Maternal Foodways

Abstract

There are two interrelated issues for maternal foodways, the valorisation of healthy ‘home-cooked food prepared from scratch’ (Pollan 2013) and the significance of home-baking. In respondents’ accounts both are markers of high cultural capital and bound up with notions of appropriate middle class maternal foodways and intensive mothering (Hays 1996). Further, as highlighted in Chapter 2 on family foodways, respondents are keen to distance themselves from commercial/convenience foodways, ready meals (chilled, dried, canned, frozen) and take-away food. This dismissal of convenience foodways as inferior runs counter to research carried out by Carrigan et al. (2006) who identify a hierarchy of potential cheats when it came to the use of convenience products by women when feeding their families. Yet, commercial foodways are considered to ‘lack’ on many levels, mostly due to a perceived ‘lack’ of care due to a symbolic vilification of ‘other’ maternal foodways, such as the mum who feeds her children convenience foods, like ‘cheese and chips out of a Styrofoam container’ (Deans 2013).