The Parents' Relationship and the Child's Illness in Anorexia Nervosa

The authors examine the impact on the preanorexic child of the parents' relationship with one another, particularly the models they present of mature male/female relationships. The authors suggest that patterns of maternal perfectionism and self-sacrifice combined with paternal entitlement makes sexual maturity particularly threatening for female children in these families, and may partially explain the greater incidence of anorexia nervosa in women, and its explosive incidence in adolescence.

One of the most striking aspects of anorexia nervosa is its tendency to afflict women. The disease affects women ten times more frequently than men, and tends to erupt at times of sexual maturation: menarche, puberty, and the development of a mature female body shape. There seems to be something about femininity that is particularly susceptible to anorexia, but unfortunately that something remains arcane. Most authors have ascribed this skewed distribution of the disease to the greater cultural press toward thinness in women and to differences in male and female experiences in puberty and adolescence (Garner et al., 1983). In this paper we will focus instead on what may be an additional important factor: the manner in which the parents of the anorexic child model male and female behavior, particularly on how the role of women is manifested in their relationship, and the corrosive consequences for the female child.