Body Shape Concerns, Self-Esteem and Quality of Life Among Women

Abstract

The present study population is women, mothers and non-mothers. Main focus of the population is mothers. Mothers go through physical changes before and after giving birth. For some mothers it takes longer time to get back to the body they used to have and for some they do not change themselves as are happy to they embrace the changes. However, the non-mothers even though they don’t go through the physical changes of birth, they do go through body shaming issues. A woman in general goes through body shaming on a day-to-day basis. Which in turn affects their self-esteem, they tend to forget that they are beyond those criticisms. Once self-esteem of mothers has affected, it can have an effect on their quality of life. The main objective of the study was to examine the relationship between body shape concerns, self-esteem and quality of life among mothers and non- mothers and to identify the difference in Body shape concerns, Self-esteem and Quality of life based on age, locality and occupation. The total participants of the study were 104 women (63 mothers and 41 non-mothers). The tools used to assess the variables were Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ 16A), Quality of Life Scale and Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. The major findings of the study were that there is a significant relationship between body shape and quality of life among mothers and there is no significant relationship between body shape, self-esteem and quality of life among non-mothers. The findings also revealed that there is no significant difference in body shape, self-esteem and quality of life among women. The study also found that there is influence of body shape in quality of life among mothers that as body shape concerns decreases the quality of life increases.