Exploring fathers’ food parenting, feeding roles and experiences in tough times
There is limited research focusing on the roles of fathers in mealtime and child feeding. Families who struggle financially or worry about putting food on the table might change what and how they feed their kids. This might affect children’s health and nutrition.
The Challenge
The first 2000 days from a child’s conception have been identified as a critical window of opportunity to support child growth and development. Parental feeding practices play a crucial role in shaping children’s eating behaviours, nutritional intake, and growth. Responsive feeding involves reciprocal attentive feeding practices between the caregiver and the child that recognises and responds to children’s hunger and satiety cues.
Fathers play an important role in the lives of their children. Yet research into the food parenting to date has largely focused on mothers, little is known about fathers’ perspectives in feeding particularly when families are doing a bit tough in Australia. Two circumstances may have particular significance for families living with disadvantage – food insecurity and household chaos.
Food insecurity is defined as the limited financial, physical, and social access to food of sufficient quality and quantity for a healthy and active life. Household chaos is characterised by disorganisation and instability in the family environment. These factors may influence fathers’ feeding practices and their roles in feeding, which may ultimately affect the health and nutrition of their children.
Our Approach
Co-designing strategies and resources
We are collaborating with Australian fathers and male caregivers of children aged 6 months to 5 years to gain insights into fathers’ food parenting, feeding roles and experiences in tough times. By understanding their roles and experiences in feeding, we aim to co-design strategies and resources to support fathers. Ultimately, this research will enable children to achieve optimal growth and nutritional status.
The research is conducted in 3 phases
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An online survey distributed to fathers to collect information about the family household food and money situation, and fathers’ feeding practices. |
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Interview conducted to explore fathers’ roles, facilitators and barriers in child feeding and at mealtimes. |
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Workshops with fathers to co-design engagement strategies to support fathers’ participation in child feeding studies. |
Progress
Fathers face unique challenges
So far, our research has provided insight into fathers’ feeding experiences by highlighting the key barriers faced by Australian fathers and what enables them. From our interviews we have gained some key insights.
The division of feeding-roles in the household is influenced by family capability and employment, maternal gatekeeping, paternal attitudes and values, and intergenerational, cultural and gender norms around earning and child rearing.
Economic, environmental, and emotional stressors triggered changes to fathers’ feeding practices, which often contradicts their ideals (e.g., providing alternative meals, use of rewards and electronic devices, unstructured setting).
Fathers also described using income and food-based strategies to protect children’s food intake, which might be at the expense of the caregiver.
Where to from here?
These insights have highlighted that promoting optimal feeding practices should include targeted feeding support and broader structural interventions to address inequality. The next steps will involve conducting co-design workshops with fathers to develop engagement strategies.
Contact Us
If you are interested in hearing more about the project, or would like to be involved, we would love to hear from you:
Phone: 07 3069 7308
Email: jeffrey.so@hdr.qut.edu.au
