Picture Perfect: How Attaining the Ideal Meal is Not So Easy for Parents of Young Children

Objective: To explore parental perspectives on the ideals and realities of family mealtimes. Design: Mini-focus groups (n = 7). Setting: Rural Colorado, US. Participants: Parents (n = 30) were recruited at Head Start/preschool centers. Phenomenon of Interest: Parent perspectives on mealtimes with preschool-aged children. Analysis: Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Three categories of themes emerged: participant conceptions of ideal family meals, challenges to achieving their ideal family meal, and parental solutions. The theme of participant conceptions of ideal family meals composed family togetherness, children liking and eating the prepared food, healthfulness of food, and a nonchaotic mealtime. Challenges to achieving their ideal family meal included work schedules, disruptive child behaviors, child pickiness, snacking, and negative role-modeling. Finally, parental solutions to challenges incorporated having flexible meal timings, considering child preferences in premeal preparations, role-modeling, and numerous other parenting strategies. Conclusions and Implications: While parents valued many aspects of a version of the ideal meal rooted in historical standards, families faced many challenges in trying to attain that ideal. Although parents employed various strategies to combat mealtime challenges, parental expectations for preschool-aged children's mealtime behaviors may be unrealistic for the developmental stage of early childhood. Future interventions could help parents develop age-appropriate mealtime expectations.