A friend of mine recently mentioned a friend of hers who struggled with anorexia for years ... and it vanished when this friend came out as trans. I sort of wonder just how many anorexics were dealing with unspoken dysphoria, and that was a piece of what was going on.

The thing that struck me after I read this book a few years ago: for decades, the belief about autism was that it was caused by "refrigerator mothers," and it was treated by trying to keep the mother out of the picture. And yet, I know so many parents of autistic kids where the mother is the kid's best advocate. Anorexia was similar: blamed on the mom, treated with "parent-ectomy," but in fact, family-based treatment works vastly better than inpatient programs.

I don't know. I mean, I definitely know friends with eating disorders who had parents who certainly set the stage for disordered eating in every possible way. But that's certainly not always it. I like the comparison to alcoholism; like, there are families that set the stage for it in various ways but there's also clearly a genetic predisposition factor and when a teen has a drinking problem, it's not treated in the context of, "obviously your Mom made you into an alcoholic, so let's try to fix what she screwed up."