Virtually every mom knows the exact level of rage that’s triggered when you lovingly place food on the dinner table in front of your children only to be met with a firm, collective, “YUCK.”
Such is the life of the “food parent.”
“The pressure is relentless,” says Dr. Colleen Reichmann, an eating disorder and perinatal psychologist. “In my opinion, it’s endless work throughout every day, seven days a week.”
Reichmann defines the “food parent” as “the parent who is in charge of the majority of the thought and labor that goes into feeding kids, which is everything from planning meals, grocery shopping, thinking about what will work for lunches, packing lunches, making dinners, trying to get creative when you have kids with selective eating … just all of the thought and labor behind all of that.”
Being the food parent is not “just making dinner, which I think people automatically think it is,” she adds.
Not surprisingly, the food parent is most often the mom.
Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play Institute completed a 500 person study with the University of Southern California in 2024 which concluded that women literally take on the cognitive labor (the planning/mental load) for virtually every household task. That includes “food parent” duties like buying groceries, packing lunches, making meals and doing dishes.
Reichmann, a Philadelphia mom of two, has gone through times when she performed all of the food parent duties.
“We try to use feminist partnership values, but I think it just happens if you’re not super careful,” she says. “The way our society is set up, mothers just slide into taking things on without realizing it.”
Though Reichmann has been able to shift toward more of a 50/50 division of food labor in her household, she, like many moms, tends to do the majority of the research behind what and how to feed her kids, which is especially tricky because one is a “highly selective” eater.
“Honestly, for me it’s very upsetting,” she says of having her kids reject meals and request snack foods instead. “I really have to do a lot of self-soothing through making meals.”
When Reichmann posted about the plight of the food parent on Instagram, moms wrote thoughtful responses:
- “This hits home. I was crying last night over my toddler’s not eating/eating minimally at dinner and that mental burden is not shared by my husband.”
- “I feel so seen. The mental hoops I jump through each day to make sure my picky toddler is fed each day is exhausting.”
- “And then throwing leftovers away because no one ate it, no one liked it and you can’t possibly eat this yourself for the next five days straight and there’s no room in the freezer. I cried over it this week.”
- “I’ll add that the ‘responsibility’ for the child’s body size is also primarily placed on the mother. So if you have a child in a bigger body, that’s seen as the mother’s ‘failure.’”
Even if dads were to become the food parent, they likely wouldn’t feel it in the same way moms do.
“If the father does take this all over, it’s still not as big of a burden, because eating issues are so skewed towards women in our society,” Reichmann says. “There’s this simmering pressure. We’re trying to help kids grow and consider nutrients, but not pass on our eating disorders or our eating issues. So you have to do it in a body positive way, but also be really concerned about the nutrients and their health.”
And to top it all off, the current push to avoid processed or prepackaged food places a larger burden on moms to not just fill their kids’ bellies, but to fill them with the “right” kind of food.
It is of course ideal to feed your kids balanced, homemade meals, but Reichmann doesn’t want moms to feel like they are “bad” if they fall short of that very high bar by relying on prepackaged food.
“It starts to feel like it’s just another way to constantly be failing as a mother,” she says.
What should food parents do to lighten the load?
Starting to reallocate food duties can feel overwhelming at best, and it will look different for every family, but Reichmann suggests starting with taking stock of your household responsibilities.
What part of being the food parent feels most triggering to you? Is it the grocery shopping? Coping with your child’s food sensitivities? Dealing with leftovers?
Then see if your partner can take on your least desirable task. After all, it might not be as triggering to them as it is to you.
“Think of it as a really weighted domestic task,” Reichmann says. “If other things have a 10% weight, being a food parent has 70% and needs to be dispersed a bit more.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
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