Maternal eating disorders and infant temperament: Findings from the norwegian mother and child cohort study

Abstract

We hypothesized that women with eating disorders would be more likely to rate their infants' temperament higher on negative emotionality than women without eating disorders. Of 3,013 mothers with eating disorders, 44 reported anorexia nervosa (AN), 436 bulimia nervosa (BN), 2,475 binge eating disorder (BED), and 58 EDNOS purging type (EDNOS-P). The referent group comprised 45,964 mothers with no eating disorder. A partial proportional odds model was used to estimate the relation among maternal eating disorder presentations and infant temperament ratings while adjusting for covariates. Women with AN, BN, EDNOS-P, and BED were 2.3, 1.4, 2.8, and 1.4 times more likely to report extreme fussiness than the referent group of women with no eating disorder, respectively. Mothers with eating disorders may rate their infants as more difficult because of information-processing biases or because their infants are emotionally difficult. Maternal perception of infant temperament may be a risk factor for children's emotional development.