If it takes a village to raise a child, it equally requires one to nourish a child. Although parents and caregivers play the most direct roles, children’s food and health outcomes are influenced by policymakers, schools, social services, and larger community systems. While academic studies have advanced policies and interventions for pediatric nutrition, many still frame issues as the ‘parent problem’ and therefore neglect the social and political contexts of family food practices.
A recent article by nutrition and food researchers suggests that medical studies regarding children’s food consumption often rely on outdated assumptions. Following a literature review across major databases, the researchers proposed a new construct called “food care,” defined as concern for or action toward ensuring adequate food for oneself or others. The researchers noted that while existing studies frequently examine children’s food consumption, parental feeding practices, and risk factors for poor diet, few of them considered structural factors such as affordability, food access, food environments, interconnected systems, and the emotional and cognitive labor parents expend to feed their children.
Among the 20 studies analyzed, three-quarters suggested parental behaviors in some way contributed to children’s nutrition-related problems, including disordered eating, pediatric obesity, or issues related to mental health. Research most often focused on four areas: how caregivers feed children, parental attitudes toward children’s weight, strategies to encourage healthy eating, and family mealtime interactions. In cases of minimal evidence regarding parental impact, the conclusions often circled back to what parents, in most cases, mothers, should be doing. Very few researchers acknowledged the positive aspects of “food care,” including the ability to bond through caring for children through food, the trust created in allowing children to eat food, preserving family food traditions, and experiencing psychological benefits from shared meals.
Many of these assumptions stem from the cultural ideology of “intensive parenting,” especially “intensive mothering,” as described by sociologist Sharon Hayes. The ideal of intensive mothering is child-centred, labor-intensive, and guided by experts. Though these assumptions are rarely acknowledged, they underlie many recommendations for how parents should invest their time, energy, and money in their children’s diets. This adds to the already heavy burden of responsibility placed on mothers for children’s health, while placing little emphasis on structural determinants.
This trend of parental blame recalls critiques in psychology nearly 40 years ago, when Paula Caplan noted the history of blaming mothers for children’s problems. The current analysis claims nutrition research may be repeating this, dismissing the invisible but actual work of parents to which researchers seem unaware, as well as the constraints families have, like limited time, unconducive surroundings, lack of financial resources, or competing demands.
Parents clearly shape children’s eating habits. But their parental influence occurs in a dynamic web of social, political, and economic forces. The recommendations from reviewed studies generally encouraged clinicians to provide parents with additional feeding advice. But only a few studies recognized the structural supports that may be useful, such as affordable childcare, availability of school meal programs, access to safe food storage, the food environment in their neighbourhood, or policies that provide equitable access to healthy food. For many families, feeding decisions are less about ignoring the advice but more about dealing with concrete constraints.
The researchers call for a critical rethinking of assumptions about parenting and nutrition that moves beyond parental behaviour, to consider the sociopolitical contexts of food care. They argue for recognition of the everyday and emotional labour of feeding families and suggest that we need to renew research that takes this work seriously. Ultimately, children’s health should be understood as a collective community responsibility, not merely the burden of individual parents.
References: Black J, Middleton G. Glass half empty? Nutrition studies shouldn’t just focus on what parents do wrong. The Conversation. Published August 20, 2025. Accessed August 21, 2025. Glass half empty? Nutrition studies shouldn’t just focus on what parents do wrong.
