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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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.