Interacting Effect of Mother Eating Style with Acceptance and Challenge in Determining Daughter Eating Style

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

The actions of significant others, including parents, can have important associations with weight management outcomes. The combination of two behaviors from significant others, termed acceptance (warmth and attentiveness during interactions about weight management) and challenge (degree of pushing one to enact healthy behaviors), are related to higher levels of body self-esteem, eating efficacy, and health eating behaviors (Dailey et al., 2010). Mother’s health behaviors also hold a significant role in predicting their daughters’ eating behaviors (Cooper and Stein, 2013), including emotional and restrained eating. However, little is known about how mothers’ accepting/challenging behaviors, in combination with their own eating habits, predict their daughters’ eating behaviors. Thus, the current study examined (a) the relationship between acceptance/challenge and daughter eating style and (b) the interaction effects between maternal eating style and acceptance/challenge in predicting daughter eating style.
Given past literature, we predict that acceptance and challenge will serve as a buffer between the interaction of acceptance/challenge and mother eating style in determining daughter eating style.
Participants included mothers (Mm_age = 42.65, SD = 8.59; Mm_BMI% = 29, SD =7.23) and their adolescent daughters (Md_age = 15.65, SD = 2.5; Md_BMI% = 61.52, SD = 27.34) recruited from a college town in Midwest USA. Both completed the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) to measure eating style. Additionally, daughters completed an Acceptance/Challenge questionnaire.
As hypothesized, maternal disordered eating predicted daughter’s disordered eating in the domains of emotional (B = .24, SE = .08, p < .01) and external eating (B = .44, SE = .10, p < .001) after controlling for age and BMI percentile. After accounting for maternal eating behavior, maternal acceptance and challenge were unrelated to daughter eating behavior across domains. However, both significantly interacted with maternal eating to predict emotional and external eating among daughters. Contrary to our expectations, high levels of acceptance and challenge did not serve as a buffer between maternal and daughter disordered eating. Instead, high levels of acceptance and challenge appeared to be a vehicle by which mothers pass on their own eating behaviors. Indeed, maternal disordered eating was only associated with daughter disordered eating when mothers utilized high levels of acceptance (emotional; B = .16, SE = .06, p < .01) or challenge (emotional; B = .14, SE = .05, p < .05; external; B = .27, SE = .08, p < .001). See Tables 1 and 2.
Surprisingly, the results did not confirm the hypothesis that acceptance and challenge would serve as a buffer between mother eating style predicting daughter eating style. Within this population, acceptance and challenge only served as a protective factor when mothers had highly external or emotional eating styles. In efforts to promote healthy eating styles among daughters, it is important to examine levels of acceptance and challenge in their close relationships in addition to their mothers’ eating styles. Future research is necessary to determine why acceptance/challenge is sometimes a protective or risk factor for girls depending on maternal eating style.

Authors

• Valerie Renee Valledor, Eastern Michigan University
  Presenting Author

• Chong Man Chow, Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aidan Schmitt, Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ellen Hart, Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author