Mealtime emotion work: Gendered politics of care and power at the table

Objective: This study examined how family members managed emotions - or produced emotion work - during family mealtimes and how this affected eating together in contexts where positive feeling rules, such as expectations of feeling happy together at the table, shaped commensality. 

Background: The happy family meal ideology is widespread, but few studies have specifically investigated the way emotions are managed at the table. 

Methods: Based on 90 h of observations and 47 interviews with parents and children in 14 households across France and Australia, this ethnographic study examined emotions during family mealtimes. The data was analyzed using grounded theory. 

Results: Positive feeling rules affected family mealtimes and led the mothers and fathers to produce significant, but different types of mealtime emotion work. The mothers were seen as caring, loving, and patient, whereas the fathers were seen as fun, but also impatient and authoritative. The lower the social class position of the family, the more parents distanced themselves from normative feeling rules—or from the happy family meal ideology—which meant emotions were not moderated as much. 

Conclusion: The type and intensity of emotion work repositioned parents in unequal roles of care and power relationships in relation to each other. 

Implications: The amount and type of mealtime emotion work are key to understanding the barriers and burdens that families face when wanting to eat together.