Self-esteem, Parental Appraisal and Body Size in Children

— 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 U 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 arc 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.