Paper short abstract:

I will discuss the changing roles of children in the Polish society, by focusing on food and analysing how and why children exercise their agency and in many intentional and non-intentional ways change their families' foodways. The paper is based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Warsaw.

Paper long abstract:

Children's roles and their place in societies are changing. Poland, as many other countries, is becoming a neontocracy - a society focused on children (Lancy 2008). This growing focus on children and their changing roles in the society are well reflected in discourses and practices related to food. Studying how children are fed and how they eat allows us to look at the structures in which they are embedded whilst not neglecting their agency.

This paper will focus on the issue of children and food in Warsaw. It is based on twelve months of research conducted between September 2012 and August 2013. The ethnographic research was mostly centred on families and primary schools, but also included studying state institutions, food industry, non-governmental sector and media. This paper will be mainly informed by my research with children aged between 6 and 12 years old, which included interviews, drawing, taking photographs.

What and how children eat is becoming of interest to various social actors in Poland, not only their parents and grandparents, but also teachers, state administrators, government officials, food producers and marketers, activists. Diverse groups of adults want to influence what and how, when and where children eat. I argue that children exercise their agency and in many intentional and non-intentional ways influence not only these feeding practices, but also how others eat. I will discuss the broader issue of children and food in Warsaw through analysing how and why children change and influence their families' foodways.