{"id":2684,"date":"2021-12-14T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=2684"},"modified":"2021-11-02T11:15:13","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T16:15:13","slug":"why-we-feed-our-children-so-differently-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2021\/12\/14\/why-we-feed-our-children-so-differently-and-why-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we feed our children so differently \u2013 and why it matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Parents are bombarded with advice on how they should feed their young children. Nutritional science<\/a> identifies different parental feeding styles and associated health outcomes, while celebrity chefs<\/a> encourage parents to produce tasty, practical and \u2018homemade\u2019 meals. Whatever their source, these messages emphasise healthiness<\/em> and variation <\/em>as key components of good feeding<\/em>. However, despite apparent consistency in the dietary discourse, there are wide disparities in parental attitudes<\/a>. Why is this the case? And why does it matter?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In my British Academy funded research<\/a>, I explored how parents of toddler-aged children from different social classes understand good feeding<\/em> – and how these interpretations influence their day- to-day feedwork. \u00a0I conducted go-along interviews (accompanying participants on their outings) to participate in the choosing, purchasing, cooking, feeding and cleaning up processes. My research was longitudinal<\/a>; I collected my data over the course of 2 years from 12 families living in southeast England. This enabled me to observe food practices as children grow and conditions change.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The results showed that parents from all classes consider variation<\/em> to be key, but they interpret this differently according to their cultural and economic resources. For middle-class interviewees, variety is essential in cultivating a broad, autonomous, and adventurous taste repertoire. This involves continually introducing different types of food, cooking and serving styles to \u201ceducate the palate\u201d. \u00a0Pureed baby food pouches are avoided as \u201cbanal\u201d and \u201chorrible,\u201d like \u201ccat food\u201d.\u00a0 These parents, especially mothers, devote considerable time and effort teaching their children how to appreciate \u201cforeign\u201d and \u201cexotic\u201d foodstuffs and, more generally, to achieve this sophisticated ideal of variety.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For families with fewer resources, encouraging their children to appreciate a varied<\/em> diet is important because feeding \u201cfussy children\u201d is considered to be demanding for many reasons. This practical rationale generates very different practices. For instance, working class families tend to \u201chide\u201d the foodstuffs that their children might reject in dishes that they like, so they eat them \u201cwithout knowing it\u201d. Another strategy used to minimize the risk of rejection is to allow children to watch videos or TV when eating. While these pragmatic approaches ensure that variation is delivered and sustained, they fall short of encouraging the heightened culinary agency desired by most middle class parents.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Equally, parents\u2019 understanding of a healthy diet<\/em> differs widely. Middle class parents tend to adopt a hypercritical nutritional approach, dismissing broader public health messages such as the \u2018five-a-day\u2019 rule as too simplistic. They often ignore mainstream advice after doing their own research and are more confident in offering plant-based alternatives, in line with broader environmental concerns. \u00a0The journey from soil to plate and the importance of reading food labels is also emphasised from early on. This is coupled with a strict and exclusionary definition of homemade<\/em>; as something \u201cthings with no list of ingredients,\u201d \u00a0and which \u201cproduces less plastic waste.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Providing healthy <\/em>meals is a primary concern for working class families too, but their main objective is finding a balance between food groups – and their strategies are quite different. For instance, one interviewee sprinkled refined sugar on top of fruits less favoured by her children – a tactic unlikely to be adopted by middle class parents. These families also define homemade <\/em>more literally: the meal is assembled and consumed at home<\/em> \u201cproperly,\u201d regardless of the number of industrial steps involved in the production of the items prior to purchase.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Why should these interpretative differences matter? Firstly, it shows us that one-size-fits-all recommendations, devoid of any nuanced understanding of parents\u2019 conditions, cannot generate any meaningful impact on feeding practices. If a homemade, varied, balanced, healthy diet is understood so differently, providing information and support to families using these terms is simply not helpful. Secondly, the tastes embodied through these diverse culinary socialisations are likely to yield different symbolic value\u00a0 in adulthood years<\/a>.\u00a0 Those who possess a complex palette, a heightened sense of culinary agency and environmental awareness are likely to occupy a cultural and moral high ground, whereas those who lack them can easily be categorised as practical (food as fuel), vulgar or uncultivated. Studying the nuanced differences in feeding practices can give us a much needed insight into how class based culinary inequalities emerge and reproduce in everyday life.<\/p>\r\n

Irmak Karademir- Haz\u0131r is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research focuses on the lived experience of social class, cultural inequalities, and consumption practices. You can find her on Twitter @KarademirIrmak<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Funding acknowledgement:\u00a0British Academy Small Grant SG170135<\/span><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parents are bombarded with advice on how they should feed their young children. Nutritional science identifies different parental feeding styles and associated health outcomes, while celebrity chefs encourage parents to produce tasty, practical and \u2018homemade\u2019 meals. Whatever their source, these messages emphasise healthiness and variation as key components of good feeding. However, despite apparent consistency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2690,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions\/2690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}