Learning to overeat in infancy: Concurrent and prospective relationships between maternal BMI, feeding practices and child eating response among Hispanic mothers and children

Summary Background Parents play a key role in shaping children's eating behaviours and self‐regulation. There is limited data on how maternal weight influences feeding practices in the first year of life. Objective To examine the relationships between maternal BMI, feeding practices and infant eating behaviours related to self‐regulation. Methods Participants were 160 mother‐infant dyads. A longitudinal design was used to examine concurrent and prospective associations between maternal 6‐month postpartum BMI, mothers' feeding practices at 6 months (Infant Feeding Practices Questionnaire) and children's eating behaviours at 6 months (Baby Eating Behaviour Questionnaire) and 12 months (Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire). Results Higher maternal BMI was associated positively with mothers' use of restrictive feeding practices (β = 0.036, p = 0.033), and inversely with responsivity to infant satiety cues (Spearman partial r = −0.249, p = 0.002) at 6 months. Mother's restrictive feeding practices were associated with infant food responsiveness (β = 0.157, p = 0.009) and emotional overeating (β = 0.118, p = 0.005) at 12 months. Maternal use of responsive feeding practices was associated with lower infant food responsiveness at 6 months (Spearman partial r = −0.173, p = 0.031) and lower emotional overeating at 12 months (Spearman partial r = −0.183, p = 0.022). Conclusions Our findings add to studies suggesting that feeding practices can provide mechanistic pathways in the intergenerational transmission of obesity. Postpartum family‐system approaches focusing on maternal health while integrating infant feeding guidance may confer benefits in improving maternal‐child health.