Dietary restraint of 5‐year‐old girls: Associations with internalization of the thin ideal and maternal, media, and peer influences

Abstract

These cross-sectional findings suggest that the socio-cultural environment of young girls may be important in the very early development of unhealthy dieting tendencies. Longitudinal research is necessary to identify whether these are prospective risk factors.

A Review of Instruments for Assessing Body Image in Preschoolers

“…Damiano et al [21] 82% were dissatisfied with their body size. Pallan et al [26] 49.6% of the girls wanted to have a thinner body.…”

“…[15] Dietary restraint Body dissatisfaction was not associated with dietary restraint. Damiano et al [21] Age Correlations Body dissatisfaction score was positively associated with age.…”

“…Fourth, only three studies have analyzed the relationships between body dissatisfaction and diet in preschool children. These studies have found that although body dissatisfaction was not associate with dietary restraint [21] it is associated with dieting awareness in infants [15]. Indeed, 43% of children reported that they would use some form of dietary restraint if their weight increased significantly [16].…”

“…In addition, the scale has been adapted by adding more figures [9,23] or changing facial features [25]. Other silhouette scales that have been used besides the Collins Scale [36] include those developed by Tiggemann and Pennington [38], Tiggemann and Wilson-Barret [39], Truby and Paxton [40] and Mciza, Goedecke, Steyn, Charlton and Puoane [41], or adaptations of the same [7,20,21,42,43], as well as scales designed and created specifically for the paediatric population [12,19]. Table 1 shows the silhouette scales used in studies over the past 12 years in children aged 3 to 6 years old.…”

“…These ideals of beauty and stereotypes can be internalized by preschool children [5][6][7][8][9], arousing concerns [10,11] and negative opinions and feelings [12][13][14] about their bodies. Body dissatisfaction has been observed in children aged between 4 and 7 [7,8,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In a recent review on the subject, Tatangelo et al [27] found that the prevalence of body dissatisfaction in children aged under 6 years old ranged between 20% and 70%, depending on the assessment instrument employed.…”