ABSTRACT
Family life has been changing in Poland, with children arguably becoming the centre of attention, a place that was previously reserved for men. This process is exemplified in family foodways and the practices of feeding. Parents, especially mothers, increasingly cater to children’s needs and wants, while at the same time struggling to feed them in a way that society classifies as “proper”. In this chapter I explore the food tensions and power struggles between children and their parents, drawing on ethnographic research conducted with middle class families in Warsaw, 2012–2013. Building on de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics (1984), I analyse the strategies which parents use in order to feed their children, and the tactics used by children when eating. By doing that I show, both theoretically and ethnographically, that we cannot understand the former without the latter, thus arguing for a relational approach to feeding and eating.
