In young women with eating disorders, it is amazing how often repairing their relationships with their fathers is a critical part of successful therapy. I have been struck by how many of them have issues with their fathers. So the story actually makes a certain amount of sense.

unless and until men can operate EXACTLY the same way women do, and of course it is obvious to everyone, everyone rational that is, that they can't.

First, whoever's writing the headlines...I really think the tactic of raising an alarmist and misandrist strawman (Is it all their dads' fault?) only to say, "oh, no, look, there's some ambiguity at the end of the tunnel...") is not only unnecessarily sensationalist...but is probably inviting a lot of the scorn in the letters section that probably wouldn't have been directed at the substance of the posting, except for the headline.

Second, just because the mothers' general "parenting styles" weren't shown to have an effect, does not mean that other aspects of their behavior don't have effects. Other studies (including one more recent than this, but I couldn't find it) have indeed shown links between mothers' dieting behavior and their daughters' ideas about their bodies:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0887/is_11_19/ai_76284033

It's interesting that fathers' parenting styles have greater effects on actual weight--truthfully, it's not what I would've guessed. But it's a long way from concluding what the headline makes us anticipate Carol's going to say. And it's that snazzy headline that gets remembered, not the rest of the article.

There's some untapped daddy issues...

I eagerly await Broadsheets call for Ms. Spears' boyfriend's arrest, seeing as how she's 16 and he's 19...

"So I can't help brightening up when a study finds that fathers' parenting styles actually influence their children more than mothers' do."

Really? Why? I'm certainly heartened at the finding that fathers' parenting has substantial and measurable effects. But it's not a freakin' contest between parents over who has to take less responsibility for how the kids turn out.

Where would that leave the kids?

"In contrast, the fathers with authoritative or authoritarian parenting styles actually lowered the odds of their children having weight problems."

Carol, you're so focused on trying to pin the blame on dad that you missed the point of the study, which is that children benefit from being raised by forceful patriarchs.

"I eagerly await Broadsheets call for Ms. Spears' boyfriend's arrest, seeing as how she's 16 and he's 19..."

Well, that depends on the state in which they did the deed, seeing as how the age of consent is as low as 14 in some states under certain circumstances (in Kansas until recently, the age of consent for marriage was lower than for sex). And a few have "Romeo and Juliet" laws, which mitigate statutory rape laws if the age difference between consenting partners is less than 2-3 years.

Turns out she's not. Apparently her period was just late, and she eventually told her mother (but told Britney first, which made her mother so mad!) and her mother made her fly home to see a doctor in LA because if they were spotted seeing a doctor in L.A. there would be a huge scandal. K-Fed got asked for advice as well, which seems odd except that he knows a lot about baby-making so maybe it makes sense.

Why she didn't just go pee on a stick before freaking out and involving her entire family, ex-brother-in-law, and the tabs is a little odd although it dovetails nicely with the other thread on sex education in high school. Clearly even with all the MTV and internet influence, teenagers still don't know shit about how their bodies work.

The article ends with:

"So it's better to blame our parents' bodies, but not their parenting style."

That's OK to a point, but genetic arguments can be overused too. Disorders should not be blamed on parents all the time, mothers or fathers. Theories attributing illnesses to a certain kind of mother have always been a problem. BUT, I think we are entering an era where parents blame everything on genetics, AND are eager to explain their kids' behaviors and problems with diagnoses (with some sort of biological, pre-parenting origin) instead of working with them and thinking about what their kids might actually be experiencing. So we should avoid pat theories in either direction.

"Parenting styles" may end up being pretty meaningless, as the statement above suggests, but parenting does matter in a lot of ways. You can have good parents and bad parents regardless of their "style" or whether the parent is by nature warm, a bit withdrawn, independent, or very involved. But parents matter. I don't think any parent would want to be told that they don't, any more than they'd want to be told that anything that goes wrong with their kid must mean they're a terrible parent.

When it come to kids having problems, parents can make a difference (and may find things in the home or school environment that are contributing to the problems). If a kid has a severe disorder, like autism or severe, biologically-driven obesity, then parents just do what they can to help through finding expert help and implementing necessary interventions at home, and they shouldn't be societally burdened by blame & harmful theories. But when kids have behavioral problems or are unhappy, I have a problem with the growing tendency for parents to say "look, Johnny has a disorder and we can give him meds or therapy to fix what's wrong with HIM, it's nothing we did, he can blame our genes but not our parenting." It's actually a pretty weird, isolating, and hurtful message to KIDS, that the problem is theirs & the family doesn't need to work on creating a better environment or asking and responding to what the kid is feeling. We should be careful not to move from foolishly & hurtfully blaming the parent to foolishly & hurtfully blaming the kid's genes & labeling him as defective.

Just my two cents so we don't forget that the world is complicated & don't just swing from one extreme to the other since it's the new fashion...