Browsing by Subject "parents"

This study's goal was to describe how parents talk to their children about meat and meat production. This topic is relevant because meat production and the ethics of eating meat are being widely discussed. People are also more distanced from food production than ever before so it is interesting to study how they relay information about it to their children. The research problem in this study was to recognize in which type of situation and by whose initiative discussion about meat took place, what topics they talked about and how parents reacted in those situations. In this study the parents' different ways of talking about meat with their children are being described. The study was conducted with a qualitative research approach. The data was collected with seven theme interviews from two fathers and five mothers of children aged 4–6. Before the interviews, the interviewees had read a book, Nakki lautasella (a children's non-fiction book about food and meat production), with or without their children. In the content analysis, open coding was done to the data and then the data was divided into themes and then re-connected. Five themes were derived, offering answers to the research questions. Almost all parents had discussed meat with their children in some way, but nobody had told them about meat production in detail. The discussions typically took place at the dining table and on the children's initiative. Parents' way of talking about this subject was to answer child's questions when they came. Topics that parents experienced difficult were ones such as animals welfare and the violent phases of meat production, like slaughtering. Parents avoided talking about these subjects or they answered with very simple answers. By their actions parents were trying to protect their children because they felt like these topics were inappropriate for children and that they would stick to their children's minds causing anxiety. However, I claim that parents felt uncomfortable discussing topics that challenged them selves to think about them and evaluate their choices. In the future it should be researched why parents leave the initiative to talk about meat to their children and how it affects the discussed topics. More research should be done about the connection between the discussion parents have with their children and how much children know about food origin.