When Mothers Encourage Teens to Diet

Social influences, such as media, peer group, and family pressures, have a particularly potent impact during adolescence. Mothers’ attitudes toward dieting and weight can influence their teenage daughters and, according to a recent study, they can also lead to unhealthy attitudes toward weight and unhealthy weight-control methods among their teenage sons.

At the University of Minnesota, mothers’ dieting was linked to weight-related concerns and behaviors among their teenaged daughters, but these effects were even greater among their sons. When mothers encouraged their sons to diet, the result was binge eating, dieting, and other weight control behaviors, independent of the sons’ relative body weight (Int J Obesity 2002; 26:1579).

Study design

An ethnically diverse group of teens (381 boys and 429 girls) answered a questionnaire and then were interviewed by telephone. Their mothers were also interviewed. The study involved mothers, but not fathers, because mothers generally have more influence on their children’s eating behaviors.

The mothers were asked about their current weight and height and how often they dieted to lose weight or to keep from gaining weight, and how satisfied they were with their own body weight. Finally, the mothers were also asked to describe their teens’ current weight (very underweight to very overweight) and the extent to which they encouraged their sons and daughters to control or lose weight.

Boys: prone to diet and binge

The most striking finding of the study was the degree of weight loss behaviors among the teenage boys whose mothers encouraged them to diet. Boys who were encouraged to diet were twice as likely as boys who were not encouraged to diet to worry about weight gain, two to three times more likely to diet, seven times more likely to binge eat and two to three times more likely to use healthy and unhealthy techniques to try to lose weight.

The findings for girls differed from much of the research to date, according to the authors. In the current study, there was only one difference between girls who were or were not encouraged to diet—caring about controlling weight.

Words: even more powerful than actions?

It may be that what the mother says, not does, influences her children’s weight-related concerns. Modeling the mother’s dieting behaviors may not necessarily increase the chances that her teenagers will diet, especially if the teens’ relative body weights are taken into account. Thus, a mother’s own dieting behaviors may have less influence on her teen’s behavior than her direct verbal statements about the child’s attributes.

Mothers who encouraged their teens to diet were significantly heavier than mothers who did not encourage their children to diet. Almost half of the girls and the boys who were encouraged to diet by their mothers were not classified as overweight—however, about half of the mothers were considered overweight or obese. The authors theorize that overweight mothers were worried about their child’s weight because of their own experiences with weight control.

The authors think that parents who are concerned about their children’s weight should be educated about encouraging healthy eating habits and regular exercise to promote health, including healthy weight control. The children who were encouraged to diet did report using more healthy means to lose weight, but they also reported more restrictive eating than the children whose mothers placed no emphasis on diet or weight loss.