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Research is comprehensive on mother/daughter relationships and a mother’s influence on her daughter’s beliefs, attitudes, subjective norms and ultimately behaviours are important. Daughters identify more closely with their mothers than their fathers and this sense of identification (e.g., ability to relate to) is viewed as a contributing factor in the ability for a mother to influence her daughter’s life (Starrels, 1994). Beliefs can be considered an individuals’ subjective estimates about whether a particular behaviour will lead to particular consequences (Bandura, 1986). Attitudes are determined by personal conceptions concerning a given object/behaviour and thus creating a learned disposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object/behaviour (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Finally, subjective norms are the expectation of other significant persons' opinions and beliefs and the degree/social pressures to which an individual feels the motivation to comply (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Research has shown that the mother/daughter relationship influences every stage of the daughter’s development, with particular influence in the formation of the adolescent girl’s perception of herself and her body (Flaake, 2005).
A mother’s conduct, together with her relationship with her daughter, can directly and indirectly influence her daughter’s self-esteem, body satisfaction, societal and interpersonal aspects of appearance ideals, eating disorder symptoms/concerns, and physical activity behaviours. Self-esteem can be described as how individuals feel about all the characteristics that make up their person (e.g., skills and abilities, interactions with others, and physical self-image; Piers & Herzberg, 2002). A mother’s parenting style (Szkody, Steele, & McKinney, 2021), behaviour, and own sense of self-esteem (Openshaw et al., 1984) is related to the positive and negative development of her daughter’s self-esteem. Body satisfaction denotes the degree of discrepancy between one’s actual and ideal body weight/shape (Stormer & Thompson, 1996); the subjective evaluation of one’s body (Stice & Shaw, 2002). Maternal modelling of body-image attitudes and behaviours act as social development precursor for daughters (Rieves & Cash, 1996) and are a direct influence on predicting body dissatisfaction (Vincent & McCabe, 2000). The feminine appearance or beauty ideal is the socially constructed notion that “physical attractiveness is one of women’s most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain” (Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003, p.711) and evidence has supported the role of maternal modelling as a process through which this ideal is acquired in daughters (Pike & Rodin, 1991).
Development of eating habits in young adolescent girls, particularly those described as disordered are influenced by their mother’s eating attitudes and behaviours (Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2010; Woodruff & Hanning, 2008). Disordered eating has been described as eating attitudes and behaviours that are a particularly dangerous health risk, as they represent the subjective experiences and behaviours ranging from “normative discontent with weight and moderately dis-regulated eating, to clinical extremes of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa” (Leung, Geller, & Katzman, 1996, p.253). Finally, physical activity (including sport participation) can be considered a form of leisure (Greendorfer & Ewing, 1981; Trost et al., 1997) and research suggests that through observation (i.e., modelling), mothers have an influence on their daughters’ leisure beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. As maternal modelling in the development of beliefs, attitudes, social norms, and behaviours, exists offline, a similar influence could be exercised by the fast evolution of digital culture (e.g., social networking sites; SNSs). It is imperative that the online mother/daughter relationship be considered and investigated.