The Paradox of Healthful Children Who “Do Not Eat”: A Sociological Study on Parenting in Bogota

• Main Author: Jhon Jairo Díaz Benavides
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2016-01-01
• Series: Revista Colombiana de Sociología
• Subjects: el niño que no come; alimentación infantil; crianza; socialización primaria; sociología de la alimentación; sociología de la infancia; sociología de la medicina.
• Online Access: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/recs/article/view/56349

This article is the product of a qualitative study done in Bogotá between August 2013 and March 2015. Thirty semi-structured interviews were done with pediatricians and caregivers of children less than six years old who had been brought for medical consultation because they were “not eating” but who were diagnosed as healthy after the medical examination. The paradox results from the difficulty to explain and understand why some children who “do not eat”, according to parents or guardians, do not show any medical criteria that could be considered as illness. Framed in the analysis model in which Illness, Disease and Sickness are three different but complementary forms, “not eating” is seen as a sociological problem in which the explanatory system of beliefs, guidelines and practices of raising children on the part of the parents or caretakers during the first socialization process marks the beginning and the development of a conflict at the moment of the feeding that ends up as a motive for a visit to the pediatrician. In the same way with other aspects of parenting, eating is a negotiation between various biological and cultural characteristics that can be problematic, causing unexpected clashes between adults and children during the socialization process. Finally, it is seen that that children “not eating” is a problematic manifestation of how society conceives of childhood - in the discourse of rights - and the role of parents, who end up in a crisis of meaning