Abstract
BackgroundThe adolescent years see significant physical and emotional development that lay foundations for patterns of behaviour that can continue into adult life, including the shaping of eating behaviours. Given parents are key socio-environmental drivers and influencers of adolescent behaviours around physical health and wellbeing, it is critical to consider if specific forms of parental communication are potentially contributing to the associated emotional difficulties experienced in the adolescent years. The aim of this research was to systematically review the myriad of literature pertaining to the prevalence of parental weight or appearance-based teasing and adolescent eating problems to examine how the scientific and clinical community currently understands the relationship between these domains.MethodsA systematic search of the literature, using the SCOPUS, APA PsycINFO, Medline, CINAHL databases, reference lists and Google Scholar, was undertaken to identify relevant literature for parental teasing and problem eating in adolescents aged 10–19 years, published between January 1980 to October 2020, in English or French.ResultsSix studies met criteria for inclusion, all were cross-sectional studies and two included additional prospective data. Although parents were not the most common perpetrators of teasing, often subsidiary to that of peers and siblings, the influence and impact of parental teasing remained significant, and in some cases, appeared to interact with sibling-based teasing. This teasing was associated with problem eating behaviours for adolescents.ConclusionsThere is evidence in the literature to suggest the existence of an association between ‘eating problems’ amongst adolescents and exposure to parental appearance or weight teasing. Parents are unlikely to be aware of the perception or impact of the words they use or the wider influence these words may have. Future research should employ representative longitudinal designs to develop a greater understanding of the relationships between parental communications around their adolescent’s appearance or weight and how that communication is perceived by adolescents within complex family processes.Trial registrationPROSPERO 2018 CRD42018109623. Prospectively registered 15th October 2018.
Highlights
The adolescent years see significant physical and emotional development that lay foundations for patterns of behaviour that can continue into adult life, including the shaping of eating behaviours
It is not possible to say that parents are the cause of an adolescent’s eating problems, when the person who is their primary carer is criticising through body shaming, or worse, perceived to be rejecting them through likely misunderstandings in communication styles such as humour, teasing and jokes, the potential for adverse impact is worth considering as a possible influence or association [13,14,15]
Reasons for exclusion were decided in a systematic order, excluded because they were not specific to parent teasing as a construct or did not have a teasing focus, n = 110; excluded for not being from the cohort (i.e the cohort were younger than 10 years or older than 19 years) n = 13; excluded for not measuring disordered eating n = 3
Summary
The adolescent years see significant physical and emotional development that lay foundations for patterns of behaviour that can continue into adult life, including the shaping of eating behaviours. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), adolescence, defined between 10 and 19 years of age, [1] is a time of rapid physical, emotional and cognitive development which creates a unique population requiring age specific attention to development and health [2] It is during this period of development that foundations are set for patterns of behaviour that can continue into adult life [2], of note, the shaping of eating behaviours [3,4,5]. Parental rejection is found to be positively associated with concurrent emotional eating [16] and related to psychological distress and anxiety in later adult life [7, 10, 17] Such repeated emotional and behavioural experiences in adolescence may contribute to ‘eating problems’ in adulthood creating health, logistical, and fiscal burdens on the health system, the community, the individual and their family system [18]. This pathway has long-term sequelae including a substantially elevated risk of anxiety and depressive disorders, cardiovascular disease, chronic fatigue and chronic pain [10, 17, 19, 20]
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