A qualitative investigation of the issues leading parents and children aged 3-7 years to argumentative discussions during mealtimes

This paper sets out to investigate the issues leading parents and children aged 3-7 years to argumentative discussions during mealtimes. Within a data corpus of 30 video-recorded meals of 10 middle to upper-middle-class Swiss and Italian families with a high socio-cultural level, 107 argumentative discussions between parents and children aged from 3 to 7 years old were selected. The qualitative approach for the analysis is based on the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation. The findings of this study indicate that the argumentative discussions between parents and children during mealtimes unfold around issues that are generated both by parental directives and children’s requests. The argumentative discussions triggered by parental directives mostly concern context-bound activities such as having to eat a particular food or the teaching of correct table manners. The argumentative discussions triggered by children’s requests refer to a wide range of activities, mainly related to the activity of mealtimes, but also related to the children’s behavior outside the family context. The results of this study suggest that argumentative discussions between parents and young children during mealtimes are not mere conflictual episodes that must be avoided, but they have a crucial educational function.