Maternal personality affects child's eating habits

Friday April 3, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- A mother's personality can affect her baby's eating habits, a study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), in collaboration with the University of Oslo, found.

The study, led by psychologist Eivind Ystrøm at the NIPH and colleagues, showed that mothers who had many negative thoughts and feelings were more likely to give their children unhealthy foods such as sweets and fatty foods.

For the study of 27,763 mothers, Ystrøm analysed how much their psychological and socio-demographic factors affected the diets of their children at the age of 18 months. By this age, children normally learn to prefer sweet and fatty food over healthy food.

The researchers found mothers who were emotionally unstable, anxious, angry, sad, or had poor self-confidence or a negative view of the world, were far more likely to give their children sweet and fatty foods.

They also found socio-demographic factors such as the child’s sex, the child attending nursery school, mother’s age, mother’s BMI, education, smoking, number of children, income and marital status had an impact.

Mothers who smoked daily, had a high body mass index, had many children, or had a male child/children who attended nursery school were more likely to give their children an unhealthy diet, according to the study published in 2009 in Maternal & Child Nutrition.

On the other hand, mothers who had a higher education and/or were older were more likely to give their children a healthier diet.

(by David Liu and edited by Heather Kelley)