"The influence of maternal perceptions on daughters’ eating disordered behavior appears to continue into adolescence and young adulthood. For example, mothers whose daughters engaged in eating disordered behavior were more likely to view their daughters as overweight than were mothers of non-eating disordered daughters (controlling for weight differences between groups). Further, this appearance pressure is not necessarily limited to weight, as mothers of daughters with eating disorder symptomatology also rated their daughters as less attractive than the daughters rated themselves. These results are concerning, as they suggest that daughters who engage in eating disordered behaviors may not only lack a maternal role model of healthy eating, but also feel maternal pressure to lose weight and enhance their appearance. This of course could reflect several complex intergenerational processes. On one hand, mothers may harbor threshold or subthreshold eating disturbances themselves, and their comments or behaviors could reflect their underlying pathology. Alternatively or complementarily, the daughters’ pathology could render them more sensitive to maternal comments that in other situations may be perceived as culturally normative. These environmental experiences could facilitate the expression of an existing genetic predisposition for eating disorder symptomatology."