| dc.description.abstract | Currently, the term "Almond Mom" has gone viral as celebrity parents were seen overly restricting their child's choice of food and implementing extreme dieting practices. The "Almond Mom" aligns with authoritarian parenting, which is a parenting style that shows high levels of demandingness and low levels of warmth and responsiveness towards their child. The authoritarian parent creates unrealistic expectations for their child, which can lead to lower self-esteem and depressive symptoms. According to previous literature, it has also been found that negative family food talk and parental commentary can lead to disordered eating. Nearly all research focuses on the direct relationship of negative diet talk and wellbeing. However, little is known about the possible interventions that could buffer the effects of diet talk. To address this gap, 820 female college students (Mage = 24.7 years; SD= 5.47) were asked to complete a set of surveys with the following themes: disordered eating, orthorexia nervosa, depressive symptoms, self-esteem, family food talk, parental commentary, and parental warmth. The results showed that negative food self-talk and negative commentary from the mother were positively associated with disordered eating, whereas fathers' negative commentary was positively associated with lower self-esteem. It was also found that fathers' parental warmth had a negative relationship with depressive symptoms regardless of the presence of family food talk, but that it had little effect on the students' depressive symptoms in the presence of high food talk. The results of this study indicate the need for parents to educate themselves on disordered eating and for research on possible interventions of diet talk within the family dynamic. | |
