The diet of young eaters: a specific requirement requiring a reorganisation of family eating habits
Résumé
The diet of young eaters: a specific requirement requiring a reorganisation of family eating habits
L’alimentation des jeunes mangeurs : un besoin spécifique entrainant une réorganisation alimentaire familiale
We decided to take a look at what children eat by focusing on some analyses and results from a research programme on the diet of very young eaters, i.e. children aged between 0 and 3 (Dupuy and Rochedy, 2015). By analysing the underside of domestic and parental production in respect of the diet of small children, the report will focus on the supply journey, storage methods, culinary techniques, table manners and post-meal practices, describing them in terms of different life stages and also in respect of the development and socialisation of children. From a sociological point of view, how can we analyse the parental practices related to the act of feeding alongside those related to the construction of the list, or even the register, of what young children eat as a result of diversification?
The various aspects of the work of parents have been investigated (Vandelac et al., 1985): the material work (shopping, preparing food and feeding the child/children but also the rest of the family, etc.), the cognitive work (thinking about what to eat and how to prepare it and anticipating the shopping that needs to be done, etc.) and the sentimental and relational work (family cohesion, being together, conversations/discussions around the child's diet, pleasure, conviviality and the child's well-being, etc.). It then becomes possible to question the evidence of this social fact: studying the work of parents in respect of the diet of young eaters in order to understand the changes, the disparities and the inequalities as well as the construction of the dietary practices of young eaters and the impact of parental work on their socialisation.
This line of questioning, which is situated at the crossroads of the sociology of food, childhood, the family, health and gender relations, demands that particular attention be given to the juxtaposition and the combination of several dimensions. Firstly, the social construction of childhood (and early childhood) with the current place of the child and the small child, of children and small children, of childhood and early childhood, in the family, in culture and, more widely, the society under examination, which creates understanding of the socialisation, and particularly the multiple facets (horizontal, vertical and inverse) of food socialisation and the underlying inter/intra-generational relationships. Furthermore, the life stages and diet of the child are taken into account in the process of constructing the list of food (construction of likes and dislikes, rejections, preferences, neophobia, pleasure and emotion) alongside the prevalent childcare norms today. Finally, the issue of domestic and parental work (mental and physical tasks and the division and inequality of work within the family) and the "care" aspect, i.e. "thinking about others", which includes tangible and intangible practices, such as "emotional" components, provide an insight into the complexity of this task.
Several points concerning the study are worthy of particular attention.
The first relates to the fact that it takes into account a change in the child's diet from birth with milk given to begin with (dietary diversification with the first purée and then textured food with the introduction of lumps) until the child is integrated into family mealtimes, both physically and symbolically, by being served the same food as the rest of the family. These changes require ongoing readjustments in the feeding environment. Furthermore, this study takes a look at the practices and representations of the young child's diet from the point of view of the feeding environment while also considering what the child does with what he receives.
Next, transitory ritualisation processes will be considered in order to reflect on the issue of these small rites that enable the child's socialisation and to verbalise the unspoken organisational aspects of the feeding environment in terms of certain cognitive shortcuts that are far from insignificant in daily life, comprising a vital process for parental organisation and, more broadly, for the feeding environment. The "transitory" dimension made it possible to put change and the dynamics of child and adult adaptation at the centre of the ritualisation of daily life as a result of the swings and transitions at work during food socialisation leading the child towards a non-specific diet.
Thus, by analysing the diet of young children in this way, it was possible to study the various mental and physical pressures present in the feeding environment and the disparities at work in the threefold work of acquisition-transformation, relationship and love involved in the feeding role. Here again, the plurality and the complexity observed made it possible to re-question the division of domestic and parental tasks in respect of food during early childhood both in practice and in terms of values.
Finally, implicitly throughout this study, we looked at the effects of the various educational influences on the processes of food socialisation in the child. The more a person is involved in the feeding role, the more that person has an influence on the relationship between food and the child's health, pleasure, well-being, self-fulfilment and development (Dupuy, 2013, 2014). Consequently, the socialisation processes experienced with the child are complicated, even more so given the concerns that weigh heavily on early childhood, which are currently centred on the importance of feeding children tasty healthy food in the first 1000 days of their lives. Nutritional needs, dietary needs and emotional needs are combined and are translated into, among other things, a sense of catching up in the feeding methods used or by parental guilt and also by a "stencil effect" (Fischler, 1990) in terms of both the list of foods offered to the child and the way in which the child is fed depending on the circumstances, the place, the time, the effect produced, etc. These elements can influence the socialisation processes at work in the child, i.e. what the child receives, how he experiences it and relates to it emotionally and, more importantly, what he takes away from it.
Consequently, in the first part, we will set out the context and the challenges of children's diets in order to set the stage for questions involving the concerns surrounding the relationships between diet and health and diet and transmission for early childhood as a result of the importance placed on the first 1000 days in the life of a child. This will provide an opportunity to put these notions back in the centre of individual, collective and social dynamics. The second part will deal with the unequal distribution of the feeding work in respect of the young child. A third part will look at the empirical data of this study, and will be broken down into discussions on the methodology employed and on the study populations in the two geographical areas of France: Toulouse, Paris and their respective suburbs. Finally, the fourth and fifth parts will revisit two particular results from our research. We will discuss the organisational logic and the processes of food socialisation in order to gain an understanding of the evolution of the dietary act by moving away from the specific in favour of the general. We will then suggest a description and an analysis of the complex and unequal feeding work undertaken by parents.
Bibliography:
Dupuy A., 2013, Plaisirs alimentaires, Socialisation des enfants et des adolescents, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Dupuy A., 2014, « Regard(s) « sur » et « par » l’alimentation pour renverser et comprendre comment sont renversés les rapports de générations : l’exemple de la socialisation alimentaire inversée », Enfances Familles Générations, p. 79-108.
Dupuy A et Rochedy A., 2015, L’alimentation des O-3 ans.
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Fischler C., 1990, L’homnivore, Paris, Odile Jacob.
Vandelac L., Bélisle D., Gauthier A. et Pinard Y., 1985, Du travail et de l’amour, les dessous de la production domestique, Québec, Saint-Martin.
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