Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #114134

Leslie D. Kaufman, PhD, Brooklyn District Public Health Office, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 485 Throop Avenue, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 10007, (646)253-5716, lkaufman@health.nyc.gov

Background: To design effective public health interventions that address the epidemic of child obesity, it is critical to understand its social roots – especially in low income, urban Latino communities where rates of obesity and diabetes are particularly high. This study examines how female-headed households buy, prepare, serve, and consume food in their daily lives. While mothers and grandmothers have long been recognized as pivotal influences on children's food practices, less is understood about how fathers – particularly multiple fathers in families, a common situation – figure into children's lives. This paper explores food and fatherhood in the social contexts of families and communities.

Methods: Researchers used qualitative methods, including extended ethnographic interviews and participant observation among twelve Latino families. Research took place in participants' homes in a low-income neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

Results: Fathers play a substantial role in routine family food practices, and multiple fathers in families increase the complexity of social interactions: Fathers include children as “eating companions,” adding meals to already overweight children; they also engage in inconsistent food sharing with children, serving to divide families and send confusing messages to children about who gets food, when they get it, and why. Overall, food practices articulate family relationships – engendering intimacy and cementing relationships or creating and underscoring conflict – which affects children's eating habits, weight, and health.

Conclusions: In female-headed households of low-income, urban Latino communities, fathers influence children's eating habits, weight, and health. These findings will guide advocacy, program planning, and education for clinicians and public health practitioners.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Discuss and describe fathers' involvement and role in their children's lives regarding eating habits, overweight, and health in low-income, urban Latino neighborhoods.
• 2. Identify the role and social meanings of food for families, in which cycles of scarcity of goods and food predominate.
• 3. Describe families’ food purchase, preparation, and consumption patterns.
• 4. Apply study data on fathers’ influence on children to guide public health planning for nutrition programming and obesity prevention for adults and children.

Keywords: Food and Nutrition, Family Involvement

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.