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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Self-esteem, parental appraisal and body size in children
1Department of Psychology, University of London, U.K.
Abstract:
This study investigates the influence of body size, parental appraisal of body size, and children's beliefs about parental appraisal, on self-esteem in children from 9 to 11 years old. Parents' and children's responses to a matched question about body size suggest that children are accurate predictors of parental evaluation and that their self-esteem scores are influenced both by actual parental dissatisfaction and beliefs about parental dissatisfaction. For boys, lower self-esteem is associated both with thinness and being perceived as too thin. For girls, lower self-esteem is more associated with fatness.
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