“A lot of sacrifices:” Work–family spillover and the food choice coping strategies of low-wage employed parents

Abstract

Integrating their work and family lives is an everyday challenge for employed parents. Competing demands for parents' time and energy may contribute to fewer meals prepared or eaten at home and poorer nutritional quality of meals. Thus, work-family spillover (feelings, attitudes, and behaviors carried over from one role to another) is a phenomenon with implications for nutrition and health. The aim of this theory-guided constructivist research was to understand how low-wage employed parents' experiences of work-family spillover affected their food choice coping strategies. Participants were 69 black, white and Latino mothers and fathers in a Northeastern US city. We explored participants' understandings of family and work roles, spillover, and food choice strategies using open-ended qualitative interviews. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. These parents described affective, evaluative, and behavioral instances of work-family spillover and role overload as normative parts of everyday life and dominant influences on their food choices. They used food choice coping strategies to: (1) manage feelings of stress and fatigue, (2) reduce the time and effort for meals, (3) redefine meanings and reduce expectations for food and eating, and (4) set priorities and trade off food and eating against other family needs. Only a few parents used adaptive strategies that changed work or family conditions to reduce the experience of conflict. Most coping strategies were aimed at managing feelings and redefining meanings, and were inadequate for reducing the everyday hardships from spillover and role overload. Some coping strategies exacerbated feelings of stress. These findings have implications for family nutrition, food expenditures, nutritional self-efficacy, social connections, food assistance policy, and work place strategies.

Prevalence and patterns of cooking dinner at home in the USA: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007–2008

“…Confounding is unlikely to account for these observed relationships, which in our study hold true even when controlling for factors such as race/ethnicity Table 3; all differences were significant at P , 0?001 by the Wald x 2 test (GED, general equivalency degree) and family structure. Previous studies have shown that time is a significant barrier preventing many people from cooking, and this is especially true among low-SES groups (10)(11)(12) . Our work further explains these observations by showing that compared with high-SES groups, low-SES groups have a more dichotomous (never/always) distribution when it comes to cooking.…”

Characteristics of fast-food/takeaway-food and restaurant/café-food consumers among New Zealand adults

“…Qualitative research has indicated that time constraints and the use of convenience foods are interrelated, and are also influenced by family dynamics, such as the number of adults within the household and external stressors such as work commitments (33,34) . Perceived time pressures were noted as being important in the purchase of takeaway meals in Ireland (35) .…”

The barriers that women face when choosing food for their primary school children: A case study in the Western Cape Province, South Africa

“…Unfortunately, these foods are often high in fat and sugar and children become accustomed to them, hence developing a preference. [26,27] This could result in the younger generations acquiring fewer cooking skills from their mothers and, in turn, a reliance on convenience foods.…”

“…The food industry has responded and capitalised on this need, but the majority of options still focus on convenience and not on health. [27,28] The value of changing supermarket layout to enhance the visibility of healthier items justifies further exploration. Participants in a study conducted by Zacchary et al [29] suggested having taste test sections to increase consumer confidence in a product.…”