Gastric symptoms and low perceived maternal warmth are associated with eating disorder symptoms in young adolescent girls

Abstract

Objective This study sought to determine whether gastric symptoms are associated with later eating disorder (ED) symptoms during early adolescence, and whether this relationship is moderated by parental warmth/acceptance and/or the child's sex. Method Longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study were utilized. Participants ages 9–10 years old (N = 4,950; 2,370 female) completed measures at baseline and 1 year later (Y1). At baseline, gastric symptoms were measured by parent‐reported items from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and perceived parental acceptance was measured by youth report on the Children's Report of Parent Behavior Inventory (CRPBI) Acceptance subscale separately for mothers and fathers. ED symptoms at Y1 were assessed by parent report on a computerized version of the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K‐SADS). Linear mixed‐effects models were conducted separately for maternal and paternal acceptance to test relationships among variables. Results A three‐way interaction between baseline gastric symptoms, sex, and maternal acceptance predicted Y1 ED symptoms (𝛽 = 0.08; p < .01). Post‐hoc analyses revealed that the interaction between gastric symptoms and maternal acceptance was significant for girls only (𝛽 = −0.06, p < .01), such that low maternal acceptance was associated with a stronger relationship between baseline gastric symptoms and Y1 ED symptoms. No statistically significant main effects or interactions were found in the model for paternal acceptance. Discussion Gastric symptoms and low perceived maternal acceptance may interact to result in heightened risk for EDs in young adolescent girls.

Parenting Styles and Disordered Eating Among Youths: A Rapid Scoping Review

“…DE outcomes were measured using self-report tools with the exception of one study, where parents reported on offspring DE using the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (Kerr et al, 2021). Of the rest, five studies used versions of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI-1 and -2) and two implemented the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), with one study using a modified version for children (ChEAT, Meesters et al, 2007).…”

“…Additionally, unresponsive parenting styles (exhibiting low behavioral monitoring) predicted various DE among daughters, such as body dissatisfaction (Blodgett Salafia et al, 2007) and bulimic behaviors (Krug et al, 2014). However, findings were inconsistent as many studies reported non-significant results for males which were not present for their female counterparts (Krug et al, 2014(Krug et al, , 2016Zubatsky et al, 2015;Kerr et al, 2021). Further, some studies compared longitudinal measurements of parental responsiveness and demandingness using logistic regression analyses (Hautala et al, 2011;Krug et al, 2016).…”

“…Associations between parenting style and youths' DE were dynamic: crosslagged analyses suggested they were reciprocal (Korotana et al, 2018) and differed with age as associations were stronger in early teens relative to later teenage years (Hautala et al, 2011). Finally, the quality of included studies was restricted by a failure to report attrition rates, with only three studies including this information (Hautala et al, 2011;Korotana et al, 2018;Kerr et al, 2021).…”

“…Although some studies have examined the impact of adverse parenting styles on DE symptoms in youth, the results lack consistency. Though demanding (McEwen and Flouri, 2009) and unaccepting (Kerr et al, 2021) parenting styles have been associated with youth DE, non-significant associations have also been reported between paternal (Zubatsky et al, 2015) and maternal (Berge et al, 2014) parenting styles and adolescent DE. As the parent-child relationship is dynamic throughout youth development -with parental influence decreasing in salience relative to other social influences (e.g., Branje, 2018) -parenting styles may not be as influential on offspring outcomes as youths mature.…”

An update on the assessment of culture and environment in the ABCD Study®: Emerging literature and protocol updates over three measurement waves

“…The Culture and Environment working group (CE WG), described previously ( Zucker et al, 2018 ), is responsible for selecting measures and monitoring data pertaining to cultural factors and the social environment. To our knowledge, there are at least 17 published studies to date using CE measures, covering unique associations between family factors (e.g., conflict, monitoring, acceptance/warmth) and amygdala reactivity ( Demidenko et al, 2021 ); suicidality ( Janiri et al, 2020 ), maladaptive guilt ( Donohue et al, 2020 ), eating disorders ( Kerr et al, 2021 ), and early substance exposure ( Wang et al, 2021 ). In addition, school factors and prosocial behavior appear uniquely associated with general psychopathology, accounting for comorbidities across internalizing and externalizing behaviors ( Brislin et al, 2021 ).…”