Adequate Food, Adequate Parenting? Critical Insights on Family Law (and Justice) and Parenthood Through Food

Patrícia Branco

doi:10.5204/lthj.v2i1.1477

Abstract

The links between food, families and the law seem to be particularly strong in what concerns dietary issues, parental food choices and the best interests of the child. In such a framework, I will examine some recent decisions that have been pronounced by Italian courts having to decide disputes involving such questions in relation to alternative food choices. My claim, drawing on Canguilhem, is that some of these decisions seem to point towards an imposition to normalise food practices and familial behaviours: children and parents are to be educated towards food practices that are seen as in accord with social normativity (normal) and avoid those considered as deviant (pathological).

Highlights

Law is transmitted from generation to generation through representations of precedent, ruling and authority.[1]
Food is more than just food: production, supply and cooking of food are rooted in sociocultural narratives with reference to politics, the law and social practices and norms.[4]
Italian anthropologist Marino Niola,[19] for example, perceives the Sunday brunch as the new communal ritual that brings individuals together in a globalised and multicultural milieu. This mealtime becomes a site where the palette of flavours and foodstuffs is freer from previous gastronomic codes, presenting a simultaneity of plates, which seems to reflect the individuals’ choices of new familial typologies and a democratisation of family relationships, and where the divisions associated with traditional lunches fade away

Summary

Introduction

Law is transmitted from generation to generation through representations of precedent, ruling and authority.[1]. This ideal of the Sunday lunch may obscure the fact that diverse families might use food differently in their familial sociality and, create family in new ways.[18] Italian anthropologist Marino Niola,[19] for example, perceives the Sunday brunch (which he sees as being ‘more than breakfast and less than lunch’) as the new communal ritual that brings individuals together in a globalised and multicultural milieu This mealtime becomes a site where the palette of flavours and foodstuffs is freer from previous gastronomic codes, presenting a simultaneity of (sweet and savoury) plates, which seems to reflect the individuals’ choices of new familial typologies and a democratisation of family relationships, and where the (hierarchical and gender) divisions associated with traditional lunches (apparently) fade away. Branco underpinning the ideals of childhood (protecting the child’s innocence and health) and parenthood (the parents’ rights and duties involved in parenting), and how these interlink with notions of the family, gender expectations and biopolitics

The Italian Court Decisions

Normality I

The Microtechnology of Ethical Eating

Normality II

Concluding Remarks