Maternal weight discrimination experiences and restrictive feeding practices are associated with child body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness

Abstract

Research has established that experiencing weight discrimination is associated with myriad negative consequences, including disordered eating cognitions. However, it has not yet been tested whether a parent's experiences of weight discrimination affect their children's disordered eating cognitions. This paper seeks to establish a relationship between a mother's experiences with weight discrimination and her children's disordered eating cognitions. Using data from the NHLBI Growth and Health Study, we tested whether 193 mothers' weight stigma experiences are associated with their children's (N = 264) body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness, and whether maternal restricted feeding practices is a mechanism through which they are related. We found that maternal weight discrimination experiences are associated with both child body dissatisfaction and child drive for thinness through maternal restrictive feeding practices. In race-stratified models, these same patterns were evident for non-white children but not white children. Overall, these associations were sometimes, but not consistently, robust to the addition of covariates. Our results suggest that maternal experiences of weight discrimination may influence their restrictive feeding patterns, and subsequently their children's disordered eating cognitions.