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. <strong>Procedures</strong> 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 &amp; Rothbart, 2003). <strong>Findings in brief</strong> 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.