{"id":452897,"date":"2026-03-02T01:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T01:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452897\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T01:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T01:58:10","slug":"one-parenting-trend-is-to-blame-for-picky-eating-i-have-a-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452897\/","title":{"rendered":"One parenting trend is to blame for picky eating. I have a fix."},"content":{"rendered":"

The following essay is excerpted from Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History<\/a> by Helen Zoe Veit. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin\u2019s Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

Dr. Spock admitted he\u2019d been wrong. By the 1970s, 30 years after he\u2019d published his mega-bestselling Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, he sorely regretted what he\u2019d said about children\u2019s food<\/a>. He knew that if you read his book carefully, you\u2019d see that he\u2019d recommended nutritious foods and assumed that children would want to eat them. He\u2019d said that pickiness might last a few months, at most, and that by age 2 children should be eating \u201ca pretty grown-up diet.\u201d<\/a> But having been a child in the early 20th century himself, a time when most children had quickly learned to eat like their parents, he\u2019d assumed that good eating simply happened by \u201cinstinct,\u201d and he\u2019d warned mothers that telling children what to eat was oppressive, annoying, and counterproductive. And that was the message his tens of millions of readers had taken away. Critics parodied his advice: \u201cFeed \u2018em whatever they want.\u201d To Spock\u2019s dismay, this caricature was turning out to be a better description of American children\u2019s food than the wholesome, vegetable-heavy diets he\u2019d proposed himself.<\/p>\n

By the time Dr. Spock was revisiting his advice, American ideas about children\u2019s tastes had fundamentally changed. Fast food, processed food, and nutritionally empty snacks and sweets had become mainstays. Children\u2019s diets were \u201cpoor and they are getting worse,\u201d Spock noted, with too few nutrients and too much high-calorie junk. When he\u2019d written in his original book that it was fine to give children ice cream even if they hadn\u2019t eaten their spinach, he\u2019d envisioned that as a rare scenario, but it wasn\u2019t rare at all by the late 20th century. Instead, \u201cnice parents\u201d by then said yes to treats and didn\u2019t insist on vegetables. And many kids now weren\u2019t eating a \u201cpretty grown-up diet\u201d until adolescence or later\u2014a possibility that had never occurred to Spock back in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

The rise of mass childhood pickiness is a story about Americans\u2019 crumbling confidence in children\u2019s ability to love diverse foods. By the late 20th century, it came to seem cruel to expect children to eat the same meals as their parents because \u201ccommon sense\u201d now said that children\u2019s tongues and taste buds were biologically different. More and more Americans scathingly rejected earlier feeding methods as old-fashioned, controlling, and even abusive. Older methods had become the Joan Crawford character of the 1981 movie Mommie Dearest: an aging narcissist forcing sad, unappealing food on a sad, vulnerable child.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n By Helen Zoe Veit. St. Martin\u2019s Publishing Group.\n <\/p>\n

\n Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page.
\n Thank you for your support.\n <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s more or less been the story ever since. Today, many Americans take it for granted that pickiness is mainly biological and that it stems from children\u2019s physically unique responses to food\u2019s taste, texture, and color. By these lights, food rejections are signs that a child naturally dislikes a food and isn\u2019t going to be capable of liking it anytime soon. Strict parents might succeed in forcing a child to chew and swallow something\u2014and \u201cforce\u201d has been the verb of choice for critics. But when adults believe that children reject food out of innate biological revulsion, it seems obvious that nobody can get children to enjoy food they reject. As a result, insisting that children either eat family meals or leave the table hungry looks like a cruel violation of their bodily autonomy, and even a violation of the ideal of consent. And it\u2019s become common to claim that expecting children to eat the same dishes as their parents leads to misery and maladjustment around food.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the history of American children\u2019s food is more important than this pivot. For centuries, Americans thought it was good parenting to expect that children would eat family meals or go hungry for a few hours. But since the late 20th century\u2014as myths about the science of taste took over popular culture\u2014more and more people have seen it as terrible parenting.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to be a good parent around food today? There are a lot of rules, but don\u2019t worry! Really, don\u2019t. Not worrying about what your children eat is one of the biggest rules of all.<\/p>\n

Good parents know about health, but they aren\u2019t uptight about vegetables. They don\u2019t withhold snacks or use desserts as rewards, and they don\u2019t imagine that children could care about nutrition. Good parents offer new foods, but they don\u2019t push too hard. They recognize dislikes and they consider children\u2019s aversions when planning meals and shopping for food. Above all, good parents are nice parents, and they never \u201cforce\u201d children to eat something. If children don\u2019t want to eat what the rest of their family is eating, good parents don\u2019t have them leave the table hungry. They give them something else.<\/p>\n

These spoken and unspoken rules about what it means to be a good parent around food today have all flowed from two beliefs about childhood that were enshrined in the last quarter of the 20th century: First, children\u2019s tastes are biologically and unchangeably unique. And second, it\u2019s cruel and psychologically harmful to expect children to eat the same food as adults.<\/p>\n

But just think for a moment how different our parenting rules around food are from those that govern other parts of daily life with children\u2014even the many physical parts that could also potentially raise questions about bodily consent. Sometimes young children tearfully reject baths, but we matter-of-factly get them into the tub and soon they\u2019re giggling and splashing. Young children refuse to put on pants, but through humor or persuasion or by wriggling them onto their little limbs ourselves, we get them clothed before leaving the house. Children sometimes throw tantrums when it\u2019s time to go to school or when it\u2019s time to leave a playdate, but we don\u2019t see those tantrums as signs that they\u2019re biologically destined to be illiterate or to live at their friend\u2019s house. Children twist their faces away from sunblock and clamp their jaws as the toothbrush approaches, but we don\u2019t think that means it\u2019s OK for them to get sunburns or cavities. Children whine about car seats and seat belts. We insist anyway, children learn to wear them, and sometimes they save their lives.<\/p>\n

