Interdependence of attachment styles and relationship quality in parent-adolescent dyads.

The current study examined how attachment styles of parents and adolescents may jointly influence the quality of their relationship. Parent-adolescent (Ndyads = 77) pairs were recruited from a Midwestern town in the United States. The mean of adolescents' age was 16.25. Both members reported their attachment styles, relationship closeness, and relationship discord. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) showed that both members' attachment avoidance was associated with self-report lower levels of closeness. Parents' attachment anxiety was related to relationship discord. Parents with higher avoidant attachment reported lower closeness when adolescents were higher in avoidant attachment. Higher parents' anxious attachment was related to higher relationship closeness when adolescents were higher on anxious attachment. Such an association was negative when adolescents had lower anxious attachment. Higher parents' anxious attachment was related to greater discord when adolescents were lower on anxiety attachment. This study reveals the complex dyadic dynamics of relationship quality in parent-adolescent pairs.

Retrospective reports of parental feeding practices and emotional eating in adulthood: The role of food preoccupation.

The current study examined the role of food preoccupation as a potential mediator of the associations between parental feeding behaviors during childhood (i.e., restriction for weight, restriction for health, emotion regulation) and emotional eating in adulthood. Participants (N = 97, Mage = 20.3 years) recalled their parents' feeding behaviors during early and middle childhood and reported on current experiences of food preoccupation and emotional eating. Findings revealed that recalled parental feeding behaviors (restriction for weight, restriction for health, emotion regulation) and food preoccupation were positively associated with later emotional eating (correlations ranged from 0.21 to 0.55). In addition, recalled restriction for weight and emotion regulation feeding were positively associated with food preoccupation, r = 0.23 and 0.38, respectively. Further, food preoccupation mediated the association between emotion regulation feeding and later emotional eating (CI95% = 0.10 to 0.44). These findings indicate that parental feeding practices in childhood are related to food preoccupation, and that food preoccupation mediates the association between emotion regulation feeding in childhood and emotional eating in adulthood.