Neighborhood Disadvantage, Greenness, and Population Density as Predictors of Breastfeeding Practices: A Population Cohort Study from Finland.

BACKGROUND: Many environmental factors are known to hinder breastfeeding, yet the role of the family living environment in this regard is still poorly understood. OBJECTIVES: We used data from a large cohort to identify associations between neighborhood characteristics and breastfeeding behavior. METHODS: Our observational study included 11,038 children (0-2 years) from the Southwest Finland Birth Cohort. Participant information was obtained from the Medical Birth Register and municipal follow-up clinics. Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, greenness, and population density were measured for a period of 5 years prior to childbirth within the residential neighborhood on a 250 × 250-m grid. Any breastfeeding and breastfeeding at 6 months were the primary outcomes. Binary logistic regression models were adjusted for maternal health and socioeconomic factors. RESULTS: Adjusted analyses suggest that mothers living in less populated areas were less likely to display any breastfeeding (OR: 0.46; 95% CI: 0.36, 0.59) and breastfeeding at 6 months (OR: 0.37; 95% CI: 0.34, 0.40). Mothers living in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods were less likely to display any breastfeeding if the neighborhood was less populated (OR: 0.54; 95% CI: 0.30, 0.95) but more likely to breastfeed at 6 months if the neighborhood was highly populated (OR: 3.74; 95% CI: 1.92, 7.29). Low greenness was associated with higher likelihood of any breastfeeding (OR: 3.82; 95% CI: 1.53, 9.55) and breastfeeding at 6 months (OR: 4.41; 95% CI: 3.44, 5). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that neighborhood characteristics are associated with breastfeeding behavior in Finland. Unravelling breastfeeding decisions linked to the living environment could help identify interventions that will allow the appropriate support for all mothers and infants across different environmental challenges.

Diet quality in preschool children and associations with individual eating behavior and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage. The STEPS Study.

A good quality diet in childhood is important for optimal growth as well as for long-term health. It is not well established how eating behaviors affect overall diet quality in childhood. Moreover, very few studies have considered the association of diet quality and a neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood. Our aim was to investigate how diet quality is associated with eating behaviors and neighborhood disadvantage and their interaction in preschool age children in Finland. The participants were from the Steps to Healthy Development Study at age 2 y (n = 780) and 5 y (n = 653). Diet quality was measured with a short questionnaire on habitual food consumption and eating behavior was assessed with the child eating behavior questionnaire to indicate the child's eating style regarding food approach and food avoidance dimensions. Information on neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage were obtained from the statistics Finland grid database. We found that diet quality was higher at 5 years compared to 2 years of age (p < 0.001). Food approach subscale, enjoyment of food, was positively associated with the diet quality (p < 0.001 for 2 and 5 y) while subscale desire to drink was negatively associated with the diet quality (p = 0.001 for 2 and 5 y). Food avoidance was negatively associated with the diet quality both at 2 and at 5 years of age (p < 0.001). A higher neighborhood disadvantage was negatively associated with the diet quality at the age of 2 years (p = 0.02), but not at the age of 5 years. Eating behavior had similar associations with diet quality both in affluent and deprived neighborhoods. Our results suggest that both the eating behavior and neighborhood disadvantage are, already in the early age, important factors when considering children's diet quality.

Parental Self-Efficacy and Child Diet Quality between Ages 2 and 5: The STEPS Study.

Parental self-efficacy (PSE), a measure of the subjective competence in the parental role, has been linked with child well-being and health. Research on the influence of PSE on child eating habits is scarce, and the few studies have concentrated on certain food groups, such as vegetables or fruits, and have mostly included only maternal PSE. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore the associations between PSE (separately for mothers and fathers and as a total family-level score) and child diet quality in a cross-sectional and longitudinal study setting. PSE was measured at child ages of 1.5 and 5 years, and diet quality was measured at ages 2 and 5. Participants are from the Steps to Healthy Development (STEPS) Study (n = 270-883). We found that maternal PSE and family level PSE score were associated with child diet quality. Paternal PSE was not, but the dimension Routines was associated with child diet quality. PSE was similarly associated with child diet quality at both age points. Our results suggest that PSE is an important construct in the development of healthy dietary habits in children, and supporting parenting programs aimed at higher PSE could promote healthy diet quality in children.

Parental feeding practices and child eating behavior in different socioeconomic neighborhoods and their association with childhood weight. The STEPS study.

Child obesity risk, child eating behavior and parental feeding practices show a graded association with individual level socioeconomic status. However, their associations with neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage are largely unknown. In this study (n = 682), we investigated how parental feeding practices and child eating behaviors were associated with body mass index and risk of overweight at preschool age in affluent and disadvantaged neighborhoods. We found that high food approach tendency in disadvantaged neighborhoods predicted higher body mass index and increased the risk of overweight at the age of 6 years compared with affluent neighborhoods. Our results suggest that children's eating habits may have stronger impact on overweight risk in disadvantaged than in affluent neighborhoods.

Infant fecal microbiota composition and attention to emotional faces.

The gut microbiota has been suggested to influence neurodevelopment in rodents. Preliminary human studies have associated fecal microbiota composition with features of emotional and cognitive development as well as differences in thalamus-amygdala connectivity. Currently, microbiota-gut-brain axis studies cover heterogenous set of infant and child brain developmental phenotypes, while microbiota associations with more fine-grained aspects of brain development remain largely unknown. Here (N = 122, 53% boys), we investigated the associations between infant fecal microbiota composition and infant attention to emotional faces, as bias for faces is strong in infancy and deviations in early processing of emotional facial expressions may influence the trajectories of social-emotional development. The fecal microbiota composition was assessed at 2.5 months of age and analyzed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Attention to emotional faces was assessed with an age-appropriate face-distractor paradigm, using neutral, happy, fearful, and scrambled faces and salient distractors, at 8 months of age. We observed an association between a lower abundance of Bifidobacterium and a higher abundance of Clostridium with an increased "fear bias," that is, attention toward fearful versus happy/neutral faces. This data suggests an association between early microbiota and later fear bias, a well-established infant phenotype of emotionally directed attention. However, the clinical significance or causality of our findings remains to be assessed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).