In other words, in most parts of daily life we\u2019re confident that parents are wiser than preschoolers, and we\u2019re confident that kids can get used to all sorts of things they initially fear or reject. We don\u2019t think of ourselves as \u201cforcing\u201d children to do something against their will when we manage to shimmy the toothbrush past the clamped jaws most nights. If we reflect on it at all, we think that good parents teach children to do what\u2019s safest and best for them, even if it upsets them temporarily. If we heard about a parent who always let a child decide whether to wear a seat belt or brush their teeth or go to school, we\u2019d find it strange. We might call it bad parenting.<\/p>\n

Food used to be in the parents-are-wiser-than-preschoolers category, too. Without thinking about it much, Americans well into the early 20th century were casually confident that children would get used to new foods, and they were as firm and persuasive at meals as we are today in other parts of our children\u2019s lives. As a result, children in earlier eras almost always did learn to like family foods, reinforcing the normalcy of these methods and quietly bolstering everybody\u2019s confidence.<\/p>\n

Of course, parents in the past sometimes doubted themselves, and parenting methods and families themselves were diverse. Some families had abundant food and servants to cook it for them, and others struggled to fill children\u2019s bellies. Not all children in the past lived with their parents and not all families sat down together at meals for a variety of reasons. And some parents in the past were tyrannical, neglectful, or abusive, just as some parents are today. But to the extent that it\u2019s possible to generalize about something as diverse as parenting, the ways American adults responded to children\u2019s reluctance to eat changed dramatically over the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Before the 1930s, being a picky eater didn\u2019t exist as a concept, much less as a normal or expected part of children\u2019s identities. Earlier generations hardly noticed occasional food rejections or they saw them as \u201cwhims,\u201d not as central parts of childhood\u2014just as we don\u2019t see children\u2019s attempts to reject toothbrushing or snow boots as crucial parts of their identities today. Children in the past occasionally went hungry for a few hours if they rejected a family meal because few parents in the past would have rewarded a child\u2019s strange refusal to eat with new food. Plus, it was hard to conjure up instant meals before refrigerators, microwaves, or processed foods, and some people didn\u2019t have any extra food on hand at all. When a child left the table without eating, they would usually have come to the next meal with a good appetite, a sense of their parents\u2019 confidence in their ability to enjoy family foods, and a feeling that they were an important participant in family meals. The emphasis in the past was never on forcing children to eat. In fact, Americans generally rejected that idea quite vehemently. The emphasis was on teaching children \u201cto like and to want\u201d food that the rest of the family was eating. By far the most striking theme in historical sources about children\u2019s food isn\u2019t food rejection or discipline. It\u2019s pleasure. American children from all regions and backgrounds used to find a lot of joy in eating.<\/p>\n

And this gets to one of the most glaring ironies in the history of pickiness. In the early 20th century and before, back when American parents took it for granted that children could learn to like the same food as themselves, most children were enthusiastic eaters who acquired broad tastes early and grew up to be adults with healthy body weights and stable eating habits. But starting in the mid-20th century, it became common to claim\u2014without evidence\u2014that expecting children to eat the same food as adults was deeply and lastingly harmful. Americans lampooned older parenting methods as cruel, and by the late 20th century they claimed that expecting children to eat anything specific led to all sorts of problems: to prolonged stress and family conflict; to rebellion and long-term food aversions; to children having no sense of their own fullness and so to overeating and obesity; to unhealthy relationships with love and food and thus to eating disorders; and to general unhappiness, instability, and dysfunction as adult eaters.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Red States Are Racing to Outdo Each Other on Their Favorite Fake Issue. But One Just Jumped to the Head of the Pack.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kids Didn\u2019t Used to Be Picky Eaters. Here\u2019s What Changed.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Everyone Hates Fine Dining\u2019s Most Silly, Overwrought Tradition. So Why Are We Still Paying for It?
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The irony is that none of these things\u2014not prolonged meal-time conflict, not elaborate food aversions, not obesity, and not eating disorders\u2014were common in the early 20th century or before, when American parents had expected their children to share their meals. These problems only became common in the second half of the 20th century, at exactly the same time that parents lost confidence in children\u2019s ability to love diverse foods and started catering to individual preferences. This doesn\u2019t mean that modern child-feeding methods necessarily cause these problems. But it\u2019s nonsensical to suggest that older parenting methods cause them, since those problems were all extremely rare just when those older parenting methods were most common.<\/p>\n

Parents today don\u2019t want their children to be picky. Having a picky eater \u201cmeans a lifetime of extra work and daily frustration,\u201d as one exhausted 1990s mother put it. It can also mean shouldering enormous worry, guilt, and anger. But modern parents have inherited a set of expectations that puts them in an almost impossible position. Many are terrified that no matter what they do, they will somehow hurt their children. The inherent contradictions in trying to be a \u201cgood parent\u201d around food today aren\u2019t lost on parents when every meal feels like a war between concerns for children\u2019s health and desires to make them happy. But when parents believe that children\u2019s tastes are biological and that they naturally dislike most healthy foods, it doesn\u2019t seem like children or their parents can possibly win.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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