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Family meals, positive versus negative emotion suppression, and emotional eating: examining adolescent–parent dyadic associations

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Abstract

Purpose

The present study aimed to extend existing research by examining adolescent–parent dyadic associations among adaptive and maladaptive family meal characteristics, positive and negative emotion suppression, and emotional eating.

Method

Participants included a community-based sample of adolescents and parents (N = 1646 dyads) who participated in the National Cancer Institute’s Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating Study. Dyad members both completed measures assessing family meal characteristics (family meal importance beliefs, family mealtime television watching), emotion suppression, and emotional eating via online surveys. Actor–partner interdependence models were used to examine dyadic associations among the assessed family meal characteristics, positive and negative emotion suppression, and emotional eating.

Results

Multiple within-person (e.g., adolescent–adolescent, parent–parent), cross-dyad member (e.g., adolescent–parent, parent–adolescent), and divergent adolescent versus parent dyadic effects were identified that differed based on the extent to which participants suppressed positive versus negative affect. For example, whereas adolescents’ stronger beliefs in the importance of frequent family meals were associated with lower levels of their own suppression of positive emotions and, in turn, lower levels of both their own and their parents’ emotional eating, these mediational associations were only identified at the within-person (not cross-dyad member) level among parents.

Conclusions

Collectively, these findings attest to the complexity of associations among the assessed risk and protective family meal characteristics, the suppression of differentially valenced emotions, and emotional eating that manifest at the adolescent–parent dyadic level. Findings also support the continued use of a family-based perspective to further the understanding of factors that are associated with emotional eating.

Level of evidence

Level V, cross-sectional descriptive study.

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Availability of data and material

Study data are available from the National Cancer Institute: https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/hbrb/flashe-study/flashe-terms.

Code availability

Code is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was completed in part with support from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under award number F31MH120982 to Kelly A. Romano. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology, 555 Park Avenue, Norfolk, VA, 23504, USA

    Kelly A. Romano & Kristin E. Heron

  2. Old Dominion University, 250 Mills Godwin Building, Norfolk, VA, 23529, USA

    Kelly A. Romano & Kristin E. Heron

  3. Virginia Commonwealth University, 808 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA, 23284, USA

    Robin S. Everhart

Authors
  1. Kelly A. Romano
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  2. Kristin E. Heron
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  3. Robin S. Everhart
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Contributions

KAR completed study conceptualization, data analysis, methodology, and manuscript writing tasks. KEH and RSE completed manuscript editing and oversight tasks. All authors were responsible for reviewing the manuscript, and approved the final article for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kelly A. Romano.

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Conflict of interest

None.

Ethical approval

Study procedures were approved by the U.S. Government’s Office of Management and Budget (0925–0686), NCI’s Special Studies Institutional Review Board (iRIS No. 327123), and Westat’s Institutional Review Board (6053.01.01), and were performed in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its amendments.

Informed consent

All parent participants electronically provided informed consent for their own and their adolescents’ participation, and adolescents assented to participate.

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Romano, K.A., Heron, K.E. & Everhart, R.S. Family meals, positive versus negative emotion suppression, and emotional eating: examining adolescent–parent dyadic associations. Eat Weight Disord 27, 1491–1504 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-021-01292-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-021-01292-4

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