Investigating associations of intolerance of uncertainty and inflated responsibility beliefs with postnatal specific anxiety and infant feeding outcomes

Background: Despite its significant impact on parenting and child outcomes, postnatal anxiety receives less attention than postnatal depression. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and inflated responsibility (IR) may be vulnerability factors for postnatal anxiety and infant feeding outcomes. For this reason, we investigated the associations of postnatal anxiety and a range of factors including IR and IU. Method: Postnatal women ( n =126), predominantly white Irish, completed an anonymous online survey assessing postnatal anxiety, IU and IR, and infant feeding. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were tested for unique predictors of postnatal anxiety. Multivariate tests were used to assess variables associated with feeding outcomes. Results: Although both IR and IU were significantly correlated with postnatal anxiety, regression analyses found only IR accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in postnatal anxiety. In terms of feeding outcomes, IR and IU were associated with reduced likelihood to breastfeed. Conclusions: IU and IR may have different impacts on postnatal anxiety. IU and IR may explain the higher incidence of anxiety in postnatal women and impact on a mother’s decision to breastfeed her infant. Although important, these are results of a small cross-sectional study with some limitations. As such, they should be interpreted with caution. More investigation of these concepts would be beneficial.