The inter-generational transmission of eating disorders

Abstract

A self-perpetuating cycle has been implicated between early childhood feeding problems and later eating disorders; between parental management style and eating disorders in the child; and between the way a mother was raised and her own parenting behaviour. Questionnaires were distributed to all nurseries in a discrete area of the West Midlands, to elicit information about both nursery-school children's eating behaviour, and the eating attitudes and management style of their primary caregiver. Comparisons were made between the eating behaviour of children whose caregiver showed evidence of abnormal eating attitudes, as demonstrated by their scores on BITE and EAT-26, and that of a control group drawn from the same population. Food refusal and fussiness were hypothesized to be orthogonal dimensions of eating behaviour in the child. Food refusal significantly correlated with the management style of mealtimes when there was evidence of disordered eating in the caregiver, and co-varied with the caregiver's eating attitudes. Food fussiness was seen to be relatively stable across groups, but correlated with the management style of caregivers. This supports the hypothesis that food refusal and food fussiness are distinct behaviours, rather than degrees of the same behaviour. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.