Autonomy and control: The co-construction of adolescent food choice

Abstract

We explored how adolescents and parents negotiate adolescents’ increasing food choice autonomy in European Canadian, Punjabi Canadian and African Canadian families. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 47 adolescents and their parents, participant observation at a family meal and a grocery shopping trip with the family shopper(s). Thematic and constant comparative analyses were used. Adolescents exercised considerable autonomy over much of their food choice and their parents monitored and controlled the environment within which adolescents were given independence and responsibility. Parents used strategies of coaxing, coaching and coercing, while teens responded by complaining, ignoring and refusing their parents’ advice. At the same time, teens took responsibility and reflected on their behaviours while keeping in mind their parents’ advice, even if in some cases they were as yet unable to act upon it. Food choice autonomy is not simply a negative act of teenage defiance. Instead, it is actively co-constructed by both teens and their parents as each resists and responds to the others. Studies of adolescent autonomy related to food choices, and interventions based on nutritional autonomy as a risk factor for poor nutrition would do well to take account of the co-constructive parent–adolescent process of teen autonomy.