Seeing Food Through Young Children’s Eyes
Children’s Representations of Parental Feeding Strategies and Food Choice Reasoning
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15714693 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Irith Freedman (0000-0003-1134-9147, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, corresponding author), Anat Gesser‐Edelsburg (0000-0003-4467-8799, University of Haifa), Billie Eilam (0000-0002-7021-6363, University of Haifa) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 347-347 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Children (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-9067 • E-ISSN: 2227-9067 |
| Publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (PUBLISHER • CH) |
| DOI | 10.3390/children13030347 |
| PMID | 41897060 |
| OpenAlex | W7131860919 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 76 |
Background/Objectives : Research on children's eating has primarily focused on parental feeding practices and dietary outcomes, with less attention to how young children themselves understand parental food-related messages and relate them to their own food choices. Recognizing children as active participants in food socialization, this study aimed to examine preschool children's representations of parental feeding strategies alongside their expressed food-choice considerations. Methods : A qualitative, exploratory, multi-method design was employed within a constructivist framework. Forty kindergarten children aged 4 years 10 months to 5 years 8 months participated in individual, play-based sessions conducted in familiar educational settings. Data were generated using two complementary tools: a doll role-play task eliciting children's representations of parental feeding strategies and a simulated grocery shopping task eliciting food-choice considerations. All sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results : During role-play, children frequently portrayed parents as emphasizing health-related arguments, control, and negotiation when guiding food intake. Less frequently, they represented strategies such as encouragement to try, deception, or references to body weight. In contrast, during the food-choice task, children's selections were primarily guided by personal preference, with health considerations mentioned less often. For most participants, the feeding strategies attributed to parents did not closely align with the considerations guiding their own food choices. Conclusions : The findings highlight young children's active and selective engagement with parental feeding discourse and underscore the contextual nature of food-related meaning-making in early childhood. Rather than reflecting a straightforward transmission of parental messages, children's food choices appear shaped by situational affordances and perceived autonomy, supporting child-centered approaches to nutrition education and health promotion
Affordance · Food choice · Negotiation · Reflexivity · Situational ethics · Task (project management · Thematic analysis · Breastfeeding Practices and Influences · Child Nutrition and Feeding Issues · Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
Research Methods in Education
How do parents' child-feeding behaviours influence child weight? Implications for childhood obesity policy
Children's eating attitudes and behaviour
Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity
Long-term impact of overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence on morbidity and premature mortality in adulthood
Gender differences in food choice
Parental control over feeding and children’s fruit and vegetable intake
Ecological Systems Theory
Understanding the food choice process of adolescents in the context of family and friends
Ontogeny of taste preferences
‘I want food to be tasty and healthy’
Mutual Apprentices
A practical guide to reflexivity in qualitative research
Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis
Food Parenting Practices Promoted by Childcare and Primary Healthcare Centers in Chile
A qualitative study of providers’ perceptions of parental feeding practices of infants and toddlers to prevent childhood obesity
Active involvement of children aged 11–12 years in the development of a healthy nutrition intervention – a qualitative evaluation from researchers’ and children’s perspectives
Understanding children’s perspectives of the influences on their dietary behaviours
How to do things with food
Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research
Parenting styles, feeding styles, and their influence on child obesogenic behaviors and body weight. A review
Children's knowledge of eating
Children’s views of obesity, body size and weight
Beyond Healthy Eating
The effect of a memory-game with images of vegetables on children's vegetable intake
A comparison of parental views of their pre-school children’s ‘healthy’ versus ‘unhealthy’ diets. A qualitative study
Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Child Feeding Questionnaire in Australian preschool children
Development of a Measure of the Motives Underlying the Selection of Food
Confirmatory factor analysis of the Child Feeding Questionnaire
You must eat the salad because it is nutritious”. Argumentative strategies adopted by parents and children in food-related discussions at mealtimes
Associations of preschoolers’ dietary patterns with eating behaviors and parental feeding practices at a 12-month follow-up of obesity treatment
The role of family communication and parents' feeding practices in children's food preferences
Negative eating attitudes and behaviors among adolescents
Strategies used by parents to influence their children's food preferences
How do children make food choices? Using a think-aloud method to explore the role of internal and external factors on eating behaviour
Children's descriptions of their involvement within everyday food practices
Revisiting a neglected construct
Cultural specificity in food choice – The case of ethnography in Japan
A qualitative exploration into momentary impacts on food parenting practices among parents of pre-school aged children
Parental intentions to implement vegetable feeding strategies at home
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Positioning Positionality and Reflecting on Reflexivity
Children's food, power and control
Buying Food for the Family
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |