The Role Of Parents In Preventing Their Children’s Eating Disorders

The origin of certain disorders is unknown. In others, there are hints of the factors that precipitate them. In the case of eating disorders (ED) it seems a clear and hard reality: they are motivated by a cultural context.

This implies that eating disorders, both anorexias, bulimias and obesity, respond to values ​​and lifestyles that predominate in the environment. It is worth considering, in this way, the influence of society, its impact on the peer group and the role of parents in the prevention of eating disorders in their children.

In many psychological disorders, age plays a key role. In some, as in personality disorders, specific changes begin to manifest in early adulthood.

Others can systematically affect a part of the population, such as anxiety and depression problems in women (although on this issue we could talk about overdiagnosis and the low favoring of helping behavior by men).

Furthermore, 90% of these adolescents were women. These data are not surprising. From a young age, women are the ones who suffer the most from the suffocation of a society that believes in a type of beauty and restricts, as in anorexia, everything else.

The researchers Piñedos, Molano and López de Mesa (2010) found that one of the main reasons why the socioeconomic level was not relevant in the appearance of an ED is that the stereotypes of beauty and thinness were already reaching contexts less susceptible to be immersed: rural areas.

According to the Spanish Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AEPNYA), the average age of onset of an eating disorder is between 16-17 years. Most cases appear before the adolescent is 20 years old.

The age of risk is between 13 and 24 years for women. These ages coincide with the daughter’s stay at home. Therefore, considering the role of parents in the prevention of ED in their daughters so relevant, we can ask ourselves, is there something they can do to prevent it from appearing?

The role of parents in the appearance of an eating disorder

Before exposing the role of parents in the prevention of eating disorders, and therefore what has been able to facilitate their appearance, it should be clarified that an eating disorder is related to many factors. That there are certain characteristics in the family that can be related to this does not mean that the developed TCA is the family’s fault .

Martínez and Martínez (2017) studying the relationship between eating disorders, family and gender in Bogotá, found that there were patterns in the families of those affected. In this way, they concluded that dysfunction in family functioning was proportional to the appearance of an ED, with two core elements: lack of cohesion and low tolerance to frustration in these young people.

Similarly, both researchers spoke of the appearance of overly controlling parents with their adolescent daughters, overprotective, authoritarian, and who did not favor the daughter’s independence. This can lead her to think that she lacks control over her environment, at an age where she should have already acquired responsibilities and power over her life.

Is permissive parenting style the solution?

The role of parents in preventing EDs in their daughters is not permissive or even negligent. In this same study, they observed that lack of affection and supervision are related to low self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem is one of the main characteristics of all eating disorders.

In fact, it has been argued about the existence of a single type of family, where an ED is more likely to appear. In the absence of consensus, it seems interesting to point out what Espina, Pumar, García and Ayerbe (1995) find in their meta-analysis about eating disorders and family interaction:

• Bulimia tends to run in more troubled and pathological families. In them there is hostility, nutritional deficits, detachment, impulsiveness and lack of parental support. Marital conflict does not usually appear.

• In many cases, restrictive anorexia seems to develop in families with parents who, although positive, are often involved in major marital and coexistence problems.
• Families of adolescent girls with purgative anorexia also often have marital conflict. Hostility and lack of parental support are usually more mitigated.

What can parents do against eating disorders?

Knowing the enormous impact that a parent or a completely different parent can have on the appearance and development of an eating disorder, we cannot help but wonder what they can do.

Martínez, Navarro, Perote and Sánchez (2010) present some useful tools in their manual: Educating and growing in health: the role of parents and educators in the prevention of eating disorders.

The hilarious comments about your daughter’s physique

The adolescent’s body changes and she is not the only one to notice it; her environment also speaks of her figure. Some of these comments can go a long way on the road to good self-esteem.

Many adults who have suffered an ED recall comments such as: “don’t eat so much that you’re going to turn round”, “expensive paella”, “you look like an idiot when you wear your hair like this”, “look at what body your cousin has”.

Tools for an uncertain adolescence

Adolescence is a challenge that for some adolescents can come before they are ready. Some believe they reduce their discomfort with a false solution, TCA, which gives them control over their body (already a source of constant discomfort) and over food.

It is vitally important to educate, give tools, address frustration and know how to handle it; that they do not experience adolescence as a confusing stage due to a lack of information on the part of the parents.

Talking about eating disorders, warning signs, thoughts that can be related to them and the existence of various beauties, even if the messages you receive through other channels are totally different, is highly recommended.

It is likely that this role is not played by your friends or by a society that largely lives off the existence of the problem, you will have to be the one to tell your  daughter that thinness is not synonymous with beauty. If not, she will be exposed to an adolescence full of physical changes with the idea that extreme thinness, sometimes unattainable, is what she should aspire to.

Limits, as necessary as they are complicated to manage

The permissiveness in general lines of the last decades has given rise to parents who, although they want to set rules, do not know how to do it. Therefore, the imposition of limits, from affection and acceptance and differentiating between what we would like for our daughter and what she wants, is a protective factor against any TCA.

Part of the role of parents in preventing eating disorders is setting limits. It is perhaps one of the most thankless jobs in the short term, but with better effects in the medium and long term.

The idea is that, if as children they do not learn to live with limits in a healthy way, when they are adolescents they will disdain them, even if they need them, as in the case of eating disorders. In fact, experts say only two ingredients are needed to keep TCA at bay: affection and control.