A careful inspection of our results regarding the ‘‘overprotection’’
PBI dimension reveals that a maternal denial of psychological
autonomy negatively affects the level of emotional awareness,
whereas greater amounts of paternal encouragement of behavioral
freedom positively affected emotional awareness. Developing further
additional research concerning the possible compensation of
maternal or paternal behaviors have on their children’s behaviors
will be interesting.
Obesity research often has focused on the relationship between
family structure and emotional eating. Topham et al. (2011) found
that parents’ minimizing responses to their first-grade children’s
negative emotions predicted emotional eating behaviors in the
children. Snoek et al. (2007) found that low levels of maternal support,
high levels of psychological control and high levels of behavioral
control were related to increased emotional eating in
adolescents. This study did not find an immediate impact of family
structure on emotional eating in obese adults; rather, we found an
indirect relationship mediated by the level of emotional awareness
(see Fig. 2).