Study is here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.22649 …
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The study basically got external observers to rate mother-child interactions at 1 and 7 months for psychometric characteristics (maternal warmth, child positive affect etc), and then followed the kids up for 80-100 months (6-8 years) after that
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They reported that some maternal characteristics - in particular 'warmth' - during non-feeding interactions had a modest correlation with BMI trajectorypic.twitter.com/1R1cTbfPk5
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So, first thing's first: all of these stories were wrong (some more than others). The study looked at BMI TRAJECTORY, which is associated with, but not the same as, OBESITY It's an important distinction
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It's also important to note that this study was conducted in very high-risk babies/mothers, using mothers who were enrolled in a study of cocaine users during pregnancypic.twitter.com/CkALcbXWDv
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The study was also, of course, OBSERVATIONAL in nature What this means is that they observed these interactions, and made some predictions based on them
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But there are many things that cause both higher weights AND less warm playing behaviours For example, the study didn't control for domestic abuse, which could be a very important factor in this population
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As well as that, it's worth considering that these are all OBSERVER-rated scores That means that the study observers rated mothers on 'maternal warmth' That's a pretty tough thing to assess, in my opinion
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It's probably pretty much impossible for an external observer to assess 'maternal warmth' in a totally unbiased way, which to me makes the whole thing much more complicated How much of this rating could be due to the observers' own biases? Hard to say
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On top of all of this, it's worth noting that the study didn't find ANY correlations with MOST OF THE VARIABLES THEY STUDIEDpic.twitter.com/heX0uirY0h
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So the headlines could've read "mother's behavior makes very little difference to baby's future weight, some indications warmth is important" But that's a bit less news-worthy, I guess
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Honestly, my take-home from this study is that mothers probably don't have to worry much about how loving they are to their infants To be fair, I would've said that before the study as well
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