Tabulani and Themba are brothers in their early twenties. They lost their mother when they were very young and it was left up to their father to raise them; he too died suddenly several years later. Since then they have been looking after the family home, in a township outside Johannesburg, along with their older brother and younger sister.
“It is because of our parents that we are responsible and have the skills to run a house,” says Themba, as he attends to a pot of beef and potato soup cooking on a stove. “Since we were children we’ve been responsible for getting food and making sure we eat well and are healthy.”
There are thousands more stories like Tabulani and Themba’s, but they often go untold or unnoticed by the development community. The problem is that “nutrition programmes usually try to impart knowledge on mothers,” says Shawn Baker, director of global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Various social, economic and health conditions, such as HIV and Aids, and more relevantly, ebola, mean that the family as an institution is changing in its structure and function. The mother may typically be seen as the care provider, and the father as the breadwinner or absent from the home, but what happens for instance when it’s the mother who is absent from the home and cannot buy food and cook for her family?
The role of gender in nutrition was an issue raised by a member of the audience at the 1,000 Days Symposium, held by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) back in February.
Panelists agreed that too much of the burden of malnutrition is placed on the mother’s shoulders. So what can be done and is being done to change this? The answer is a combination of innovative product solutions that encourage other members of the family to take up the role of buying the food and effective marketing strategies and efforts to influence behaviour changes.
Over the past couple of years, GAIN has partnered with academics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a project that analysed the impact behaviour change has on infant feed practices in Indonesia. Research showed that jelly and deep fried snacks were popular among mothers and their children aged 12-24 months. It also concluded that parents tend to lack an understanding of what constitutes a balanced and nutritious diet, and that feeding practices are influenced by family and friends. In order to encourage better practices and healthier eating, the project used marketing campaigns that were directed at other people in a mother’s social circle who might bear some responsibility for caring for her child.
“In Indonesia, when we worked on campaigns to raise awareness we used fathers, grandmothers as authoritative figures that can confirm that a sort of behaviour is a good behaviour,” explains Marti Van Liere, director of maternal, infant and young child nutrition at GAIN. “People trust health workers. People also trust people that are close and around.”
Van Liere says that it’s important to use advertising and mass media to establish social norms and to create an idea of what is expected of people. For instance, the use of male actors in adverts can give fathers the impression that they should be more involved in children’s nutrition.
The aim “is to influence the ecosystem around the caregiver - be it a mother or father - to enable them to make the right choices,” she adds.
In Bolivia, the World Food Programme has previously sought to engage fathers in nutrition training. It found that the majority were hesitant at first – the participants perceived the issue of infant health and nutrition to be something that should concern mothers. Like GAIN’s work in Indonesia, the focus of the workshops delivered was on promoting the importance of people in the mother’s social circle getting involved in nutrition.
The more fathers and other family members are encouraged to help out and understand the benefits their involvement can bring to their children’s nutritional wellbeing, the more their role will become a social norm.
An example of how men can be be actively involved in ensuring their children are fed properly is through the use of pre-paid complementary food cards. Olivier Kayser, managing director of Hystra, a consulting firm, authored a report which received support and funding from GAIN, on marketing nutrition for the base of the economic pyramid. Through Hystra’s work, Kayser has found that providing families with pre-paid cards, designed to improve convenience, allowed the responsibility of buying food to fall outside of the mother’s domain.
“It was not part of the daily expense. It was an opportunity for the father to intervene in what the kids were going to eat,” says Kayser. “They were willing to get involved because it was inexpensive.”
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