Have you noticed how fast family roles are evolving? When only one parent is in the home, does the income level influence the type of nutrition children receive now that there are more children born outside of marriage than in past decades? Check out the February 18, 2012 Sacramento Bee article by Jason Deparle and Sabrina Tavernise, (New York Times), "More kids born outside marriage."
Today, you don't dare call kids illegitimate for what the parents choose. Today, more than half of births to U.S. women younger than 30 occur outside marriage. Also see the MSNBC February 18, 2012 article, "The New Normal: A Child Out of Wedlock."
No, it's not just a phenomena for poor women who dropped out of high school. Instead, the fastest growth in the past two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have taken some college courses, but have not received four-year degrees, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.
Sometimes asthma can be exacerbated by eating foods that don't agree with kids that are prone to asthma. The most prevalent chronic illness in the USA among children under the age of 18 is asthma. Check out the Child Trends research website article, "What Works for Asthma Education Programs."
Check out the articles from Child Trends, Eat and Be Merry... Together at the Dinner Table and Trends in Marriage and Fertility. Families that dine together are fine together. Child Trends noted that research suggests that at least one tradition – family meals – benefits children and youth year-round. A new factsheet by Child Trends summarizes state-by-state variations in the frequency of having meals together, for children ages birth to five years old, ages six to eleven, and twelve through seventeen.
The benefit of eating together demonstrates connectedness. Also see, Overweight Children and Youth | Child Trends Databank. And check out
The kitchen or dining room table is not the time to argue, threaten kids with what you'll do if they don't eat those vegetables that taste bitter to them because they've inherited a gene that amplifies bitterness on the back of their tongue. Just hide small portions of kale, broccoli and spinach in a smoothie of fruit, such as apples and pears, and they'll get to eat those raw vegetables.
Ideally, families should find something to laugh about at the dinner table. Numerous studies have shown that children and adolescents who eat meals frequently with family members experience better outcomes than their counterparts who do so only infrequently or not at all. These associations hold up even after taking account of other child and family characteristics, including even other forms of family togetherness.
The positive child outcomes identified thus far in the research (see Child Trends’ Databank) include fewer behavior problems, and a lower likelihood of depressive symptoms, substance abuse (including cigarette smoking), fighting, and suicidal thoughts. Teens who regularly have meals with their families also tend to do better in school, and are more likely to delay initiation of sexual activity.
When a family eats together, the quality of food eaten improves, especially for teens and young children. According to the Child Trends article, Eat and Be Merry... Together at the Dinner Table, some studies find that when parents join their children at mealtimes, children consume more fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, and are less likely to skip breakfast (a meal critical for optimal academic achievement). For some subgroups of children and teens, the benefits may extend to reduced likelihood of being overweight or obese, or for developing an eating disorder.
If you remember the 1950s, TV became so popular at mealtimes that TV dinners were sold frozen in supermarkets on lightweight metal trays that you heated in the oven, often giving diners a few slices of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and a vegetable in small portions. Decades later, when you visited older relatives some of them announced that there were still TV dinners in the freezer portion of the refrigerator instead of suggesting other forms of dining because the older relative was unable to cook for guests.
Sometimes the meals were delivered frozen to elderly, homebound relatives. But in the 1950s, many generations of families at in front of the TV set together dining on frozen TV dinners and watching prime time TV.
Child Trends notes that watching television during mealtimes frequently may not be a good idea. Watching TV cuts family conversation. Perhaps the family that grew up arguing with parents at the dinner table may resort to turning on the TV to prevent people from socializing and talking to one another because of past experience in their own childhood of arguments breaking out at the dinner table.
TV viewing while eating really does inhibit the breadth of conversation that might otherwise occur. Teens, when asked what’s the best part of a family dinner, are most likely to mention the sharing, talking, and social interaction with family members.
Television-viewing while eating, according to some evidence, is associated with reduced consumption of fruits and vegetables, and, perhaps even more importantly, with decreased attention (among both adults and children) to the cues that normally let us know when we’re full.
