Children Are Aware of Food Insecurity and Take Responsibility for Managing Food Resources

Abstract

Child food insecurity is measured using parental reports of children's experiences based on an adult-generated conceptualization. Research on other child experiences (e.g. pain, exposure to domestic violence) cautions that children generally best report their own experiences, and parents' reports of children's experiences may lack adequate validity and impede effective intervention. Because this may be true of child food insecurity, we conducted semistructured interviews with mothers, children (age 9-16 y), and other household adults in 26 South Carolina families at risk for food insecurity. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparative process combining a priori with inductive coding. Child interviews revealed experiences of food insecurity distinct from parent experiences and from parent reports of children's experiences. Children experienced cognitive, emotional, and physical awareness of food insecurity. Children took responsibility for managing food resources through participation in parental strategies, initiation of their own strategies, and generation of resources to provide food for the family. Adults were not always aware of children's experiences. Where adult experiences of food insecurity are conditioned on inadequate money for food, child experiences were grounded in the immediate household social and food environment: quality of child/parent interactions, parent affect and behavior, and types and quantities of foods made available for children to eat. The new, child-derived understanding of what children experience that results from this study provides a critical basis from which to build effective approaches to identify, assess, and respond to children suffering from food insecurity.

The Measurement of Food Insecurity Among Children

“…For instance, mothers report managing household food resources for the whole family, and cutting back how much they eat at times of food scarcity in order to protect children [23]. Children, however, report eating less when food runs low so that younger siblings and parents have enough to eat [48]. Each reporter may be accurately reporting their experience, and yet these reports lead to contradictory information about children's food insecurity.…”

“…To date there has been less extensive use of child self-report assessments of child food insecurity, but existing work supports the existence of common crosscultural domains. Studies in the United States and Venezuela both found that children experience awareness of food insecurity, including cognitive awareness, emotional or psychological awareness, and physical awareness [48,53]. There are also commonalities in how children take on responsibilities for managing food insecurity, including children's participation in parent-initiated strategies, and strategies that children initiate themselves.…”

“…For instance, the United States has sufficient food supply and systems for distribution to ensure that all children are food secure, and yet many US children experience food insecurity [16,48]. Beginning with measurement of actual child experiences allows for aggregation to higher levels of analysis, and can thus meet the purposes of a global monitoring system to compare prevalence within and across countries and over time.…”

“…Food insecurity has multiple domains, and each may influence children's well-being, health and development [48]. Measurement for global monitoring could reflect one, some, or all domains, depending on the priorities and purposes of the system.…”

“…In other countries, economic and social dependence ends much earlier, with entry to the workforce, marriage, and child bearing often occurring during the teenage years. Global measurement of child food insecurity will need to determine who counts as a "child" (e.g., perhaps based on age, social status, or dependency on parents), and be sensitive to developmental norms that may shape the experience of child food insecurity within a particular culture [48,54,55].…”