The temporality of food practices: intergenerational relations, childhood memories and mothers’ food practices in working families with young children

Abstract

Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of 48 families with young children (aged 1.5–10 years), which investigated the influence of employment on children’s diets, this article focuses on the place of childhood memories and intergenerational relations in the transmission of family food practices. The article highlights the temporal nature of family food practices. First, it examines the intergenerational transmission of food practices in relation to present time as mothers and grandmothers negotiate what and how children eat in their everyday lives. Second, it analyses the ways in which memories of childhood influence mothers’ food practices in their current families, showing how present-day family food practices are embedded in the relations between parents, grandparents and children and in the experiences of food and eating from the past. The article thereby demonstrates the importance of the interplay between food, memories of childhood experiences and intergenerational familial relations.