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

OBJECTIVE: 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. METHOD: Of 3013 mothers with eating disorders, 44 reported anorexia nervosa (AN), 436 bulimia nervosa (BN), 2475 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. RESULTS: Women with AN, BN, EDNOS-P, and BED were 2.30, 1.35, 2.82, and 1.44 times more likely to report extreme fussiness than the referent group of women with no eating disorder, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: 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