| Eating Disorders |
| Psychology |
| Psychopathology |
Summary
Summary
"Father Hunger" is the emptiness experienced by women whose fathers were physically or emotionally absent--a void that leads to unrealistic body image, yo-yo dieting, food fears and disordered eating patterns. The term, which is now part of the psychology lexicon, originated with the first edition of this work in 1991.
After having completed a decade's worth of further investigation, Dr. Maine has updated the information about men and their daughters in this second edition. She offers a new crash course on being a girl in today's culture, based on her expertise as a leading eating disorders prevention advocate. This edition describes the origins of father hunger and its effect on the family, with even more practical solutions to help fathers and daughters understand and improve their relationships. Also included is an expanded section for educators and therapists to help them more effectively prevent and treat the problems that occur between dads and daughters.
Author Notes
Margo Maine, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, lecturer, and activist specializing in eating disorders prevention and treatment. The first edition of her book added the term "father hunger" to the psychology lexicon. She is also the author of an activist's guidebook, Body Wars: Making Peace With Women's Bodies. Dr. Maine is a past-president of the National Eating Disorders Association, which sponsors Eating Disorders Awareness Week; is a Senior Editor of EATING DISORDERS: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention; and has been a keynote lecturer at many professional conferences throughout the United States. She has had a clinical practice in West Hartford, CT for over 20 years.
Craig Johnson, Ph.D. is one of the world's foremost authorities on eating disorders. The author of several books and professional articles, he is the founding editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
Maine provides a decent balance to other important works (e.g., Kim Chernin's The Hungry Self, 1985) that focus on the relationship between eating disorders and mother/daughter issues and that have had the effect of making many mothers the focus of blame and guilt. Instead, Maine expands the scope of this work and concentrates on the importance of fathers' roles in the emotional development of their daughters. She argues that there is a natural and important longing that children have for their fathers. If it is unfulfilled, children suffer and are vulnerable to many psychological difficulties, including eating disorders. Development of such a disorder may be one of the only ways a daughter can communicate her sense of abandonment, loneliness, or despair. As part of the healing process, Maine recommends how to mend the father/daughter relationship. She addresses, without blame or judgment, mothers and fathers directly and encourages them to heal their own father hunger. She encourages young women to improve their relationships with their fathers as part of their healing process. Maine does a nice job of integrating psychological and sociological research into her material. An important introduction to new work in this area, suitable for community college students and up.-R. Kabatznick, Queens College, CUNY
