Insatiable insecurity: maternal obesity as a risk factor for mother-child attachment and child weight

Childhood obesity has become a rising health problem, and because parental obesity is a basic risk factor for childhood obesity, biological factors have been especially considered in the complex etiology. Aspects of the family interaction, e.g., mother-child attachment, have not been the main focus. Our study tried to fill this gap by investigating whether there is a difference between children of obese and normal weight mothers in terms of mother-child attachment, and whether mother-child attachment predicts child's weight, in a sample of 31 obese and 31 normal weight mothers with children aged 19 to 58 months. Mother-child attachment was measured with the Attachment Q-Set. We found that (1) children of obese mothers showed a lower quality of mother-child attachment than children of normal weight mothers, which indicates that they are less likely to use their mothers as a secure base; (2) the attachment quality predicted child`s BMI percentile; and (3) the mother-child attachment adds incremental validity to the prediction of child's BMI beyond biological parameters (child's BMI birth percentile, BMI of the parents) and mother's relationship status. Implications of our findings are discussed.