Browsing by Subject "cooking"

The purpose of my study was to find out how children aged 2–6 take part in cooking dinner in families. The aim was to get information about how often and in which cooking tasks children take part in cooking dinner and find the reasons why children take part in cooking or not. The aim was also to get information about the meanings parents give to their children´s participations in cooking dinner. Based on these results I examined is there any connection between participation and children’s eating problems and future skills in cooking. These considerations I process mainly in my last chapter discussion, because this study is not wide enough to give reliable information to these perspectives. Five families with children aged 2–6 years took part in my study. All the families were nuclear families and at least one of the parents was in working life. In every interview the mother was selected to be interviewed. Interviews were carried out in October or November 2016 and were recorded and transcribed. Semi-structured interview were used in interviews, and content analysis in data analysis. According to my research results children aged 2–6 take part in cooking dinner variously. Participation varied from weekly attendance to that there was not any attendance. According to parents the participation was generally speaking slight, but they still listed lots of tasks that children had done. The most common tasks were mixing food, frying on a pan, cutting vegetables, taking away their own dishes after dinner and filling up and emptying dishwasher. The reasons for children´s participation was their own interest towards making food, spending time together. And reasons why they did not participated are the daily rush and safety issues. The meanings parents gave to children´s participation varied a lot between different families. Parents thought that cooking dinner together brought joy to children, helped them to under-stand cooking steps, and added children´s interest against food and cooking skills. Every parent felt their children's participation in cooking with family was important, without exception.