Study - there is a weak association between observer-rated maternal warmth (someone watching you and your baby and rating you) and future BMI trajectories in the baby Headlines:pic.twitter.com/SXUqFdvFXa
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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
They reported that some maternal characteristics - in particular 'warmth' - during non-feeding interactions had a modest correlation with BMI trajectorypic.twitter.com/1R1cTbfPk5
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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