How Parents Influence Children's Body Image

Like many young people growing up in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in a body that was larger than what I saw on TV, music videos, and in the magazines, and was made to feel shame about my body from family, and at school. This led me to use some really unhealthy approaches to try to make my body smaller, and what I now know was disordered eating and exercise behaviour. At the time, these efforts were celebrated instead of diagnosed, and I wanted to help others to ‘be healthy’ too, so I went to University to study Health and Physical Education. Once I got there, I realised that so many of us in that course had personal attitudes and behaviours that were actually quite disordered, and became really interested in body image, which led me to my research in this space.

Now – having done the research, and focusing more on the translation of that research into practice and resources – my mission is to change all of the things about the world that make people feel shame about their bodies, so the next generation of young people doesn’t have to be held back by the beliefs they have about their bodies and appearance.

The biopsychosocial model is often used to explain the influences on our body image. 

• Biological influences – include being born into a female body, the genetic influences on appearance, the size and shape of your body, hormones, and brain chemistry. 

• Psychological influences – include levels of anxiety and perfectionism.

• Sociocultural influences – include peers, family, and the media; what we see and hear said to us about beauty and appearance, directly and indirectly. This includes what we see on social media and the comments that are made to us about our bodies.

Whenever we have cultural beauty ‘ideals’ that are unrealistic for the majority to achieve, we will have a high prevalence of body image issues. The simple explanation for body dissatisfaction is that you don’t think you look as good as whatever is being held up as the ‘ideal’. These beauty standards have changed over time – but have always been unrealistic to achieve throughout history.

The challenge we have now is that young people have such pervasive and omnipresent reminders of these ‘ideals’ in their pockets, and social media has really amplified the opportunities to feel inadequate about our appearance. In a very short space of time, young people can see far more images of the ‘ideal’, and they are now not just celebrities and models, but ‘real’ people, which means that we think that we too should look like this. When we post on social media, our ‘ideal’ status is then quantified in likes and comments, and we receive feedback – mostly based around how we look. Young people tell us that they even compare the comments they get about their looks to those they see on other people’s posts – the layers of comparison really amplify the effect.

Parents often think that social media is the main influence on their children’s body image – which feels big and scary, and out of their control. However, the parental influence on body image is really strong – particularly for young children under the age of 12.

As parents, we directly and indirectly role model to our children constantly – in terms of how we speak about and how we treat our own bodies. Those little comments about how we have ‘let ourselves go’ or how we are ‘looking old’ or how big our butts look in an outfit – they all add up to subtly convey that a) the ‘ideals’ in the media are also upheld in the family unit, and b) our worth is determined by our appearance. The things that parents do – and the lengths that they will go to to change or alter their appearance are also a really strong indicator of the importance of appearance to our children.

The other common thing that happens in the home are comments and teasing about young people’s bodies and appearance from parents and siblings. I still hear of young people being called ‘chubby’ in ways that parents think are cute, but this has a lifelong impact on that young person’s wellbeing. Research has shown that being teased about weight and appearance is known to lead to higher disordered eating behaviour – even 20 years later. Those words last a lifetime.

Once children move into adolescence, their peers start to take over from parents in terms of the main influence on body image. A young person’s friendship group becomes the source of their ideas about what the ‘ideal’ is in that specific group, and how important it is to look like that ‘ideal’ in order to stay in that group. Peer pressure in relation to appearance doesn't look as obvious as what it might be in relation to alcohol and other drugs – it’s a very subtle, ever-present conversation.

Young people often engage in ‘fat talk’ or ‘appearance talk’ in order to gain feedback from their peers and friendship groups. This often involves saying things like: “Ugh, my thighs are so fat” and then others chime in with: “No they’re not – look at mine!” These conversations reinforce the appearance ideals of the group and the social value of adhering to them.

In order to manage the influence of these peer influences, parents can have conversations with their tweens and teens and approach with curiosity around their conversations about bodies and food that might be taking place. 

Body image concerns often go unnoticed – having a relationship where you can have open conversations with your tweens and teens means that they might be more likely to open up about how they feel about their bodies at an earlier stage of concern. Young people might also state that they ‘want to get healthier’ – which is often where restrictive dieting begins and can progress to disordered eating.

It can also be really useful to sit down and look at each other’s social media feeds together in order to be able to have a conversation about what they are seeing, and how it makes them feel. Suggesting a pause period – where any content that makes them feel bad about themselves is muted or paused for a month, might be helpful in maintaining open lines of communication as well.

