Children

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Childrens Food? Reflections on Politics,
Policy and Practices

• Prof. Allison James
• University of Sheffield.

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Aims

• To explore childrens food as a cultural
  construct that marks adult - child differences
• To examine implications for theorising
  generational relations in late modernity
• To situate the concept of childrens food in
  wider policital/policy discourses

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Generational relations

• Alanen (2001)
• the two generational categories of children and
  adults are recurrently produced through
  relations of connection, and interaction, of
  interdependence ( 2001 21).
• Differential exercise of power
• Generational relations are part of the
  biographies of families

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Childrens food in England

• Growing separation adults and children reflected
  in different foods
• nursery food
• Mennell (1985)
• a matter of making them eat what was good for
  them, whether they liked it or not. At worst,
  making them eat food to which they actually felt
  an aversion was seen as a necessary part of
  breaking the childs peevish will (1985296).

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Victorian childrens diets -class analysis

• ..the consequences for children of eating
  complex and too solid forms of food were the
  sick headaches and bilious attacks which pursue
  their victim through half a lifetime, to be
  exchanged for gout or worse (Thompson cited in
  Mennell 1985297).
• the best way in which to give meat to girls is
  in the form of pain roast or boiled joints.
  Elabourate entrees, rich and stimulating sauces,
  and the like, may be left to temp the jaded
  palates if their elders. Digestive troubles may
  ensure when over-rich food is given ( cited in
  Mennel 1985 297)

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Food and English childhood?

• Children different from adults - food
  prohibitions prescriptions
• Health focus on children as becomings
• Later trickle down effects - school meal system
  1930s
• Children as the nations future
• through their everyday involvement in childrens
  lives, welfare bureaucracies of national and
  local government, and of philanthropy, imposed
  what, to all intent and purposes, were certain
  class dominated and expert formulated concepts
  of childhood on the general population (
  Hendrick 1997 50)

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English Childrens food - 21st century?

• Index of generational relations in England
• Family pubs c.f. adult restaurants
• Different, specialised menu for children
• Fast food, highly processed

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Impact of food technology

• Development of industrial food enables new foods
  and new prescriptions/ prohibitions
• highly processed
• marketed packaged
• Fast food/junk food
• New index of adult-child relations
• New index of social class relations

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Food as universal index of generation?

• France other European societies little in
  evidence
• Generation indexed in other ways
• CF
• Hunter-gather societies
• Childrens food is wild food
• children, who have to perform tasks outside the
  home and the village and must cater for
  themselves, have a broad knowledge of the
  potential foods and how to prepare them (de
  Garine 1993165)
• Prohibited for adults
• shameful, a backward symbol of poverty and
  unbecoming to an individual attending school, an
  urbanite or the members of Christian and Muslim
  high religions (de Garine 1993165).

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Sweets as childrens food (James 1979)

• Kets - rubbish, rotten carcasse
• Kets- cheap sweets
• Kets as inedible
• Kets eaten in-between meals
• Kets food controlled by children, not eaten by
  adults

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English Childrens food - 21st century?

• Moral panic
• Recent policy initiatives - childhood obesity
• 5 a day
• School dinner reforms
• Advertising bans/ restrictions
• Surveillance control

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Prohibitions..

• 'things like Sunny D and all those things that
  are advertised, is aimed at them, that is not
  particularly good for them really. Cheese
  strings and those things that they think are
  marvellous and really they're not. They'll have
  seen an advert on TV and thought that it looked
  good and can we give it a try. And, you know,
  sometimes I would try it but very often not
  really.'

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Prohibitions.

• She never bought me Dairylea dunkers. Ive asked
  her and asked her when I was a kid and all she
  said was no
• Id always prefer like a chocolate biscuit but I
  will not be allowed. Or coke and crisps.
• I asked for chocolate spread and she didnt get
  it.

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Junk food childrens food

• Junk food is not proper food
• Dairylea Dunkers, cheese strings. Theyre always
  asking for those. I never every buy them. I
  dont know why they bother asking really.
• Junk food as new social problem
• Childrens childhoods as new social problem
• Parenting under surveillance

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Food, power generational relations

• Because when I go to the shop I always like take
  stuff. Take it all put it in the trolley she
  picks it out pulls it out of the trolley. Its
  quite a nightmare to go with her... what sort of
  things do you like to put in the trolley?
  Biscuits, junk foods She just puts healthy food
  back in. Its like get the healthy food out and
  the junk food in.
• 'I'm not allowed to buy what I really -- I'm not
  allowed to buy loads of junk food, my dad doesn't
  let me, like loads of chocolate, I'm not allowed
  to buy chocolate, loads -- and sweets. Like
  maybe one, like, you know, packet

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Childrens food junk food

• If my friends come we have a lot more junk food.
  My Mum makes like chips and burgers and Im not
  really into that. But most of my friends, a lot
  of my friends are. When Paul comes..For lunch he
  has a ham sandwich just plain with no butter
  'cause he dunt like butter. And then for dinner
  he has chicken nuggets and chips every day.
  ...My Mum usually makes some chips and burger
  and things but he doesnt like normal burgers.
  He has to get these special prime beef ones or
  someat.

