ABSTRACT
Drawing on ethnographic data from two early childhood settings, the purpose of the paper is to show how food events are a prime means through which the home is made visible to educators. Framed within the idea of early childhood settings as ‘civilizing’ institutions, I set out to show how the ability of young children to ‘eat nicely’ alongside class based notions of a ‘proper’ meal, evident when food is eaten or bought in from home, conjure perceptions of family life in the imaginaries of educators. In contrasting data from a private day nursery and a nursery class attached to a primary school the paper examines how the gender, class and race of the educators and families, coupled with the raison d’etre of the early childhood setting (i.e. for profit, childcare or publicly available, ‘compensatory’ education focused) result in markedly different food encounters between families and educators. Alongside examining the marginalization of particular families, this paper also highlights some strategies of resistance children and their families employ.
