Parenting styles and eating disorders

Accessible summary • The paper describes the parental bonding styles perceived by eating disorder patients. • Different perceived parenting styles were assessed in a sample of 70 eating disorder patients as well as their self‐esteem, different psychological and psychopathological variables, coping strategies and some eating disorder‐related variables. • The most frequent style among eating disorder patients is low care and high control, and between 8.6% and 12.9% of the patients perceive their parents' styles as neglectful. • During the treatment the role of the fathers seems to change, at least from the point of view of the patients, who perceive the fathers' style as mainly based on high care and low control. The aim of the study was to analyse the parental bonding profiles in patients with eating disorders (ED), as well as the relationship among the different styles of parenting and some psychological and psychopathological variables. In addition, the association between the perceived parental bonding and different coping strategies was analysed. Perception of parenting styles was analysed in a sample of 70 ED patients. The Parental Bonding Instrument, Self‐Esteem Scale of Rosenberg, Coping Strategies Inventory, State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory and Eating Disorders Inventory‐2 were used. Kruskal–Wallis test (comparisons), Spearman correlation coefficients (association among different variables) and χ2‐test (parental bonding profiles differences) were applied. The stereotyped style among ED patients is low care–high control during the first 16 years, and the same can be said about current styles of the mothers. Between 8.6% and 12.9% of the patients perceive their parents' styles as neglectful. The neglectful parenting is the style mainly involved in the specific ED symptoms as drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction and bulimia. In order to achieve a better balanced parents' role during the treatment, it would be necessary to improve the role of the mothers as caregivers, decreasing their role mainly based on the overprotection.