The predictive role of perceived maternal parenting styles, emotion regulation strategies and early maladaptive schemas on eating attitudes

The aim of this study was to examine the predictive roles of perceived maternal parenting styles, difficulties of emotion regulation and early maladaptive schemas on eating attitudes. The data was collected from 327 females whose ages were between 19 and 40. Participants filled out a Sociodemographic Form, Young Parenting Inventory-Mother Form (YPI) to assess their perceived maternal parenting styles, Difficulty of Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) to assess their emotional regulation difficulties, Young Schema Questionnaire- Short Form 3 (YSQ-SF3) to determine early maladaptive schemas and Eating Attitude Test (EAT-26) to assess their disordered eating attitudes. The results showed that perceived maternal parenting styles, difficulties of emotion regulation and early maladaptive schemas predicted the eating attitudes. Maternal belittling/criticizing and exploitative/abusive attitudes and behaviours; and schema domain which was unrelenting standards had predictive roles on the eating attitudes. Socio-demographic data such as body dissatisfaction, application to dietician, existence of psychiatric diagnosis, weight perception and body mass index were also found to be associated with eating attitudes.