Family Mealtime as a Context of Development and Socialization. Larson, Reed W., Angela R. Wiley, and Kathryn R. Branscomb, eds. New Directions for Child Development, Number 111. San Francisco, CA: Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 2006. 110pp.
Reviewed by: Heather Rae-Espinoza, Ph.D. Adjunct Faculty, California State University, Long Beach
The descriptions of mealtime interactions in Family Mealtime as a Context of Development and Socialization may send you to search for a crockpot or additional silverware. The familiar topic, however, expands beyond a portrayal of rote behavioral scripts to show the misperceptions, variations, and continuities in mealtime practices that lead to different academic, emotional, and nutritional outcomes. The contribution of this edited volume lies in the exemplar it offers of multiple theoretical and methodological frameworks used to research a customary experience. It compiles work on mealtimes from history, cultural anthropology, psycholinguistics, psychology, and nutrition to demonstrate the diverse forms and functions of mealtimes. Mealtimes provide parents teaching opportunities and offer children experience in appropriate behavior.
For example, from a historical perspective, Cinotto delves deeper than the dominant culture to review distinctions between groups’ mealtime practices. Cinotto separates the content of the meal for immigrant families, which was often a sign of ethnic identity, from the context of the meal, which represented Americanization. Mealtimes evolved to meet different cultural and economic circumstances through sociocultural change. Contrary to existing assumptions and media representations, mealtimes have changed in practice, such as the inclusion of fast food and television, rather than in frequency.
Furthering the description of mealtime variability, Ochs and Shohet connect mealtime interactions to predominant concerns of socialization such as linking generations, demonstrating hierarchy, and teaching appropriate communication. They espouse a view of enculturation that grants children agency in the negotiation of cultural knowledge. Through ethnographic review, the authors focus on variation in the distribution of food, the valuation placed on food, and the emotions regarding food.
Snow and Beals expand on mealtimes as occasions for modeling appropriate communication. Reminiscent of Heath’s Ways with Words, Snow and Beals explain how conversational experience in family time involving narrative and explanatory talk contributes to children’s success in school through the introduction of new vocabulary and rules for talk. In fact, they claim that mealtime “was a more richly supportive context” than other conversational interactions between parents and children.
Fiese, Foley, and Spagnola counter ideals of mealtimes as emblematic of family unity and communication. Depending on the actual experience, mealtimes can be events of discord and model negative behaviors. Through habitual and affective interactions in mealtimes, children can find validation or alienation. The authors discuss the benefits of mealtime communication, commitment, and continuity for well-being and identity.
Connecting to claims from previous chapters, Neumark-Sztainer argues that teens from families where meals are given priority in an enjoyable atmosphere and structure are less likely to engage in disordered eating behaviors. While this chapter is clearly connected to socialization issues that would be influenced by mealtimes, the other chapters do beg the reader to question why a focus on mealtimes.
Representation of parents’ decisions at mealtimes seems to prioritize this context over other instances of parental expectations and practices. While mealtimes proved an excellent medium for demonstrating a focused set of parental practices, I was left wondering about it as an analytic unit in and of itself. Why is mealtime a more supportive context for demonstrating roles, defining rare words, and expressing emotional support? Perhaps it is the investment of symbolism in the event or a logistical gathering of group members in physical space. What is unique and imperative for providing these interactions and what is mere confluence? What about bath-time, bedtime stories, commercial breaks, and carpools or common interactions in other cultural contexts? The work could also benefit from a clear definition of what constitutes family mealtimes. In de-constructing the naturalized aura of the family mealtime, the authors have left themselves without a defining framework.
In addressing the family as a unit at mealtimes, each chapter claims to theorize socialization as a dynamic process. The editors write, “Children are not solely imitators of cultural practices and meanings; they may resist and transform them, as well as introduce new practices and meanings to other family members” (p. 8). However, for the most part, children are treated as receptacles of cultural values through parents’ structuring of mealtime practices and expectations. There are some exceptions, such as Cinotto’s discussion of immigrant children expressing their distaste for the food habits of their parents (p. 25) or Ochs and Shohet’s description of how Lucy learns she can depend on her family (p. 43). However, the “collaborative construction of social order,” “co-constructed” talk, rituals and routines of mealtimes, and family meal structure focus in this book on parental behaviors and expectations of coercion and control. The individual addressed in these socio-cultural contexts is the parent. We are left to wonder about both the motivation of the children’s responses to the parents’ behaviors in most cases (Why do some children join the clean plate club while others whine and protest?) and also how the parents respond to children’s behaviors in light of their own expectations (How do parents’ permissive lapses fit into wider parental ethnotheories?). Such a dynamic picture of mealtime interactions would be difficult to accomplish through some of the methodological and theoretical frameworks in the volume, but we should remember that children are passing rolls and negotiating dessert at the dinner table as well as receiving social direction. We should not treat participants in the mealtime as static, even though the event provides an excellent foil for understanding the dynamic and multifaceted aspects of parents’ decisions at mealtimes.
Overall, this work provides a format for integrating psychological and anthropological perspectives. Fiese, Foley, and Spagnola address common concerns in this integration clearly: mealtimes elucidate developmental transitions, the creation of and subscription to routines and rituals, and the change in the meaning of (family) ideology over time. The questioning of assumptions, applied recommendations, and descriptions of practice throughout the work can provide a context for classroom discussion on questions regarding the defining elements of mealtimes and the role of children. In spurring and categorizing students’ reminiscences of an Italian grandfather’s comments on peppers or of a previous love for plates with divided sections, students are given the tools to address the various actors in dinner theatre through an organized and multifaceted analytical framework.
References Cited:
Heath, Shirley Brice
1983 Ways with Words: Language Life and Work in Communities and
Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
