Promoting Responsive Feeding During Breastfeeding, Bottle-Feeding, and the Introduction to Solid Foods

Promoting Responsive Feeding During Breastfeeding, Bottle-Feeding, and the Introduction to Solid Foods addresses how caregiver feeding practices and styles shape the quality and outcome of feeding interactions during infancy. Emphasis is placed on how the quality and nature of caregiver-child interactions during breastfeeding, bottle-feeding, and the introduction to solid foods shape the development of children's eating behaviors, growth trajectories and chronic disease risk. The book also considers the potential influence of broader contextual factors on early feeding interactions, including how psychological, social, cultural and economic factors may influence caregivers' abilities to implement feeding recommendations. - Highlights the importance of responsive, or infant-led feeding practices and styles - Promotes high-quality caregiver-infant interactions during breastfeeding, bottle-feeding and the introduction to solid foods - Discusses the socioemotional and cognitive benefits of high-quality feeding interactions

Alison Ventura received a B.S. in Psychology with an emphasis in Biology and a minor in Community Nutrition from the University of California, Davis. She then earned two Master's degrees from the Pennsylvania State University: one in Nutritional Sciences and the other in Human Development and Family Studies. In 2008, she earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University. From 2008-2011, Dr. Ventura was a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a taste and smell research institute in Philadelphia, PA. For the past decade, Dr. Ventura's research has primarily focused on infant feeding interactions and understanding how these interactions affect the development of eating behaviors and growth trajectories across infancy and early childhood.