Beyond Body Positive: A Mother’s Science-Based Guide for Helping Girls Build a Healthy Body Image

This book will help moms teach their 3 to 10-year-old daughters to value and respect their bodies from the start.

Girls’ body image begins to develop very early in life, and many girls show body image concerns by middle childhood. As the primary influence on how girls feel about their bodies, mothers are in an ideal position to support their daughters’ healthy body image development. Research shows that when a mother has a healthy body image, her daughter is much more likely to value and respect her own body.

In this book, psychologists Janet Boseovski and Ashleigh Gallagher begin by prompting readers to reflect on their relationships with their own bodies. Science-backed information and activities help facilitate reader insight into their own tendencies toward perfectionism and social comparison, as well as their reservoirs of self-compassion, self-esteem, and other factors related to healthy body image. Armed with this new self-awareness, moms can commit to modeling healthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for their growing daughters.

The authors then explain how key developmental considerations in early, middle, and late childhood relate to body image and show how moms can guide their girls through each phase of childhood in the context of peer, media, and other cultural influences. With scientific knowledge and intentional, health-focused behaviors, moms can help their daughters develop a self-image that is not tied to physical appearance, learn to accept their bodies despite imperfections, and resist harmful cultural messages about their bodies.

Includes a full appendix of activities written and compiled by the authors, with Julianne Peebles.

Janet Boseovski, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in early to late childhood, and her work has been published in leading scientific journals. Janet is a board member of the Jean Piaget Society for the Study of Knowledge and Development and chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Greensboro Science Center. She enjoys speaking with parenting groups, teachers, and science educators about child development and writing about developmental science for the public. Visit https: //www.duck-lab.com/ and https: //www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-start-for-healthy-body-image.

Ashleigh Gallagher, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of emotion, culture, gender, and she enjoys applying psychology beyond academic contexts. She has experience working in public policy and has co-authored a book on the opportunities available to researchers outside of the academy (The Portable PhD: Taking Your Psychology Career Beyond Academia, American Psychological Association, 2020).