In this week's Bad Parent essay, Jeanne Sager confesses that she is a recovering bulimic and is petrified that she'll pass on her eating disorder to her daughter. 
"I worry constantly: Should she have another cookie?" Sager writes. "Should I buy the
organic peanut butter or the Skippy that's on sale? Am I letting her
get too fat? Am I making her too thin"
Any woman living in our size-two-is-best society probably has some body image issues. I know I do. Even those of us who don't take those issues to the level of having an eating disorder worry that we'll pass on unhealthy behavior -- staring in mirrors for too long, obsessing over calories -- to our kids. But here's the thing: I say kids. But really I mean daughters.
Even though it's entirely possible (albeit less common) for males to develop eating disorders, we don't seem to worry as much about that happening to our sons. In fact, the very first comment on Sager's essay says: "This is the scariest thing to me about having a daughter (on Friday!).
I'm ALREADY hearing the murmurs of my ED when the doctor says, 'Oh,
she'll be at least 9 pounds.' I realized that with my son I was happy
that he was 9lbs, 6oz, but I felt disappointed that my daughter might
start out big."
While we don't want any of our children to be overweight, we consider it a compliment if someone says our baby boy is large. That means he's healthy, strapping, destined for football glory. If someone says it about our baby girl, though, we subconsciously think: Fat. Unattractive. Destined to be a Heavier Version of Bridget Jones, Sans the Love Affair With Colin Firth.
Of course, we all know this is unfair, wrong and inappropriate. And yet it's ingrained in us by society. It's a reflexive response. So what can we do about it?
Really, the same thing Jeanne Sager is doing to deal with her eating disorder's impact on her daughter. Be aware, feed our kids healthy foods and fight the good fight against those bad impulses. And that all starts in the very beginning. When someone says: "Oh your little girl is so pudgy and cute," we have to convince ourselves not to cringe. Instead we should say, "Thank you." We should give our strapping daughters a kiss. And we should be silently grateful that she's got some meat on her bones and a perfectly pleased smile on her face.
Image: Klee McMullen/Babble.com
