Adelaide, Aug 13 (The Conversation) Many families find that feeding children can often be a challenging task. A once-beloved dish is abruptly rejected, tempers flare up after long days, and siblings wrestle over food at the table.
Yet, if parents and caregivers turn to social media for guidance, they may encounter more hinderance than help. On these platforms, the task of feeding kids seems deceptively simple.
Our recent research reveals that Instagram is swarming with flawlessly curated content that can foster unrealistic expectations for family mealtimes. This could exacerbate the frustration and guilt that caregivers already experience.
Our Study
While it's known that parents face numerous challenges in feeding their children, the role social media plays in adding to these pressures is not as well documented.
We aimed to explore the portrayal of family meals on social media by examining a popular platform, Instagram. With around 2 billion users, Instagram offers a seemingly endless stream of images and videos about food, cooking, and dining.
In our study, we downloaded the top 15 posts from the hashtags #familymeals, #familybreakfast, #familylunch, and #familydinner weekly for 14 weeks from February to May 2024, analyzing their content.
Lots of ‘Meals on a Plate’
It's no surprise that most posts showcased food and drinks, frequently depicting plated meals, cooking processes, and step-by-step recipe guides.
Many highlighted "healthy foods" from the five core food groups. Interestingly, #familybreakfast featured the most “unhealthy foods”—such as pancakes, waffles, and hearty fry-ups.
However, few posts showed realistic, everyday family meals. Most presented impeccably organized and staged kitchens, finely plated foods, and polished mealtimes.
For ethical reasons related to our research, we cannot share the exact posts publicly, but below are images akin to what we observed.
Where’s the Mess?
Seeing a toddler clinging to their mom while she cooks, or a hungry, cranky child was rare. Few posts depicted the cluttered kitchen counters with scattered ingredients or plates with sauce spilling over.
In reality, family meals often happen in haste, wedged between daycare pickups, sports practices, work, and school. Caregivers frequently describe mealtimes as messy, chaotic, and noisy.
Image captions typically described recipes as “quick,” “easy,” or “family-friendly.” However, very few posts included families actually partaking in these meals together, which raises questions about how “easy” these meals might truly be.
These “easy” recipe posts assume a life where everything goes smoothly, kids help set the table, and they excitedly eat what's prepared (yet even a simple meal like baked beans on toast can lead to mayhem).
Depictions of people were rare—more emphasis was on presenting the “perfect” food. When individuals were featured, it was predominantly a woman or mother.
The presence of men, fathers, and children was minimal. Most family mealtime content was posted by women and mothers, further perpetuating traditional gender roles and the division of food-related responsibilities.
What Should Parents Keep in Mind?
Instagram might provide caregivers with quick, easy, family-friendly meal ideas. But bear in mind, what you see on social media isn’t always real.
Algorithms favor popular content, and as a visual medium, Instagram posts are frequently polished and aesthetically pleasing. Messy kitchens and chaotic mealtimes aren’t visually appealing for such content.
So avoid comparing your meals to the curated perfection you observe on social media. It’s unlikely that this picturesque depiction is how a family cooks or dines daily. Food content may also be professionally filmed or photographed.
What suits one family might not suit yours. If you encounter a new recipe or concept, give it a try, but don’t feel disheartened if it falters. It can take numerous exposures for a child to even try a new food, and some are more adventurous eaters than others.
Also, remember that healthy meals need not be complex. Search for straightforward recipes abundant in vegetables.
Mealtimes do not have to appear perfect to be both healthy and enjoyable.
Posting About Real Life
To cultivate more authentic and relatable social media content, we need to take the initiative to post it. Sharing images or videos of ordinary dishes and family meals could help other parents feel more at ease and relieved about their own mealtime experiences.
We know many men and fathers participate in family mealtimes. Sharing these moments could encourage other men to feel more at ease in the kitchen.
Encouraging gender diversity and real-life mealtimes on social media can help challenge family mealtime norms and alleviate some of the feeding responsibilities that often rest on women and mothers. (The Conversation) GRS GRS
(Only the headline of this report may have been reworked by Editorji; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)