive parenting styles but not authoritative styles.

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Sample

  • N: 450
  • Subject Ages: Children mean age of 7 years, female caregivers mean age of 34.3 years
  • Location: Not available
  • SES: Not available
  • Additional:
    • 79.4% of the mothers were married
    • 77.6% of European American descent
    • 93.3% had completed secondary education, 35.4% had completed a college degree
    • 96% of the female caregivers were biological mothers

Hypotheses

  1. Authoritative parenting, family affective involvement and family affective responsiveness would be negatively related to child emotional eating.
  2. Authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting and minimizing and punitive responses to child emotion would be positively related to child emotional eating.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Emotional eating - the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) utilizing the questionnaire format appropriate for young children
  • Parenting styles - the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire
  • Minimizing and punitive responses to child emotion - the punitive and minimizing subscales of the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale
  • Family affective responsiveness and involvement - two subscales from the McMasters Family Assessment Device

Design—Cross sectional

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Findings

  1. Child emotional eating was significantly negatively correlated with authoritative parenting style and family affective responsiveness, and significantly positively correlated with minimizing response.
  2. Minimizing and punitive responses were significantly negatively correlated with affective responsiveness and involvement and with authoritative parenting style, and these response types were positively correlated with authoritarian and permissive parenting styles.
  3. Affective responsiveness and involvement were significantly related to authoritative parenting style and significantly negatively related to authoritarian and permissive parenting styles.
  4. Warmth and support and reasoning/induction were significantly correlated with child emotional eating but autonomy-granting was not.
  5. Non-reasoning, punitive responses were related to child emotional eating but physical coercion and verbal hostility were not.

Limitations

  • Lack of father data and a cross-sectional design prevents the ability to draw conclusions or directions from the data.
  • The DEBQ has not had significant use with young children and is a self-report measure; therefore, caution should be used when interpreting the results.

Quality of Early Maternal-Child Relationship and Risk of Adolescent Obesity

Insecure attachment with low maternal sensitivity at ages 2 and 3 years was associated with teenage obesity.

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Sample

  • N: 97
  • Subject Ages: Birth to 12.0 and 15.9 years
  • Location: United States, nine states
  • SES: Diverse, based on the NICHD study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD)
  • Eligibility: Children included in the NICHD study
  • Additional:
    • Exclusion criteria - maternal age less than 18, non-singleton birth, lack of English fluency, post-birth hospitalization of more than seven days or plans for adoption

Hypothesis

  1. Obesity in adolescents is related to the quality of the early maternal-child relationship.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Adolescent obesity - BMI
  • Early maternal-child relationship quality - combined score from:
    • Direct observation at 15, 24, and 36 months
    • Attachment security - the Strange Situation
  • Additional variables: Mother’s educational attainment, racial ethnic group, birth weights, household size and income at 24 months, mother’s weight and height when child was 15 years

Design—Longitudinal

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Findings

  1. Low maternal sensitivity at 15, 24 and 36 months was associated with increased odds of adolescent obesity.
  2. Insecure attachment was associated with increased odds of adolescent obesity at 24 months but not at 15 months and 36 months.
  3. At 24 and 36 months, the combination of low maternal sensitivity and insecure attachment was associated with greater odds of adolescent obesity than was either on their own.

Limitations

  • Causality cannot be determined by observational studies.
  • Measure of maternal obesity was only assessed when the children were teenagers but not when they were younger.
  • Cannot exclude the possibility of selection bias

Responsive Feeding and Child Undernutrition in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

Research on responsive feeding is promising, but more research is needed to define child outcomes.

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Sample

  • N: 21
  • Inclusion criteria: Published research papers that studied Responsive Feeding in relation to infants and young children in low- and middle-income countries. Studies included populations of children less than 36 months and were published within the past 10 years in the English language. All articles followed the UNICEF child nutrition framework and had an outcome of child growth, dietary intake, illness or eating behavior and included a measure of responsive feeding.

Objective

  1. To present the evolution of Responsive Feeding (RF) research in relation to infants and young children (IYC) in low- and middle-income countries (LAMI). This paper serves to compile the research in support of responsive feeding contributing to the growth of IYC in LAMI countries.

Design—Systematic literature review

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Findings

  1. The research already done on responsive feeding (RF) is promising but extremely weak due to wide variety in study design and lack of consistency among definitions of RF.
  2. None of the studies isolated for effects of RF and therefore cannot be utilized to reach conclusions on the effects of responsive feeding to child outcomes. Longitudinal studies and studies that isolate for the effects of RF are needed.

Limitations

  • This paper is limited in its ability to generalize due to the vast variety of definitions utilized in the individual studies of RF.
  • The measures and variables looked at varied widely from study to study, making it difficult to determine any cross-study comparisons.

Responsive Feeding is Embedded in a Theoretical Framework of Responsive Parenting

While more research is needed, the benefits of responsive feeding on child nutrition and growth are expected to be as great as responsive parenting is to child outcome.

