Two for the Price of One: Government Report on Pregnancy and Body Image
On June 2, 2014, the Minister for Women, Jenny Elliot presented The Government Equalities Report, "Two for the Price of One: The impact of body image during pregnancy and after birth" written by AnyBody UK members Susie Orbach and Holli Rubin at the Royal Free Hospital. Orbach and Rubin introduce their report by defining the problem:
"Body image concerns are widespread. When women overestimate their size, they feel bad about their bodies and their well-being plummets. They tend to either curtail or override their appetites in an attempt to control the feeling of real or imagined fatness and this is leading many women to have to disturbed eating.1 When women underestimate their size, they also lose contact with basic physiological prompts signalling hunger and satisfaction.
The conjunctions of body image distress and disturbances in eating have tended to be seen as either trivial and vain, or as medical psychiatric issues. This has meant that they have rarely been in focus in considering health policies for expectant mothers. Understanding these disturbances explains why sound nutritional advice is often poorly taken up despite women wishing to do so.
Women’s concerns are anything but trivial. They are making women feel deeply uneasy in their bodies. They are disturbing women’s eating patterns. They are impacting on how women relate to their physical needs in pregnancy and post-partum, interrupting the focus on bonding with baby in the crucial early months when attachment behaviours are being established (Treasure 2013, Fairburn 1993, Orbach 2003)."
They elaborate on issues including feeding and nurturing babies, the experience of pregnancy, the transition from pregnancy to becoming a mother, bonding and attachment, mothers with body image and eating problems, building baby's secure body image, the case for early intervention, in addition to key information and actions for midwives and health visitors. The report's Executive Summary reads as follows: