Author: Elizabeth Diane CorderoPublisher: ProQuest
ISBN: 9780542855689
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
This project examined how parents can protect their college-aged daughters from the development of disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. It was hypothesized that perceptions of parental emotional availability and acceptance in addition to low levels of critical messages about weight and shape heard from parents would act as mediators for the influences of risk factors for unhealthy eating and body image, such as sociocultural attitudes about appearance, low self-esteem, early menarche, and high body mass index. Participants included a random sample of 211 first and second-year female university students who were invited to participate in this study via an internet questionnaire. Multiple regression was used to detect mediating-like effects of the parental variables. Messages heard from mothers and fathers were found to contribute uniquely to unhealthy eating and body dissatisfaction only in post-hoc tests of the model, and sociocultural attitudes acted as a mediator for the effects of mothers' and fathers' messages on disordered eating and body image. Moreover, analyses revealed that participants who perceived their mothers and/or their fathers as having at least one symptom of an eating disorder had significantly higher levels of eating pathology. No significant differences were found in participants' perceptions of parents with and without disordered eating and whether those parents provided fruits or vegetables or taught their daughters about exercise. Correspondingly, there were no significant differences in levels of eating problems among participants who reported that their mother and/or father had eating pathology and whether or not the parent had taught the participant about exercise. Implications for theory, application, and research as well as limitations of findings are discussed.