Father Hunger revisited: fathers, global girls, and eating disorders

Abstract

Father Hunger remains an issue for clinical examination and research, especially in the field of eating disorders. For far too long, eating disorders have been seen as 'women's issues', and fathers have been excluded or marginalized in the treatment process. As eating disorders spread across the globe, affecting women of all ages, ethnicities, and cultures, the field must educate and enlist fathers in understanding their role in their children's lives, especially the influence they have on a daughter's body image, self-confidence, and health. Fathers have the potential to both contribute to a daughter's unhealthy attitudes to her body and to food, as well as to promote recovery. Facing the crisis of an eating disorder offers the opportunity to men to become closer to their daughters and families, to provide support and validation during treatment and beyond, and to be a much-needed resource to today's global girls, challenging contemporary culture's objectification and idealization of thinness for women, and promoting recognition of this critical, now globalized, public health problem.

Caregivers in anorexia nervosa: is grief underlying parental burden?

“…The clinical and empirical literature offers ample evidence of the unique and very significant role fathers play in their adolescent daughter’s recovery, including how their attendance in therapy is associated with improved treatment outcomes [ 59 , 68 ]. This information can be relayed to fathers to strengthen their motivation to join the family in its fight against the illness and improve their understanding of their daughter’s difficulties [ 63 , 67 , 69 ]. Therapists should also be made aware of this literature as they are responsible for mobilizing absent or ambivalent fathers.…”

Perception of family relationships and personal integration in young women suffering from anorexia nervosa

“…The results concerning the intergroup differences in terms of the communication and consistency of the father come somewhat as a surprise (higher results obtained by the women suffering from anorexia); however, as mentioned earlier, researchers studying eating disorders generally point to the inappropriate attitudes of the mothers, not the fathers, towards children with an anorexia nervosa. The latter are often described as 'being absent' , which is why their impact (particularly when considering the negative effects) on the life of their daughters is not perceived by them to be negative (Maine, 1993). In spite of the observations prevalent in the literature that fathers of anorectic daughters are absent, there is certainly a need for more in-depth research on this subject.…”

“…It seems that the link between the consistency in communicating with the father and the sense of the daughter's diligence is understandable. Many studies have shown that the relationship between the daughter affected by anorexia and her father is not as difficult and toxic as her relationship with her mother (Maine, 1993;Nitendel-Bujakowa, 2005;Zerbe, 1993). It seems that the established moderate positive relationship between consistency in communication with the father and the sense of industriousness of the daughter is understandable.…”

“…It seems that the established moderate positive relationship between consistency in communication with the father and the sense of industriousness of the daughter is understandable. The relationships of daughters suffering from anorexia with their fathers are not so difficult and toxic as the relationship with their mothers (Maine, 1993;Zerbe, 1993). The matrix of the studied relationships is significantly different in both groups -more in relation to the attitudes of the mother than the father.…”

Development and implementation of a relationship‐focused outpatient multifamily program for adolescent anorexia nervosa

“…In addition to the high acceptability of our RF-MFT model within the French culture, its relatively long-time frame (18-24 sessions) seems to offer an ideal context for working on several family issues, such as gender roles, the long-term impact of externalization, family burden and grief, as well as broader individual and family life cycle issues. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the unique contributions of fathers and mothers to their AN child's recovery, and the impact of the recovery process on parental functioning (Depestele et al, 2017;Duclos et al, 2014Duclos et al, , 2018Maine, 2013). The flexible use of subgroups organized around family and gender roles gives ample and repeated opportunities to explore, amplify or de-emphasize these parental differences.…”