Attachment Quality and Obesity Risk in Childhood: A Meta-Analysis

Childhood obesity is a major public health concern with well-documented long-term consequences. Growing evidence suggests that early attachment relationships play an important role in obesity risk, particularly through their influence on emotion regulation and caregiver–child interactions around food. However, prior quantitative syntheses have focused predominantly on anthropometric indicators (e.g., BMI, weight-for-length, waist–hip ratio), which may not fully capture early obesity risk, especially in early childhood. Weight-based measures are not always reliable indicators of future obesity trajectories, as they may fail to reflect underlying eating behaviors, dietary patterns, and everyday feeding routines that emerge early in development and track into later childhood and adulthood. Importantly, early attachment relationships may shape obesity risk through more proximal mechanisms, such as caregivers’ feeding practices, children’s food consumption, and eating behaviors, long before excess weight becomes evident. The present meta-analytic review aims to quantitatively synthesize the empirical literature examining associations between attachment quality (caregiver attachment and caregiver–child attachment) and obesity-related outcomes in childhood. In contrast to previous reviews, this meta-analysis extends beyond anthropometric outcomes to include a broader range of obesity-related variables, namely food consumption and eating behaviors.