HISTORY OF FOOD INSECURITY DURING CHILDHOOD AND LATER DURATION OF BREASTFEEDING OF OFFSPRING: PRO-SAÚDE STUDY
Breastfeeding duration, shown to significantly improve child health, can be influenced by several circumstances in adult life. Food Insecurity (FI) during childhood has been related to several adverse health outcomes. We aim to observe the association between the past history of FI during childhood and later duration of breastfeeding of offspring.
METHODS:
We investigated 1075 female university employees in Rio de Janeiro, Southeastern Brazil, who participated at the 2013 phase 4 of the longitudinal Pro-Saúde Study, and who reported via a self-administered questionnaire who had breastfed her first-born child. A childhood FI score was obtained from five Likert-type questions related to FI when the participant was 12 years old, and then categorized into severe, intermediate, and mild FI, and food security. The outcome was breastfeeding duration (in months) of the first-born child. A Cox model was estimated, having childhood FI as exposure and mother’s age, color/race, education, and per capita household income as covariates.
RESULTS:
Among our study participants, 4.9% reported having experienced severe FI; 14.9%, moderate FI, and 34.7%, mild FI when at 12 years old. The breastfeeding median duration was seven months. Both bivariate and multivariate analysis did not show differences in median breastfeeding duration among FI categories. However, the Kaplan Meier curves suggested the following pattern: history of childhood severe FI was directly associated with interruption of breastfeeding up to offspring´s six months of life, and inversely associated with the outcome beyond that age.
CONCLUSIONS:
These intriguing findings raise interesting questions: do we have two different reactions (groups) toward the previous severe FI? One group could have a "tend-and-befriend" behavior toward previous stressful situations, prolonging breastfeeding. In the other group, stressors (here represented by childhood severe FI) may have the power to disrupt parenting practices seriously, interrupting breastfeeding earlier.