A longitudinal study on emotional dysregulation and obesity risk: From pregnancy to 3 years of age of the baby. (1st January 2016) - de Campora, Gaia
Abstract: Some recent findings indicate that maternal sensitivity and emotional regulation may play a key role in predicting the risk for obesity of the child in early ages. The current article describes a longitudinal study encompassing more than 50 women, across a time-span that currently goes from pregnancy (n = 65) to three years of age of the baby (n = 53). In a previous report on our ongoing research project, we showed that emotional regulation during pregnancy and pre-pregnancy BMI significantly predicted the quality of the early, dyadic feeding interactions, at 7 months of age of the baby. The current study confirmed and extended those findings, by showing that maternal emotional dysregulation (r = .355, p = .009) and pre-pregnancy BMI (r = .389, p = .004) predicted the BMI of the child at three years of age too, with a medium to large effect size. However, neither maternal emotional regulation nor pre-pregnancy BMI significantly predicted infant attachment at one year of age. Highlights: We assess emotion regulation (ER) of overweight and non-overweight pregnant women. We videotape mother-baby feeding interactions 7 months after delivery. At 1 year of age we measure infant attachment, at 3 years we collect his/her BMI. Maternal ER and pre-pregnancy BMI predict child BMI at 3 years of age. Maternal ER and pre-pregnancy BMI do not predict infant attachment at 1 year of age.