Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life (Studies in Childhood and Youth)

This book explores the significance of food practices for childhood identities, from early babyhood to middle childhood and teenage years. It examines how children and families negotiate food and eating practices; what influence the media has on these; the role institutions play; and how far class and ethnicity shape the food that children eat. This edited collection explores the significance of a range of food practices for childhood identities in the context of children's everyday lives in different cultural settings. The relationship between children and food is currently high on the political agendas of many countries particularly in relation to matters such as childhood obesity and children's exposure to media discourses of various kinds. Within these, children's relationship with food is often problematized and yet we still know little about children's everyday encounters with food, or how they are positioned as consumers by television and marketing, but also by their mothers at home or by their peers at school. By exploring children's own everyday food encounters, alongside the ways in which childhood identities are constructed and mediated through food this volume provides a more measured and insightful understanding of the various and subtle dimensions of the relationship between children, food and identity than is normally headlined in the press. In drawing on empirical material from research in the UK, USA, and Europe, stretching from early babyhood through to middle childhood and youth, the volume also enables an understanding of the changing relationship between children, food and identity over time Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction: Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life....Pages 1-12 ‘It Depends What You Mean by Feeding “on Demand”’: Mothers’ Accounts of Babies’ Agency in Infant-Feeding Relationships....Pages 13-34 Negotiating Family, Negotiating Food: Children as Family Participants?....Pages 35-51 Consuming Fast Food: The Perceptions and Practices of Middle-Class Young Teenagers....Pages 52-68 Picturing the Lunchbox: Children Drawing and Talking about ‘Dream’ and ‘Nightmare’ Lunchboxes in the Primary School Setting....Pages 69-93 Fathering through Food: Children’s Perceptions of Fathers’ Contributions to Family Food Practices....Pages 94-111 Children’s Subjectivities and Commercial Meaning: The Delicate Battle Mothers Wage When Feeding Their Children....Pages 112-129 Children’s ‘Becoming’ in Frontiering Foodscapes....Pages 130-148 Food and Relationships: Children’s Experiences in Residential Care....Pages 149-171 Discourses on Child Obesity and TV Advertising in the Context of the Norwegian Welfare State....Pages 172-191 ‘I don’t care if it does me good, I like it’: Childhood, Health and Enjoyment in British Women’s Magazine Food Advertising....Pages 192-212 Back Matter....Pages 213-218 "In exploring children's own everyday food encounters, alongside the ways in which childhood identities are constructed and mediated through food, this book enables a measured and insightful understanding of the various and subtle dimensions of the relationship between children, food and identity"--Provided by publisher