The Illusion of Choice: Mothers' Persistent Optimizing to Feed Their Preschool Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mothers play a vital role in providing healthy food choices for their preschool children. This role has become more complex in the present obesity-producing environment that has contributed to the increasing prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity in Canada. Childhood overweight and obesity is a significant public health issue in Nova Scotia where the percentage is higher than the national average. \n\nThe purpose of this study was to generate a theoretical understanding of the process in which 18 mothers living within the Cape Breton Regional Municipality engaged while making food choices for their preschool children. Constructivist grounded theory methodology informed by sensitising constructs from symbolic interaction and the socio-environmental health promotion perspective facilitated a multilevel exploration of the factors that affect mothers’ food choice practices for their preschoolers. Data collection took place over 16 months. Thirty-five interviews were completed. \n\nGrounded theory methods were used to analyze the data and a substantive theory of how mothers made food choices for their preschool children was co-constructed with the participants. The substantive theory, Persistent Optimizing, consists of three main integrated conceptual categories. In the first conceptual category, Acknowledging Contextual Constraints, mothers acknowledged various individual, interpersonal, and socio-environmental contextual factors that hindered their ability to make intended, healthier food choices for their children. In the second conceptual category, Stretching Boundaries, mothers developed and enacted moderating strategies to lessen the impact of contextual constraints, thereby increasing the number of food choices available to them. In the third conceptual category, Strategic Positioning, mothers developed and enacted a variety of optimizing strategies to get them closer to making the optimal food choice for their children in a given situation.\n\nMothers in this study struggled continuously with varying degrees of success to provide the foods they believed their children needed. The findings suggest that in practice, policy, research, and education, community health nurses must work independently and collaboratively at all levels of influence to facilitate, mediate, and advocate for social, economic, and physical environments that improve mothers’ ability to make food choices that promote their children’s health and reduce their risk of becoming overweight and obese.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".