Motherhood can make women body positive

The Asian Age.

Life, Health

Study shows motherhood makes women more comfortable with the shape and size bodies.

There is the fact that becoming a mother naturally results in changes to the appearance of the breasts, particularly in terms of their size. (Photo: Representational/Pixabay)

Motherhood teaches women to embrace their body for its functionality and not just for aesthetic purposes. They start focussing more how their body can help the baby and themselves.

A study published in the journal Body Image suggests that only non-mothers obsess about perfectionism related to the breast size. For this study, 484 women were surveyed and 69 per cent reported breast size dissatisfaction and 44 per cent reported wanting larger breasts, reported The Quint.

"There is the fact that becoming a mother naturally results in changes to the appearance of the breasts, particularly in terms of their size," said Viren Swami, professor at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Britain.

"But perhaps the most relevant is that becoming a mother, and particularly the experience of breastfeeding, may focus women's attention on breast functionality as opposed to focusing on the aesthetics of breasts and the body," Swami added.

The study also revealed that those with higher levels of perfectionistic self-presentation were dissatisfied with their breast size. "Our findings suggest that motherhood may help to decouple the link between perfectionistic self-presentation and breast size dissatisfaction," Swami said.

Read more...