UCLA

Parents are a strong influencer of children and adolescent’s developing relationships with food and their bodies. Although research shows that experiencing weight stigma is associated with disordered eating cognitions for the target of the discrimination, no studies have explored whether a parent’s experiences of weight stigma are associated with their children’s outcomes. Therefore, study 1 sought to establish a relationship between a mother’s experiences with weight stigma, her restrictive feeding practices, and her children’s disordered eating cognitions. Using data from the NHLBI Growth and Health Study, I tested whether 193 mothers’ weight stigma experiences were associated with their children’s (N=264) body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness, and whether maternal restricted feeding practices is a mechanism through which they are related. Multilevel mediation models showed significant total effects of maternal weight stigma experiences on child body dissatisfaction. Restrictive feeding practices were a significant mediator of maternal weight stigma experiences and child body dissatisfaction. There were no significant total effects of maternal weight stigma experiences on child drive for thinness. However, restrictive feeding practices significantly mediated the relationship between maternal weight stigma experiences and child drive for thinness. These associations were sometimes, but not consistently robust when household income, maternal education, child gender, age, BMI, and race were included as covariates, and when stratifying by child race. Overall, results suggest that mothers’ experiences of weight stigma may results in more use of restrictive feeding practices, and subsequently more disordered eating cognitions in their children.

Because women and girls are more likely to be affected by disordered eating and cultural norms of thinness, study 2 aimed to more deeply understand how attitudes towards weight and food were transferred from mother to daughter and the effect they have on outcomes such as disordered eating cognitions and behaviors. This qualitative study consisted of independent semi-structured interviews with a community sample of mother-daughter dyads. The sample included 10 young adult women (5 Black and 5 white) aged 20-25 and their mothers. Using a codebook approach to thematic analysis, I identified four themes related to maternal weight talk: 1) Explicit comments about weight, shape or size; 2) Using clothing as a proxy to comment on weight, shape, or size; 3) Negative impact on daughters’ body image; and 4) Breaking the intergenerational weight talk cycle, and two themes related to food attitudes: 1) Moral messages about food and 2) The role of culture and way-of-life in food attitudes.

Results of these studies 1) help us understand how disordered eating cognitions and behaviors may develop or worsen in the family context, and 2) potentially inform prevention programs or clinical treatment of eating disorders such as family-based therapy (FBT).