"Don't eat so much:" how parent comments relate to female weight satisfaction.
OBJECTIVE
How will the words of a parent influence the adult weight of their daughter? This retrospective study evaluates how the recalled comments of parents made about the weight or eating habits of a daughter related to her adult BMI and satisfaction with her weight.


METHODS
A nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted with 501 young women ranging in age from 20 to 35 (age 26.8, SD 3.1; BMI 25.96, SD 6.2), who were asked to indicate their weight satisfaction, eating habits, and BMI along with their recall of the extent to which they recalled their parents making weight-related or eating-related comments about them as a young girl. Linear regression analyses were run to examine the relationship between parental comments and women's weight satisfaction and BMI.


RESULTS
A woman's dissatisfaction with her adult weight was only related to the extent she remembered her parents making any comments about her weight (p < 0.01), but not about how much she ate (p < 0.05)-even though both were positively related to her BMI (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01). Even among normal-weight young women with similar weights, those who recalled their parents commenting about their weight were more dissatisfied with their body weight (p < 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
In this retrospective study, a parent's comments about her childhood weight were related to her weight and body dissatisfaction as an adult. In contrast, comments about her eating habits were not significantly related to weight dissatisfaction.
Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, 475 Warren Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA. fblsubmissions@cornell.edu.
Brian
B
Wansink
Department of Kinesiology & Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin, 603 Bellmont Hall, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
Lara A
LA
Latimer
Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Vermont, 254 Carrigan Wing, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA.
Lizzy
L
Pope
D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology*; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D055815:Young Adult
BMI-body mass index; Body weight; Eating; Parenting; Weight perception; Weight satisfaction