Mothers’ beliefs about infant size: Associations with attitudes and infant feeding practices

Abstract

Few studies have examined maternal attitudes toward infant body size, but extant work suggests there might be less negativity toward overweight sizes and less positivity toward thin sizes for infants than older children. Fifty mothers of 12 to 25month-old infants completed questionnaires examining attitudes toward infants', children's and their own body sizes, as well as their feeding practices. Most mothers reported ideal body sizes similar to their infants' current body sizes, but mothers reported thinner ideals for girls than boys. Mothers showed the least thin idealization and overweight devaluation when rating infant bodies compared to rating older children and adults. Mothers’ perceptions of which infant body types were overweight were related to restrictive feeding practices. Mothers who perceived their infants as thin engaged in pressuring feeding practices. Results suggest some weight bias in mothers of infants and highlight the need for longitudinal studies examining mechanisms behind these varying attitudes.