Food
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0081
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0081
Introduction
The area of “children and food” contains work from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, dietetics, and policy studies. This reflects the multidisciplinary interest in the topic. Globally, there are concerns about the diet of children in terms of food insecurity and obesity, for example; indeed, issues relating to food rarely appear to be out of the news. Babies and very young children are generally regarded as requiring a different nutritional intake when compared to adults and older children, and “childhood” is often constructed as an optimum time in which children learn to adopt “healthy” eating behaviors as well as culturally accepted modes of behavior associated with food and eating. Schools and early childhood settings are often viewed as playing a crucial role in inculcating healthy eating habits and ensuring children receive a healthy meal, but clearly the home is the prime site in which children eat meals and snacks and receive information about food and food provisioning. From birth (and even pre-conception), parents—especially mothers—receive messages about the kinds of foods they should eat (during pregnancy) and the kinds of foods they should feed their growing infant: the promotion of breastfeeding being a clear example of this. Furthermore, food is an area in which ideas about the “family” are played out, not least through notions of the “family meal.” Food plays a vital role in people’s sense of identity, not least in eating or not eating certain foods. Thus, food has meaning for all human beings beyond nutrition. Increasingly, writers in the area of children and food are acknowledging and foregrounding work in relation to children’s agency in food provisioning, which reflects a trend more generally in early childhood and childhood studies toward seeing children as active participants in their own lives. Therefore, a consideration of food through the lens of “children” and “childhood” is important. The children and food area of Oxford Bibliographies Online will concentrate primarily on work within a sociological frame of reference as opposed to the vast array of nutrition related, biomedical studies. Some of this work will be referred to, but researchers and students wishing to have a comprehensive overview of nutrition-based studies should explore the children and nutrition area, too.
General Overviews
In this section, an overview of the subject is provided in a range of materials. A number of useful anthologies are available within the topic area of food and these will also be reviewed as to their usefulness for researchers and students wishing to examine children and food as their focus. Albon and Mukherji 2008 is useful for those with an interest in early childhood and is particularly suitable at the undergraduate level. Two recent anthologies, James, et al. 2009 and Jackson 2009 are especially good but there is also useful material in other anthologies without an explicit focus on children and food, e.g., Counihan and van Esterik 1997; Fürst, et al. 1991; Korsmeyer 2005; and Germov and Williams 2004. Murcott 1998 reports on food choices in the 1990s in the United Kingdom and includes material concerning the diet of children.
Albon, Deborah, and Penny Mukherji. Food and Health in Early Childhood. London: SAGE, 2008.
This book is written primarily for students studying early childhood in undergraduate courses but is also of use to researchers in this field. Alongside chapters on nutrition, there are chapters on culture and identity, policy; and food and emotion. The book provides a comprehensive overview for someone new to the topic. “Early childhood” is taken to mean infants/children from birth to eight years.
Counihan, Carole, and Penny van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. London: Routledge, 1997.
This collection contains a wide range of articles from a range of disciplines—many of which are widely regarded as “classic” studies and some of which are reproduced from other volumes/journals, e.g., the work of Anna Freud and Mary Douglas. As these two examples demonstrate, there are chapters that explore the topic of food from a range of perspectives, some of which relate to children directly, e.g., Freud’s chapter.
Fürst, Elizabeth L., Ritva Prättälä, Marianne Ekström, Lotte Holm, Unni Kjaernes, and Solum Forlag, eds. Palatable Worlds. Oslo, Norway: Solum, 1991.
A collection of papers which examine food and eating from a range of perspectives, e.g., modern “tastescapes” (Falk) and class and gender in the kitchen (Ekström), although they do so without an explicit focus on children and food.
Germov, John, and Lauren Williams, eds. A Sociology of Food & Nutrition: The Social Appetite. 2d ed. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 2004.
A useful edited book containing articles on food and public health, food consumption and identity, and food and the body. Again, the focus is not on children and food per se but chapters such as Murphy’s (infant feeding) and Coveney’s (family food habits) are highly relevant.
Jackson, Peter, ed. Changing Families, Changing Food. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
This edited collection looks at the relationship between families and food as the family is considered to be an important context in which decisions about our everyday lives, including decisions about what to eat, are shaped. Like the edited collection James, et al. 2009, it is written in a scholarly yet accessible style, and so undergraduates and graduates alike will find it to be useful.
James, Allison, Anne Trine Kjørholt, and Vebjørg Tingstad. Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
This edited collection of scholarly yet accessible chapters is of direct relevance to researchers and students looking at children and food. Different contexts for food consumption are focused upon, e.g., home and school in each chapter, and there is an emphasis on children as active participants in their own lives and the complex ways in which their identities are mediated through food.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn, ed. The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Oxford: Berg, 2005.
