The Subjectivity Study Of Children's Family Eating Behavior

By applying the methods of quantitative and qualitative research, this paper aims to explore the subjectivity of children's dining behavior and the influences of families in it. By knowing that, it can support the effective strategies for children to form the healthy dining habits.There were 313 children and 304 parents investigated in the questionnaire of "the subjectivity of children's dining behavior in family". By using the quantitative methods to analysis the results of questionnaires, such as multivariate analysis of variances, multiple linear regression analysis and structural equation model analysis, I got some conclusions. The key influence in forming children's subjectivity in dining behavior is adults' attitude and evaluation towards children's dining behavior, for its total effect value is 0.710. Another influence is adults' behavior on educating children's dining habit, for its direct effect value is 0.670. There is one indirect influence which is adults' attitude and behavior towards nutrition, for its indirect effect value is 0.533.In this research, I also designed the activities of wrapping dumplings for children and parents. There were eight children and nine parents observed in these activities, and the observation was focused on the interactions between children and parents. By using the analytic tools, I explored the relationship between children's dining behavior and adult's evaluation, attitude and way of education towards children's dining.I found that adults' exaggerated and guiding attitude and evaluation can increase children's subjectivity in dining behaviors, but adults' inefficient supports and responses or their few attention and low participation will increase the difficulties for the mutual understanding between adult and children, and hinder children's autonomous, active and creative dining behaviors. Based on these findings, I concluded that children formed the unhealthy dining habits due to the lack of intersubjectivity between children and adults, such as adult did not emphasize on building the common experiences with children, adults did not acknowledge children's subjectivity in dining.Based on these results, 1 thought that the building of intersubjectivity between children and adults is the foundation for forming children's healthy dining habits. At first, we should encourage children to participate on the whole dining process and to form the common experiences with adults. Secondly, we should acknowledge children as the subject and cultivate their autonomous, active and creative dining behaviors. Last but not least, adults should not be proud and prejudiced but to respect and understand children during their dining.