Exclusive breastfeeding and maternal postnatal anxiety contributed to infants' temperament issues at 6 months of age

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “Exclusive breastfeeding and maternal postnatal anxiety contributed to infants' temperament issues at 6 months of age”. This publication is part of the longitudinal project “Measuring the outcomes of maternal COVID-19-related prenatal exposure (MOM-COPE)” research project. In this paper we report on longitudinal data on the effect of exclusive breastfeeding and postnatal maternal anxiety on infant’s temperament at six months.

Procedures

At childbirth and after 6 months, mothers reported on whether they were using exclusive breastfeeding, maternal milk from a bottle, formula or mixed feeding methods. At birth, the mothers also filled in the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983). After their infants reached 6 months (T1), they filled in the Infant Behavior Questionnaire- Revised short-form (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003).

Findings in brief

Exclusively breastfed infants exhibited higher levels of negative emotionality and lower regulatory capacity than the other group, with no significant differences for surgency. From the hierarchical regressions, a significant model was obtained for regulatory capacity. Significant main effects and an interaction effect emerged for exclusive breastfeeding and for postnatal maternal anxiety. The post hoc investigation revealed a significant negative association between postnatal maternal anxiety and infants' regulatory capacity in the exclusive breastfeeding group, compared with the other group.