Food Insecurity During Infancy: Implications for Attachment and Mental Proficiency in Toddlerhood
Infants who experience insecure access to food will be less cognitively advanced when they become toddlers, compared with infants who had consistent access to food, concludes a study by a team of researchers at Child Trends, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that researches child and youth issues.
The report says that more than 10 percent of U.S. households with infants experience limited or insecure access to food, and that levels of maternal depression rise in response to higher rates of food insecurity.
Data for the study came from the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which reviewed information about 9,000 9-month-old infants from 2001 to 2004.
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