“Sure you can have a fun and healthy birthday party!”: Designing a social marketing campaign to address the “normative underestimation” of parents regarding healthier birthday parties for preschool kids

INTRODUCTION

Developing healthier eating practices among preschool children is a critical challenge. While parents are increasingly aware of its importance, they might view birthday celebrations as an exception for allowing sweets in this unique symbolic event, forgetting that in the preschool birthday celebrations are nearly a weekly occurrence. This raises the challenge of how to design a social marketing approach to change normative conceptions that happy birthday parties must include sweets.  

METHODS

The study utilized a mixed methods deign, combining an online survey of 1005 preschool parents and 149 semi-structured interviews with parents and preschool staff from diverse social backgrounds from 41 towns in Israel. 

RESULTS

Most parents (74%) were willing to serve healthier refreshments and only a small percentage (10%) thought birthdays could not be celebrated without sweets. Yet, many parents (52%) underestimated others’ support for healthier parties. Various perceived benefits of healthier birthday parties were noted included helping prevent parental competition and celebrations that focus on fun activities rather than sweets, thus the birthday child is the ‘star’. To address ‘barriers’ for healthier celebrations participants provided culturally appropriate practical tips and suggestions for fun-filled healthier parties.      

CONCLUSIONS

The gap between parents’ own willingness to celebrate healthy birthday parties and their low assessment of others’ indicates the importance of a normative social marketing approach for changing preschool nutritional practices.  The social marketing campaign is designed using the practical tips and normative data both emphasizing the success of ‘positive Deviance’ examples and showing there is actual normative support among the majority of parents.