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Body Image and Child Well-Being

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Handbook of Child Well-Being

Abstract

Body image is an increasingly important issue of child well-being around the world. Body image dissatisfaction and related disorders appear to be increasing globally for both females and males. This chapter describes what is known about body image development, body image dissatisfaction, and positive body image from psychological and anthropological literature. Gender is of core importance to issues of body image among children and adolescents; therefore, gender is a central concept in this work. In particular, girls and young women contend with powerful transnational media ideal images of thin bodies, while boys and young men are increasingly faced with muscular ideal images. While body image issues have traditionally been more pressing for females, the pressures on males appear to be intensifying worldwide. Societal influences, such as media, toys, peers, and parents, play a major role in children’s standards of beauty and body image development. Moreover, contexts of cultural change and upward mobility place young people at increased risk of body image disturbance. Finally, we outline the multiple domains in which more research on children and body image is direly needed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, 500, 40530, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Dr. Kristina Holmqvist Gattario & Prof. Ann Frisén

  2. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

    Dr. Eileen Anderson-Fye

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  1. Dr. Kristina Holmqvist Gattario
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  2. Prof. Ann Frisén
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  3. Dr. Eileen Anderson-Fye
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Correspondence to Kristina Holmqvist Gattario .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Asher Ben-Arieh

  2. Research Institute of Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

  3. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar Frønes

  4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Jill E. Korbin

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Gattario, K.H., Frisén, A., Anderson-Fye, E. (2014). Body Image and Child Well-Being. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_165

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