makeup, nail polish, cologne, “sexy” underwear for young children, and so forth. The pressure for children to “look good” has never been greater.
Add to all of this the current state of the American family. Even children in two-parent families are aware of the negative effects of divorce. It is no longer guaranteed that both parents will be in a child’s life on a daily basis. Yet, children’s television programs and movies are filled with images of supposedly “perfect” two-parent families, much as they have been for generations. Thanks to endless reruns, today’s children are exposed to the same unrealistically divorce-free, intact-family-celebrating programming that their grandparents viewed.
Take for example, the fact that on several cable stations you can regularly view the programs that were popular when the Baby Boomers were youngsters. These stations regularly air repeats of shows such as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Though neither family has traditional roots (the Bradys are a blended family, created after both partners were widowed, and the Partridges do not have a traditional father present) both have strong, nurturing male and female characters. In the case of the Bradys, both parents are regularly available for the children while the Partridges have a strong mother and a nurturing father figure (the family’s band manager). Neither program makes allowances for the absent mothers or fathers who have become realities in today’s children’s lives. The fact that such television families are far from universal is never explained to the children who make up much of the television audience. No wonder that many children feel there is something wrong with their own families when viewed alongside such models of togetherness. That feeling of not being “normal” or even “good enough” can add to a child’s stress.
A real-life example of using food to deal with the stress of divorce comes from Sean, a child who began to overeat after his parents divorced. After moving to a new house, starting a new school, and seeing his father only on weekends, Sean began to overeat and watch an excessive amount of television, resulting in the seven-year-old’s ballooning to ninety-six pounds at four feet tall.
“I think maybe I contributed to the weight thing because I was so emotionally stressed about this divorce,” says his mother, Val. “I wanted him to feel okay, so I didn’t deny him anything.” Because children began teasing him, Sean finally asked his mother to help him lose weight.
As if school and family stressors aren’t enough, crimes against children are on the rise. It wasn’t too long ago that new mothers simply left their babies sleeping in their car seats for a quick run into the store. Today, this notion sends shivers down the spines of parents everywhere—and rightly so. To leave a child unattended in public for any length of time greatly increases the odds that the child will be harmed or even kidnapped. (And to leave an unattended child in a car is to risk his or her death from overheating or at the very least, a fine or public censure for the parent.) Young children are regularly fingerprinted for identification in case of foul play, and milk cartons and mail inserts are filled with pictures of missing children. No matter how hard parents may try to shield them, children and young adults are aware of the dangers surrounding them.
Put all of these stressors together—high academic expectations, overbooked schedules, more rigorous beauty standards, rising divorce rates, and increased crime against children—and you have some idea of the issues facing today’s children. In general, the emotional state of the country, and specifically of children, is chaotic and filled with fear. Now, more than ever, nurturing is needed to deal with the issues mentioned above. Unfortunately, many of today’s children are learning to nurture themselves by overeating.
Think for a moment about the many ways in which children are taught to use food to make themselves feel better. How many times has your child been offered a lollipop, cookie, or ice cream after a doctor’s visit, or a special comfort food like mashed potatoes or mac’n’cheese when he or she is sick?
Modern, Western parents no longer fear starvation, for themselves or their children. But it wasn’t so long ago that food was scarce. It was not uncommon for people to suffer from and even die of malnutrition. Eating was therefore seen as a means of promoting health, and a fat child was seen as a healthy child. While our societal circumstances have changed, our attitudes have not. Food is still used to nurture children during difficult or stressful times. The biggest difference now, however, is that the abundance of foods high in fat and calories allows children to eat a greater variety and a more dangerous quantity of food to nurture themselves.
In addition to using food to soothe our children, we also use it to reward good behavior. The practice of using lollipops after a trip to the doctor or dentist, though fortunately being phased out in most modern medical and dental practices, continues in others. Even though this may seem innocuous enough, let’s consider for a second the unconscious message being sent to children. When food is used as a reward, children are given the idea that eating is associated with the good feelings of being rewarded. By making food a reward, we teach children to place too great a value on eating. Rather than sending the message that eating is a biological act needed to nurture our bodies, children are regularly taught that food is a reward for good behavior, thus setting up a form of competition between those foods considered desirable and those that are healthy, or, even more dangerous—the expectation that all good behavior will be rewarded with treats.
Consider for a moment that a child with this expectation misbehaves in the grocery store. In the past, he or she has been bribed to discontinue such behavior with a sweet treat. If given a cookie or candy, this child has learned that food is provided for a desired behavior—he or she has also learned how to manipulate others in order to receive high-calorie foods, thus setting up a dangerous cycle as the child grows. Imagine this child as a teenager who has just completed a difficult homework assignment or gotten a good grade on a test. What do you think he or she will desire as a reward? Even more alarming, how many times in his or her life do you think food will be used in this manner?
Taking this a step further, one of the most dangerous ways that food is used is as a means of showing love. While this concept is related to the previous discussion of using food to nurture, there is an important distinction here. Using food to show love means that children come to associate, perhaps even confuse, parental or familial love with food. Therefore, when a child feels unloved, he or she may seek out food. Taken to an extreme, this may result in morbid obesity at a very young age.
Rather than learning to deal with feelings of rejection or lack of affection in healthy ways, when food is used as love, children become conditioned to reach for food. As time goes on, children will grow into adults unable to distinguish between eating for biological reasons and eating for emotional solace. It’s important to read the previous sentence once again. The danger of using food to satisfy emotions lies in the fact that children (and later adults) become unable to recognize genuine feelings of hunger. Without knowing what physical hunger feels like, children are unable to use food in the manner for which it was intended—to nourish their bodies.
In addition to all of the feelings children often associate with food and eating in their families, there are many unhealthy messages presented through the media. On any given Saturday morning, children’s cartoons are filled with commercials for fast and junk foods targeted to convince young minds into believing that fun can be had by consuming these products. One of the biggest examples of this is the creation of cultural icons designed to appeal to children. The biggest of the fast-food giants have their happy-go-lucky clown and their rambunctious king, and candymakers have even animated the candy-coated chocolate figures that “melt in your mouth, not in your hands,” sending them to parties, and even having them go trick-or-treating in commercials. Many candy commercials depict ordinary children at play.
Though these kinds of advertisements have been around for years and have come to be accepted as part of society, most people have never thought about the messages being sent to children. When a group of children or young adults appears in commercials, eating chips or candy while laughing and having fun, viewers are given
