Mothers, Eating Disorders, and Histories of Trauma

There are numerous articles addressing the contemporary struggles for parents who have children with eating disorders. Many of the research and clinical articles are specific to mothers who have daughters with eating disorders. Eating disorders among females remain significantly disproportionate to males at a rate of 9 to 1.

More research is becoming available regarding mothers with a prior or active eating disorder and how their own eating disorder has affected the parenting of their children.

The results of one such study by Karina Allen et. al revealed that “children of mothers with a current or past eating disorder reported significantly higher levels of some eating disorder symptoms than other children, and mothers with a current or past eating disorder reported significantly more concern about their children’s weight than other mothers. Maternal concern about child weight, rather than maternal eating disorder symptoms, was significant in predicting child eating disorder symptoms.”

In a review, not yet published, of research based on interviews with mothers with eating disorders, Rupert, et. al. states, “In the chapter, we provide an overview of the research regarding parents with eating disorders. As meal preparation and consumption provides families with the opportunity to connect and communicate, parents play an important role in shaping their children’s weight-related behaviors and attitudes. When a parent has an eating disorder, the rituals associated with food may create problems for themselves and their family, especially children. In our own study, we interviewed mothers with an eating disorder. We found that mothers’ relationship with food and children was complex—some prioritized food over their children, but were simultaneously concerned about the impact of their disorder on their children.”

Another review concluded that “Women with an ED were impaired in both their own lives and in their parenting abilities much like other mothers with mental illnesses.”
The review cited that the mothers minimized the impact of their eating disorder on other children, particularly among their younger children. Shame and denial surrounding their disorder influenced this minimization. The mothers reported that constraints in juggling of time regarding career and parenting prevented them seeking help. Inconsistency in responses seemed to also raise questions regarding the desire to recover.

Beyond Food and Body Issues In Recovered Parents

Very little is available in research or opinion about child rearing practices by mothers with a dual history of an eating disorder and childhood sexual, physical or emotional abuse. Some of the concerns as noted above, deal with over involvement or control over their daughters' weights, body size and shape, and food intake.

I have yet to uncover any specific or significant research or articles among this population addressing parenting issues irrespective of a concern about their child's weight, body, or food.

I have observed mothers who are dually diagnosed with Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder who also have a current, past or subclinical eating disorder and their struggle to bond authentically with their child. The inability to feel empathy or not encouraging their child to separate through over or under-involvement often leave the child with a whole host of narcissistic injuries and profound relational issues. Mothers who are narcissistic often compete with their children, especially their daughters. Their inability to relate emotionally to them by doubting their child's thoughts and feelings or through unnecessary control of their behavior have deleterious outcomes; self-doubt and low self-worth set in for the child. The possibility increases for a child to develop an eating disorder whose parent has narcissistic or borderline issues or a diagnosed personality disorder.

I have observed mothers who have recovered from their own eating disorders, particularly those with histories of trauma, overreach in their efforts protect their children from harm or what they perceive to be harm. Often they incorrectly perceive emotional negativity as emotional harm, much like physical harm. These recovered mothers’ need to “protect” can boomerang in the most unintended of ways. Emotional over-protection can leave a child ill-equipped in psychological and relational ways and can curtail the child’s fulfillment of some developmental milestones.

Raising any child to feel safe and protected are generally values forefront in the minds of most parents. Building an infrastructure based on trust, respect for privacy, encouragement of authenticity and listening empathically and responding to the child’s truth take awareness and sensitivity on the parents’ part. The recovered mother who has understood what was absent in her own childhood will dictate her parenting style and decision making in order to ensure a safe process for her developing child. Fall out from overprotection, fear of the child’s separation either physically or emotionally through suppression of aggression, and over gratification can leave a child ill-equipped in life. The mother’s attempt, though likely unconscious, is to mitigate her own fears of loss, separation, and aggression in her child. If the child stays happy, the mother won’t fear being abandoned. If the mother over-gratifies, the child won't get angry at her. She unwittingly recreates in her child similar responses she experienced when the mother was herself a child. The child becomes demanding and begins to see the mother in all or nothing terms—good or bad—gratifying or withholding. In the end, the mother reverts to being triggered in feeling once again she has failed either as a mother or isn’t doing enough to make her child happy. The mother allows for her child to demand from her more than is reasonable in order, in the end, to protect herself.

The mother’s childhood experiences and history of trauma become part of her emotional DNA which can serve to both facilitate and thwart her own child’s emotional development. Through an unconscious, and ‘unintended’ consequence of the mother’s need to overprotect and over gratify, the child grows to be ill-equipped to tolerate frustration, understand limitations and perceive life in the balance; all or nothing thinking takes hold. The parent then is either perceived as gratifying and soothing or withholding and mean. Often the mother’s exposure to childhood trauma is embedded in her viscera, woven into her psychic fabric, that her over-protection of her child is seen as normative.

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Fears of abandonment or worse, failure to protect her child, are so paramount that she will do everything in her power to ensure her child’s emotional and physical safety. In this way, the mother’s narcissistic fears of self-annihilation are so great that they interfere. The mother overcorrects though overprotection and in effect, creates in her a child the same relational reactions and responses as the narcissistic or abusive parent(s) the mother grew up knowing. These reactions can vary from the child behaving in a manipulative fashion, to overt criticism, to withholding of love or abandonment of the mother; all the reactions the mother tried to avoid!

Overindulgence leads to self-centeredness and the inability to understand and convey empathy. Too much soothing of the child’s needs leads to a child’s inability to self-soothe or be proactive when adversity strikes. Normal aggression and frustration and limit setting are experienced by the child as a refusal on the part of the mother to respond, in effect, to be a mother. The child sees the mother as selfish or mean if, or when, the mother does not capitulate to the child’s requests or demands. The mother’s reasonable expectations of her child become reasons why the child feels controlled or misunderstood and so she rejects the mother as the mother’s own parent(s) rejected her. The child begins to cover her own disappointments, failures or emotional dysregulation by blaming the mother or utilizing the mother as an emotional punching bag. The mother, often desperate for the child to remain emotionally bonded, accepts the blame and soothes, gives in or capitulates to the child’s demands.

The outcome for the mother whose history was that of abuse, trauma and/or emotional neglect inadvertently recreates in the child’s personality some emotional and experiential repetitions of the traumatic events that the mother experienced growing up as well. This is an unconscious outcome or perhaps aim of the mother whose conscious wish on all levels was to cease the repetitions of her own childhood. However, In effect, the mother recreates her past. Her child becomes, in some emotional and relational ways, the parent’s parent from her own childhood.

When a parent, i.e. a mother with a history of trauma and an eating disorder, holds the trauma on a conscious or unconscious level throughout life, parenting of her own child can easily be affected. Trauma can never be erased, but the ability to see its impact over time can help shape future decisions, enable healthy relationships to emerge and allow for painful and negative emotions to freely breathe alongside, without risk of harm, when they are triggered throughout the lifespan. Parenting for a parent who had both a history of an eating disorder and childhood trauma is a delicate and complicated matter. Knowing the pitfalls help, but seeking repair in the relationship between mother and child when this occurs is strongly recommended. Remember, that the foundation is one of love.