Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Employed Parents' Satisfaction With Food Choice Coping Strategies: Influence Of Gender And Structure, Christine E. Blake, Carol M. Devine, Elaine Wethington, Margaret M. Jastran, Tracy J. Farrell, Carole A. Bisogni

Faculty Publications

This study aimed to understand parents' evaluations of the way they integrated work-family demands to manage food and eating. Employed, low/moderate-income, urban, U.S., Black, White, and Latino mothers (35) and fathers (34) participated in qualitative interviews exploring work and family conditions and spillover, food roles, and food-choice coping and family-adaptive strategies. Parents expressed a range of evaluations from overall satisfaction to overall dissatisfaction as well as dissatisfaction limited to work, family life, or daily schedule. Evaluation criteria differed by gender. Mothers evaluated satisfaction on their ability to balance work and family demands through flexible home and work conditions, while striving …