Browsing by Subject "eating disorder symptoms"

Aims. Eating disorder symptoms are common among adolescents, can lead to full-blown eating disorders and harm adolescent well-being. Parents’ influence on adolescent psychological development is notable but among eating disorder studies it has not been explored sufficiently. Few previous studies have included also subclinical symptoms or been longitudinal and most have used adolescent-reported data on parenting. Further, parenting sense of competence has not been studied as a risk factor. The current study explores whether parenting behavior and sense of competence in childhood predict problematic eating behaviour in adolescence. Methods. The used data was from a Finnish birth cohort study Glaku. Altogether 121 17-year-old adolescents (76 girls, 62.8%) answered eating behaviour related questions. Their 119 mothers and 96 fathers had answered parenting-related questions when children were 8. Used questionnaires included Parent Behaviour Inventory (hostility/support), Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (satisfaction/efficacy) and Eating Disorder Inventory 2 (drive for thinness/body dissatisfaction/bulimia). The associations were analysed with linear regression. Results and Conclusions. Fathers’ sense of competence, and subdimensions satisfaction and efficacy, predicted less body dissatisfaction (mean effect sizes 0.18–0.26 standard deviation units, p-values < .05). Gender did not affect the association between parenting and eating pathology. Fathers’ sense of competence may protect from adolescent eating pathology, which should be noted when developing preventions.