Opinion Today: Can anorexia be inherited?

It does run in families — but that's not the full story.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story July 31, 2023 By Jillian Weinberger Senior Producer, Opinion Audio I became a journalist to tell stories about other people, not about myself. I never thought I would write, much less try to publish, a personal story. But then, last summer, my husband and I found out we were having a baby girl. I panicked. I've had an eating disorder for much of my life, and I worried that my daughter would inherit my anorexia (the overwhelming majority of patients with anorexia and bulimia nervosa are female). I started talking to friends and family about my concerns and realized that many women I know have similar fears. Perhaps they don't suffer from an eating disorder, but they have negative feelings about their weight and their bodies, and they worry about their daughters being plagued by the same. I thought sharing my story might help. I learned a lot in reporting and writing this essay — about the latest research on eating disorders and heritability, the nature versus nurture debate in psychology and about myself and how I want to parent. I discovered that anorexia does run in families — women who have family members with the condition are 11 times as likely to develop the disease than those without affected family. But I also came away from my research knowing that no one's fate is sealed at birth. The environment in which children are brought up matters. The experience renewed my determination to raise my daughter in a home without scales or rigid diets, in a family that enjoys and celebrates with food. Read the guest essay here. Igor Ustynskyy/Moment, via Getty Images GUEST ESSAY Will My Daughter Inherit My Eating Disorder? What the science says about the heritability of disordered eating. 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