As a mother, I prefer to give a healthy snack, however... Mothers’ considerations and value conflicts while providing snacks to their 2-7-year-old children

Nowadays, childhood obesity is a severe public health issue and has a high chance to track into adulthood. One of the behaviours contributing to childhood obesity is the consumption of energy-dense snacks which is highly prevalent among young children. Young children consume foods and snacks mainly in the home environment, which makes it an important setting. As mothers are mainly responsible for providing foods to their young children, the overall aim of this thesis was to identify and provide insights into mothers’ considerations and value conflicts while providing snacks to their 2 to 7 years old children.

The first study in this thesis describes snack choices and the related considerations of mothers with young children in the home environment. A food and motivation diary study with 136 Dutch mothers of young children aged 2-7 years was conducted. Fruits, cookies and candy were the most frequently provided snacks; healthiness of the snack and child preference were the most mentioned considerations. Considerations were grouped in six overall categories: health-related, the influence of the child, habit-related, strategies, external influence, and other considerations. Higher educated mothers and mothers of first children showed more health-conscious behaviour. Lower educated mothers more often justified their (unhealthy) snack choice.

How the key constructs of general parenting (nurturance, structure, behavioural control, overprotection, and coercive control) relate to mothers’ snack choice for their children aged 2-7 years was also investigated. The Dutch version of the validated Comprehensive General Parenting Questionnaire (CGPQ) was used to assess the key constructs of general parenting. The diary study with 136 Dutch mothers was used to measure the snacks mothers provided their children aged 2-4 years and 5-7 years. For both groups of mothers in our sample, differences were found on the scores of coercive control and overprotection. No differences between the mothers were present on the other key constructs. Results Indicate that more mothers who scored relatively higher on coercive control provided unhealthy products (like candy and cookies), whereas fewer mothers provided vegetables compared to mothers who scored lower on coercive control. A higher score on coercive control combined with a higher score on overprotection was associated with fewer mothers providing unhealthy products like cookies and candies.

The next study provides insight into value conflicts, which mothers may experience while providing snacks to their young children. Possible value conflicts Dutch mothers experience, while providing snacks to their children, were investigated using the food and motivation diaries and semi-structured interviews. Results showed that the younger the children, the more value conflicts the mothers experienced. Mothers experienced most value conflicts when they provided snacks perceived as unhealthy. This study elicits six main value conflicts, namely, conflicts between healthy and unhealthy snacks; between healthy and convenient snacks; conflicts related to providing snacks just before dinner; related to influence of others; conflicts when the child asks but the mother says “no”; and conflicts related to many unhealthy snacks at parties or visits.

The differences in mothers’ snack choice for their youngest child at 2-3 years compared to their oldest child when he/she was of the same age were investigated too. Moreover, the reasons for these differences were identified. This was done by semi-structured interviews. All mothers indicated differences between snacks provided to their youngest child (2-3 years) and their oldest child when it was of the same age. Most frequently mentioned differences were that the youngest children receive unhealthy snacks at a younger age, the structure regarding snack providing was more fixed, and the youngest children received less age-specific snacks. Most frequently mentioned reasons for these differences were role-modelling, the novelty of the first-born and availability of other types of snacks at home.

To investigate the snack choice, considerations, and value conflicts of mothers from different countries and the relation to national culture was investigated too. Semi-structured interviews with mothers divided over 4 national cultures (Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, and Italian) were conducted. Four key themes could be distinguished to cluster the mentioned considerations; the health-related key theme, the child-related key theme, the time-related key theme and the product-related key theme. Data showed specific prevalence between considerations and nationalities. In all cultures, the value conflicts mentioned were mainly related to health. The results of this study indicated that mothers from the North of Italy showed different considerations and value conflicts in snack providing than mothers from the South of Italy. Therefore, this possible regional effect was explored by using semi-structured interviews with mothers from the North versus mothers from the South of Italy. North Italian mothers showed more health-related considerations while providing a snack compared to mothers living in the South. The child-related key theme revealed that a snack needs to be liked by the child, otherwise Italian mothers did not provide it. The product-related key theme showed the brand to be more important for South Italian mothers. Mothers from the North of Italy experienced more value conflicts, all related to health. This studied showed that even within the same country, geographical differences in mothers’ considerations and value conflicts for providing snacks exist.

The last study of this thesis investigates mothers’ health perception of snacks provided. Mothers’ perceived healthiness of a certain snack could be diverse and differ from the actual nutritional healthiness of that specific snack. Diary studies and in-depth interviews with 22 Dutch mothers were conducted. During the interviews, four different types of cookies were presented and discussed. All mothers mentioned health as a consideration while providing snacks both in the interviews and in the diaries. For more than two-thirds of the mothers, health was the most important consideration. Three types of mothers were defined according to healthiness perception: “product mothers”, who related the healthiness of a snack to the intrinsic product properties, the “balancing mothers” who related the healthiness of the snack to the whole diet and the context, and the “not that important mothers”, for whom the healthiness of a snack was not that relevant because the healthy foods were already eaten during the main meals.