This anthology, while not focusing on children and food per se, examines the sensuous dimensions of eating and drinking and draws on historical, anthropological, and sociological works on the topic. Many key writers on the subject are included, such as Bourdieu and Goody. Thus, it may prove useful for the reader in gaining a sense of different perspectives in the field.
Murcott, Anne, ed. The Nation’s Diet: The Social Science of Food Choice. London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.
This book focuses on food choice—why we eat what we eat—in the United Kingdom and reports on the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) research program “The Nation’s Diet” (1992–1998), which was a multidisciplinary set of linked research studies. Some chapters deal specifically with children and food, e.g., chapters 4, 13, and 15.
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Article
- Abduction of Children
- Aboriginal Childhoods
- Addams, Jane
- ADHD, Sociological Perspectives on
- Adolescence and Youth
- Adolescent Consent to Medical Treatment
- Adoption and Fostering
- Adoption and Fostering, History of Cross-Country
- Adoption and Fostering in Canada, History of
- Advertising and Marketing, Psychological Approaches to
- Advertising and Marketing, Sociocultural Approaches to
- Africa, Children and Young People in
- African American Children and Childhood
- After-school Hours and Activities
- Aggression across the Lifespan
- Ancient Near and Middle East, Child Sacrifice in the
- Animals, Children and
- Animations, Comic Books, and Manga
- Anthropology of Childhood
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Ariès, Philippe
- Art History, Children in
- Attachment in Children and Adolescents
- Australia, History of Adoption and Fostering in
- Australian Indigenous Contexts and Childhood Experiences
- Autism, Females and
- Autism, Medical Model Perspectives on
- Autobiography and Childhood
- Benjamin, Walter
- Bereavement
- Best Interest of the Child
- Bioarchaeology of Childhood
- Body, Children and the
- Body Image
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Boy Scouts/Girl Guides
- Boys and Fatherhood
- Breastfeeding
- Bronfenbrenner, Urie
- Bruner, Jerome
- Buddhist Views of Childhood
- Byzantine Childhoods
- Child and Adolescent Anger
- Child Beauty Pageants
- Child Homelessness
- Child Mortality, Historical Perspectives on Infant and
- Child Protection
- Child Protection, Children, Neoliberalism, and
- Child Public Health
- Child Trafficking and Slavery
- Childcare Manuals
- Childhod, Agency and
- Childhood and Borders
- Childhood and Empire
- Childhood as Discourse
- Childhood, Confucian Views of Children and
- Childhood, Memory and
- Childhood Publics
- Childhood Studies and Leisure Studies
- Childhood Studies in France
- Childhood Studies, Interdisciplinarity in
- Childhood Studies, Posthumanism and
- Childhoods in the United States, Sports and
- Childism
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- Children and Film-Making
- Children and Money
- Children and Social Media
- Children and Sport
- Children and Sustainable Cities
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- Children as Perpetrators of Crime
- Children, Code-switching and
- Children in the Industrial Revolution
- Children with Autism in a Brazilian Context
- Children, Young People, and Architecture
- Children's Humor
- Children’s Museums
- Children’s Parliaments
- Children’s Reading Development and Instruction
- Children's Views of Childhood
- China, Japan, and Korea
- China's One Child Policy
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights Movement and Desegregation
- Class
- Classical World, Children in the
- Clothes and Costume, Children’s
- Collective Memory in Latin America, Childhoods and Collect...
- Colonial America, Child Witches in
- Colonialism and Human Rights
- Colonization and Nationalism
- Color Symbolism and Child Development
- Common World Childhoods
- Competitiveness, Children and
- Conceptual Development in Early Childhood
- Congenital Disabilities
- Constructivist Approaches to Childhood
- Consumer Culture, Children and
- Consumption, Child and Teen
- Conversation Analysis and Research with Children
- Critical Approaches to Children’s Work and the Concept of ...
- Crying
- Cultural psychology and human development
- Debt and Financialization of Childhood
- Disability
- Discipline and Punishment
- Discrimination
- Disney, Walt
- Divorce And Custody
- Dolls
- Domestic Violence
- Drawings, Children’s
- Early Childhood
- Early Childhood Care and Education, Selected History of
- Eating disorders and obesity
- Education: Learning and Schooling Worldwide
- Environment, Children and the
- Environmental Education and Children
- Ethics in Research with Children
- Eugenics
- Europe (including Greece and Rome), Child Sacrifice in
- Evolutionary Studies of Childhood
- Family Meals
- Fandom (Fan Studies)
- Fathers
- Female Genital Cutting
- Feminist New Materialist Approaches to Childhood Studies
- Feral and "Wild" Children
- Fetuses and Embryos
- Filicide
- Films about Children
- Films for Children
- Folk Tales, Fairy Tales and
- Folklore
- Food
- Foundlings and Abandoned Children
- Freud, Anna
- Freud, Sigmund
- Friends and Peers: Psychological Perspectives
- Froebel, Friedrich
- Gangs
- Gay and Lesbian Parents
- Gender and Childhood
- Generations, The Concept of
- Geographies, Children's
- Gifted and Talented Children
- Globalization
- Growing Up in the Digital Era
- Hall, G. Stanley
- Happiness in Children
- Hindu Views of Childhood and Child Rearing
- Hispanic Childhoods (U.S.)