Many families buy fast food for dinner
Some families buy fast-food to share for their dinners, but these meals are not likely to help children maintain a healthy weight. Clearly, the quality of the food families serve is also important to overall child well-being.
Eat well, regardless of your income. There are community urban gardens for people to raise vegetables. However, they usually are seasonal. eating well and spending quality time together over the dinner table is important.
Does the fact that a child is born outside of marriage and raised by one parent who works so hard that falling asleep is easier than cooking? What changes have happened in the last decade? Child Trends also looked at the surge in births to younger women without four-year college degrees.
More kids born outside of marriage
Why are some researchers implying that men are worth less than they used to be? Among men with some college education but no two or four-year degrees, earnings have fallen eight percent in the past 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Meanwhile, the earnings of women of the same age and educational levels have risen by eight percent. These statistics are noted in the NY Times article, "More kids born outside marriage."
Also noted in that article is that among mothers of all ages, a majority – 59 percent in 2009 – are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women – nearly two-thirds of U.S. children are born to mothers younger than 30 – is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.
College graduates with four-year degrees overwhelmingly marry before having children. Is there a nutritional divide amplified by the new class divide regarding family structure? Are the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education?
Who eats the most nutritional foods and feeds kids foods with the most value for long-term health? If healthy food has become luxury goods, has marriage also become a luxury?
Do American children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering from emotional and behavioral problems? And is there a link to nutrition and health care quality available to children from single homes with single incomes?
Is good nutrition dependent upon finding smarter ways to stretch meals further in the face of shrinking paychecks? If the ranks of marriageable men have thinned, and the incentive to wed has fallen among people without four-year degrees to a greater extent than those with four-year degrees or graduate degrees, has the decline of the married two-parent family influenced how children eat? One example would be feeding kids take-out fast food for dinner.
How many children go to grandma's house every weekend for a large family dinner where a variety of home-cooked from scratch meals are made? Perhaps only specific ethnic groups follow that tradition of bringing nutrition across generations without bringing starchy fillers and fattening foods.
Families support themselves. But has the recent rise in single motherhood changed the way children are fed? Presently the figure for kids born outside of marriage is the figure is 41 percent. If you look at age, 53 percent of children born outside of wedlock are kids born to women younger than 30, according to Child Trends, which analyzed 2009 data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
What about nutrition and racial differences? Large racial differences remain: 73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites.
What foods are fed to children daily from each of these ethnic groups? Nutrition may be linked to income for many who aren't living in rural areas where they can grow their own vegetables in summer and can them in sterile jars for the winter as people did a century ago.
Is nutrition linked to education? Differences in job skills and education training are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some postsecondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, according to Child Trends.
Fifty years ago consumer science and nutrition courses in college were lumped under a "home economics" title for the major. Now it's food science, consumer science, and nutrition and dietetics, which invites more men into the major.
In the past men either went to culinary schools or majored in food science or ethnobotany, not in home economics or home economics journalism. Those majors were filled with female students studying nutrition, consumer science, or textiles and fashion merchandising.
Nutrition sometimes becomes linked to the earnings of men and women. Keep in mind that statistic. Men with some college but no degrees have had their earnings drop eight percent in the last three decades. Females with the same education have seen their earnings rise by eight percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If women are not relying on men to bring home the food so they can fry it up in the deep fryer, supporting yourself and children takes a lot more work which leaves a lot less time for cooking from scratch. Many women are not freezing a week's worth of dinners or using slow cookers.
If women are dependent upon men bringing home fresh produce to cook each day because they're working long hours to support their children, family life tends to be more about satisfaction from tasty foods and self-development, sometimes from take-out foods that have lots of fats, salt, sugars, or flavor extenders to coax customers back to crave more of the particular taste of the food rather than about the nutrition value of the food.
How many working single mothers under age 30 are juicing green vegetables with apples and drinking it along with their children for the sake of nutrition and health? Is nutrition basically about following the money? Is nutrition about women having equal authority at home with men, especially in the kitchen?
And if a family eats healthier, does that family also experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioral outcomes? Basically, is the quality of food eaten by one family their own womb of civilization and health in the long-term?
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