02-Apr-2007
The GAINING book giveaway contest has ended!
It has been absolutely fascinating to see the entries – specifically, to see how consistent the dozens of guesses were. More than two thirds of contestants guessed that fathers of people with eating disorders would be doctors. Also, two thirds guessed lawyers.
And all were right!
According to Dr. Kenneth Weiner of the Eating Disorder Center of Denver, medicine and law are the second and third most common professions of fathers whose children are treated at the Center.
But only 3 people guessed the profession that is #1 (and, by the way, this was also a stunningly common paternal profession among the people I interviewed for Gaining). That profession is… drum roll…
ENGINEERING!
Of the three winners, two guessed engineering and law, and one guessed engineering and medicine. If you are one of the winners, Congratulations! Your books will be in the mail to you very soon.
This contest has raised so many thoughts for me as I've watched the guesses pour in. Clearly, genetics plays a strong role in defining not only our personalities but also our occupational choices. But then, perhaps our occupations return the favor by shaping our habits and assumptions in ways that affect our children as stealthily as our genes do. How strange that SO many people suspected doctors and lawyers of producing eating disordered children, and yet it's not strange at all, given that eating disorders reflect a genetic tendency to overachieve, crave order and regulation, and persist in difficult endeavors.
I will be musing about all of this in the next couple of days in my blog at www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/life_after_recovery/
In the meantime...
Be well,
Aimee