In addition to direct conversations, parents can be on the lookout for tweens or teens engaging in mirror checking behaviour, where they might use any reflective surface to check or correct their appearance many times a day. Wearing baggy and oversized clothing to hide their body is something else to look out for.

The main thing that parents can do is to stop talking about their own and other people’s bodies in a negative way – no more joking about your beer belly or your floppy arms, no more being judgemental of other people’s bodies on TV, no more nicknames and lighthearted teasing of your kids about their appearance. It really does make a big difference, and it is never too late to start becoming more aware of what you say about the way you and other people look, and then trying to move away from these comments.

A helpful reframe, for when you catch yourself in the middle of a comment about appearance, is to ‘add’ an ending to the comment that is about the functionality of the body. For example, if you are complaining about how your stomach hangs over your jeans, you could add: ‘But I’m really grateful that my stomach helped me grow you’ or 'at least it makes me nicer to cuddle!’ This prompt can also be used with your young people – if they say something like: ‘My thighs are so fat’ you can prompt them with: ‘But look at all of the things that those strong legs help you to do – they helped you run up and down those sand dunes last weekend!’

The terminology in the body image space is confusing!

Many people in the general public call what we do in this space ‘body positivity’ – but the Body Positivity movement was actually started by BIPOC women who identified as fat in the 60s and 70s. The concept took off on Instagram, and is easy to understand, but does oversimplify the complex relationship we all have with our bodies that changes constantly over time. For many people, it’s really hard to be positive about their bodies all of the time.

Despite the use of similar words, ‘body positivity’ is quite different to the scientific term of ‘positive body image’ conceptualised by Professor Tracy Tylka and others. This construct provides a more holistic and well rounded definition, involving love for, and care for the body.

Body neutrality is a relatively new term – yet to be fully accepted by the scientific community as being a separate construct from Positive Body Image – but one that has been welcomed among lay audiences. The idea here is that you don’t always have to #loveyourbody, but overall, it’s about focusing less on appearance, accepting and appreciating body functionality, and reducing the extent to which people feel that their worth is based on their appearance.

There are well-known associations between childhood trauma and eating disorders. Less research has been done in relation to the connection between body dissatisfaction and early childhood trauma, but it does seem that the same relationships exist.

Some research has shown that traumatic experiences in childhood may be more likely to lead to body dissatisfaction in adolescence among those with self-critical coping styles or higher levels of self-criticism. Self-compassion interventions and practices are therefore particularly helpful for young people who might have had traumatic experiences in their past.

In addition, Australian researchers have shown a connection between childhood trauma and body dissatisfaction through the Identity Disruption Model. This suggests that traumatic experiences reduce self-concept clarity which might make young people more vulnerable to the impact of social comparisons, negative commentary, and social media exposure, and more likely to base their self-esteem on their appearance. 

There is growing research support for intervention programs that promote body acceptance through building self-compassion (or reducing self-criticism) and increasing appreciation of body functionality.

Teams that I work with have included these approaches in the Be Real USA BodyKind program, and the Embrace Kids Classroom program – both school-based programs that are based on the best research evidence, disseminated at scale by non-profits, and being evaluated by research teams. I believe that this partnership approach is the way forward in having intervention programs that are engaging and accessible, but also up to date.

Much of my work is now focussed on research translation – creating innovative and engaging resources that people want to engage with, and that are embedded in the spaces where people already go to access information. This includes books, films, short professional learning videos for educators, and a magazine for parents. People want information fast, and stories are a critical component to changing hearts and minds in relation to bodies, food, and weight.

Let’s be clear about the more harmful content on social media – it’s not all bad! Diet and food content like ‘What I Eat in a Day’ posts, or accounts dedicated to restrictive dieting, or providing food advice that doesn’t come from a professional with qualifications are some of the most harmful forms of social media content. Posts featuring thin, muscular, or ‘ideal’ bodies are also known to cause harm.

But we actually have more control over our own social media feeds (on some platforms) than we ever did about the advertisements we saw in magazines. As consumers, we need to use our power to make a statement to companies and organisations, and control what we are exposed to.

We don’t have to see the harmful and damaging food and beauty content that makes us feel bad about ourselves.

Blocking, reporting, snoozing, hiding, and unfollowing are powerful actions we can take to show companies that we won’t accept the ads or content they are putting out into the world. When they see those numbers, they will take action.