Objective: Previous literature suggests a link between the quality of the parental relationship and disordered eating in offspring. We investigated the relationship between offspring pyschopathology and the parental relationship using a population-based twin registry that contained 766 complete twin pairs.
Method: We used reports of twin lifetime psychopathology from the twins and quality of parental relationship and parental lifetime psychopathology from both parents.
Results: Poorer quality of the marital relationship predicted the presence of subclinical bulimia nervosa (SBN) using both mother's (odds ratio [OR] = 0.83, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.71-0.97) and father's (OR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.62-0.97) reports. It also predicted the presence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and alcohol dependence. SBN was still strongly predicted by the marital relationship when parental psychopathology was included as a covariate.
Discussion: These results are supportive of the notion that a conflictual and distant marital relationship can, at least partially, act as an environmental risk factor for SBN.
Copyright 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.