A new look at the links between perceived parenting, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and disordered eating

• Parental autonomy support and psychological control relate to eating pathology (EDs).
• Socially-prescribed perfectionism may mediate links between parenting and EDs.
• A sample of female undergraduates completed self-report scales of study variables.
• Results indicated significant indirect effects in mediational analyses.
• Socially-prescribed perfectionism may explain links between parenting and EDs.

Perfectionism mediates the relation between parental psychological control and disordered eating, but it is unclear whether it functions similarly within associations between other parenting characteristics and eating pathology. The current study tested socially-prescribed perfectionism (SPP) as a mediator of the relations between two facets of perceived parenting style—autonomy support and psychological control— with disordered eating. Undergraduates (N = 333, 100% female) completed self-report measurement of study variables. Results indicated that psychological control and autonomy support were moderately correlated. Additionally, the indirect effect of parenting variables on disordered eating through SPP was significant across reports for both mother and father. When the directionality of variables was reversed, no indirect effects were significant, supporting the hypothesized relations between study variables. Findings reinforce prior work highlighting perfectionism as an important mechanism in the etiology of disordered eating.