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Family childhoods junk food

• you get a bit slack, dont you, and start doing
  things to cut corners and treats to keep em
  quiet and so the rest of them have had more junk
  than the oldest I suppose.

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Different families, different childhoods

• 'his mum would give it to 'em and say okay, you
  can have that'.... 'His brother wanted pasta and
  he wanted pizza and I went with whatever she was
  making'.
• 'it's really weird cause he has power over
  everything in his, at home. If his mum will go,
  his mums like so giving in to everything, his
  mum will go "Oh, shall we have like chocolate ice
  cream for dessert". He'll say, Lennyll say,
  "No, I really want the caramel thing" . His
  mumll go "Oh, you can have caramel, you can have
  chocolate" and it's really like kind of
  cushioning .in like foam'.

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Different families, different childhoods

• 'I tend to do more children friendly food when
  somebody's coming over. But the rest of the time
  we tend to eat more sort of adult type meals but
  if there's a friend coming over then I will try
  and make it a bit more child friendly..kind of
  like sausages and, you know, maybe pizza or
  something
• 'most of the time he would pick the sort of
  healthy option but given the choice, every now
  and then, I think he'd have the junkie option
• one of the reasons why I would rather that he had
  packed lunch really. Cause I think given a free
  choice he might just choose the not so healthier
  options'

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Surveillance control

• Maintaining adult-child distinctions
• when my mum and dad do shopping and they come
  back and they say Those are mine. I bought them
  for me. Then I wouldnt touch them. Id ask
  before if I wanted to have one (girl)
• We do have this top cupboard which has got like
  nice sweet things in. Maybe some crisps and
  chocolate but they may be for special occasions.
  But like its not only for the grown ups, but
  only the grown ups can go and eat. Like get,
  bring it down, or wed have to ask permission.
  (girl)

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Circumventing control.

• And she doesnt get us the nice biscuits. She
  gets the mud biscuits as we call them - the
  biscuits that dont taste very nice, so we dont
  eat them (boy)
• my favourite chocolates Bournville and shed
  got a big bar of it in the fridge which is really
  annoying so every now and then I can, like, Ill
  say Ive just had a piece of fruit or yoghurt,
  please can I have a bit of chocolate.

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Child(ish) families? Junk families?

• We like pizza, I mean, we like what you call junk
  foods, we like burgers , we like hot dogs, we
  like pizzas.

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Other families improper foodimproper families
-Sheilas story

• we were sat next to a table of two adults and
  three children who lets say were not smallthey
  werent obese but they werent small .
• me and Tim enjoyed the salad just as much as the
  pizza. We only had two pieces of pizza each and
  filled the plate up 'cause theres loads of
  different really nice looking fresh salads.
• all five of em did it and they went up again and
  filled their plates up 'cause their dad had told
  em it was a buffet Yeah, he says, Ive paid a
  lot for this. So get up there and..

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My family proper family proper food Sheilas
story contd.

• I know for a fact that they would, mine would
  have chosen the salad they wouldnt just, I
  couldnt think of anything more disgusting than
  sitting having to eat plate fulls of pizza. But
  that was obviously a message from their parents.
• I know if they go out tomorrow for their dinner
  I know if there was a choice between Burger
  King, McDonalds or a subway theyll go to the
  subway sandwich shop. I know they would. They,
  they dont, it would be torture for them to go
  and eat McDonalds and things like that.

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Proper families display families properly -
Shelias story concludes

• 'at the end of the day you're in control, you are
  the parent, you've got the purse. You make the
  decisions and if kids pester you for a chocolate
  bar, just say no. The three and four-year-olds
  are getting their own way about what they want to
  eat and you're letting them down by letting them.
  Just say no and tell them why. And if they
  pester that much say, "Well, no you can't have a
  chocolate bar but go and choose a piece of fruit
  that you'd like." There's always a way round it
  but I think some of them are so hassled they just
  give in for quietness and they're not doing them
  any favours at all. And it's a load of crap that
  the kids get what they want to eat cause they've
  pestered for it.'

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Conclusion

• Junk food- junk childhood.a cultural paradox?
• Technological changes map out child-adult
  distinctions via developments in childrens
  food
• Childrens food symbolic of childrens
  separateness
• Childhood obesity an unintended consequence of of
  such conceptual distinctions?