- Historical Approaches to Child Witches
- History of Childhood in America
- History of Childhood in Canada
- HIV/AIDS, Growing Up with
- Homeschooling
- Humor and Laughter
- Images of Childhood, Adulthood, and Old Age in Children’s ...
- Infancy and Ethnography
- Infant Mortality in a Global Context
- Innocence and Childhood
- Institutional Care
- Intercultural Learning and Teaching with Children
- Islamic Views of Childhood
- Japan, Childhood in
- Juvenile Detention in the US
- Key, Ellen
- Klein, Melanie
- Labor, Child
- Latin America
- Learning, Language
- Learning to Write
- Legends, Contemporary
- Literary Representations of Childhood
- Literature, Children's
- Love and Care in the Early Years
- Magazines for Teenagers
- Maltreatment, Child
- Maria Montessori
- Marxism and Childhood
- Masculinities/Boyhood
- Material Cultures of Western Childhoods
- Mead, Margaret
- Media, Children in the
- Media Culture, Children's
- Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Childhoods
- Menstruation
- Middle Childhood
- Middle East
- Migration
- Miscarriage
- Missionaries/Evangelism
- Moral Development
- Moral Panics
- Mothers
- Multi-culturalism and Education
- Music and Babies
- Nation and Childhood
- Native American and Aboriginal Canadian Childhood
- New Reproductive Technologies and Assisted Conception
- Nursery Rhymes
- Organizations, Nongovernmental
- Orphans
- Parental Gender Preferences, The Social Construction of
- Parenting
- Pediatrics, History of
- Peer Culture
- Perspectives on Boys' Circumcision
- Peter Pan
- Philosophy and Childhood
- Piaget, Jean
- Play
- Politics, Children and
- Postcolonial Childhoods
- Post-Modernism
- Poverty, Rights, and Well-being, Child
- Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods
- Premodern China, Conceptions of Childhood in
- Prostitution and Pornography, Child
- Psychoanalysis
- Queer Theory and Childhood
- Race and Ethnicity
- Racism, Children and
- Radio, Children, and Young People
- Readers, Children as
- Refugee and Displaced Children
- Reimagining Early Childhood Education, Reconceptualizing a...
- Relational Ontologies
- Relational Pedagogies
- Rights, Children’s
- Risk and Resilience
- Russia
- School Shootings
- Sex Education in the United States
- Sexuality
- Siblings
- Siblings, Learning Disabilities and
- Social and Cultural Capital of Childhood
- Social Habitus in Childhood
- Social Movements, Children's
- Social Policy, Children and
- Socialization and Child Rearing
- Socio-cultural Perspectives on Children's Spirituality
- Sociology of Childhood
- South African Birth to Twenty Project
- South Asia
- South Asia, History of Childhood in
- Special Education
- Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence
- Spock, Benjamin
- Sports and Organized Games
- Street Children
- Street Children And Brazil
- Subcultures
- Sure Start
- Teenage Fathers
- Teenage Pregnancy
- Television
- The Bible and Children
- The Harms and Prevention of Drugs and Alcohol on Children
- The Spaces of Childhood
- Theater for Children and Young People
- Theories, Pedagogic
- Tourism
- Toys
- Transgender Children
- Tweens
- Twins and Multiple Births
- Unaccompanied Migrant Children
- United Kingdom, History of Adoption and Fostering in the
- United States, Schooling in the
- Value of Children
- Views of Childhood, Jewish and Christian
- Violence, Children and
- Visual Representations of Childhood
- Voice, Participation, and Agency
- Vygotsky, Lev and His Cultural-historical Approach to Deve...
- War
- Welfare Law in the United States, Child
- Well-Being, Child
- Western Europe and Scandinavia
- Western Literature, The Urban Child in
- Witchcraft in the Contemporary World, Children and
- Work and Apprenticeship, Children's
- Young Carers
- Young Children and Inclusion
- Young Children’s Imagination
- Young Lives
- Young People, Alcohol, and Urban Life
- Young People and Climate Activism
- Young People and Disadvantaged Environments in Affluent Co...