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Objective

  1. To examine evidence for the practice and developmental benefits of responsive parenting with a view to providing a theoretical basis for responsive feeding.

Design—Descriptive literature review

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Findings

  1. Children benefit from responsive parenting and are likely to benefit from a responsive feeding environment, where their internal signals of hunger and satiety are recognized and met with prompt, emotionally supportive, contingent and developmentally appropriate responses.
  2. The short-term benefits of responsive feeding are expected to be children’s increasing attention to internal signals of hunger and satiety and to eating in a competent and responsible manner.
  3. The long-term benefits of responsive parenting are enhanced psychosocial, cognitive and language competence, and the long-term benefits of responsive feeding are likely to include healthy nutrition and growth.
  4. Research is needed to examine the short- and long-term impact of responsive feeding on children’s growth and development. 

Feed with Love and Respect Additional References

Bäck, E. A. (2011). Effects of parental relations and upbringing in troubled adolescent eating behaviors. Eating Disorders, 19(5), 403-424.
Blissett, J., Meyer, C., & Haycraft, E. (2011). The role of parenting in the relationship between childhood eating problems and broader behaviour problems. Child: Care, Health and Development, 37(5), 642-648.
Branscomb, K. R. (2011). An Exploration and Comparison of Infant Feeding Practices in Home and Center Contexts. Child Studies in Diverse Contexts, 1(1), 39-49.
DiSantis, K. I., Hodges, E. A., Johnson, S. L., & Fisher, J. O. (2011). The role of responsive feeding in overweight during infancy and toddlerhood: a systematic review. International Journal of Obesity, 35(4), 480-492.
Evans, A., Seth, J. G., Smith, S., Harris, K. K., Loyo, J., Spaulding, C., ... & Gottlieb, N. (2011). Parental feeding practices and concerns related to child underweight, picky eating, and using food to calm differ according to ethnicity/race, acculturation, and income. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 15(7), 899-909.
Frankel, L. A., Hughes, S. O., O'Connor, T. M., Power, T. G., Fisher, J. O., & Hazen, N. L. (2012). Parental influences on children’s self-regulation of energy intake: insights from developmental literature on emotion regulation. Journal of Obesity, 2012.
Frith, A. L., Naved, R. T., Persson, L. A., Rasmussen, K. M., & Frongillo, E. A. (2012). Early Participation in a Prenatal Food Supplementation Program Ameliorates the Negative Association of Food Insecurity with Quality of Maternal-Infant Interaction. The Journal of Nutrition, 142(6), 1095-1101.
Gueron-Sela, N., Atzaba-Poria, N., Barak-Levy, Y., Meiri, G., & Yerushalmi, B. (2011). Links between paternal depressive symptoms, parental sensitivity and children’s responsiveness: A study on Israeli children with feeding disorders. Family Science, 2(2), 87-97.
Haycraft, E., & Blissett, J. (2011). Predictors of paternal and maternal controlling feeding practices with 2-to 5-year-old children. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
Holmes, J. (2012). Observing Snack Time at a Psychoanalytic Parent-Toddler Group: Affect Regulation and Therapeutic Possibilities. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 11(1), 39-52.
Kim, P., Feldman, R., Mayes, L. C., Eicher, V., Thompson, N., Leckman, J. F., & Swain, J. E. (2011). Breastfeeding, brain activation to own infant cry, and maternal sensitivity. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52(8), 907-915.
Kröller, K., & Warschburger, P. (2011). Problematic eating behavior in childhood: do maternal feeding patterns play a role?. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 60(4), 253.
Miller, A. (2011). The impact on the family of a child’s feeding and swallowing problems: Associations with parental stress, and children’s daily functional activities (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh).
Minkkinen, M. H. (2011). Infant Brain Development And The Impact Of Breast Feeding: A Review Of Literature. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC),4(5).
Pesch, M. H., Harrell, K. J., Kaciroti, N., Rosenblum, K. L., & Lumeng, J. C. (2011). Maternal styles of talking about child feeding across sociodemographic groups. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 111(12), 1861-1867.
Powell, F. C., Farrow, C. V., & Meyer, C. (2011). Food avoidance in children: The influence of maternal feeding practices and behaviours. Appetite, 57(3), 683-692.
Scharfe, E. (2012). Maternal Attachment Representations and Initiation and Duration of Breastfeeding. Journal of Human Lactation, 28(2), 218-225.
Skouteris, H., McCabe, M., Ricciardelli, L. A., Milgrom, J., Baur, L. A., Aksan, N., & Dell’Aquila, D. (2012). Parent-child interactions and obesity prevention: A systematic review of the literature. Early Child Development and Care, 182(2), 153-174.
Wachs, T. D., Posada, G., Carbonell, O. A., Creed-Kanashiro, H., & Gurkas, P. (2011). Infant Nutrition and 12 and 18 Months Secure Base Behavior: An Exploratory Study. Infancy, 16(1), 91-111.