This book examines the many roles of families in their members’ food access, preferences, and consumption. It provides an overview of factors – from micro- to macro-levels – that have been linked to food insecurity and discusses policy approaches to reducing food insecurity and hunger. In addition, it addresses the links between food insecurity and overweight and obesity. The book describes changes in the U.S. food environment that may explain increases in obesity during recent decades. It explores relationships between parenting practices and the development of eating behaviors in children, highlighting the importance of family mealtimes in healthful eating. The volume provides an overview of efforts to prevent or reduce obesity in children, with attention to minority populations and discusses research findings on targets for obesity prevention, including a focus on fathers as change agents who play a crucial, yet understudied, role in food parenting. The book acknowledges that with the current obesigenic environment in the United States and elsewhere around the world, additional and innovative efforts are needed to foster healthful eating behavior and orientations toward food in childhood and in families.

This book is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, family studies, public health as well as numerous interrelated disciplines, including sociology, demography, social work, prevention science, educational policy, political science, and economics. 

Lori Francis, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State. Dr. Francis is a developmental health scientist with expertise in influences on dysregulated eating behaviors and the development of overweight and obesity in childhood. She is specifically interested in measuring child self-regulation across domains of development as well as factors within the family environment that provide a context for problematic eating and weight outcomes in children. Her ongoing studies examine factors that influence the disproportionate burden of obesity and dysregulated eating in children exposed to poverty and adversity. 

Susan M. McHale, Ph.D., is Director of the Social Science Research Institute and Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Professor of Demography at Penn State. Her research focuses on children's and adolescents’ family roles, relationships, and daily experiences and how these family dynamics are linked to youthdevelopment and adjustment. Dr. McHale’s research highlights family gender dynamics and the role of sociocultural practices and values in youth development and well-being. 

Valarie King, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Human Development and Family Studies, and an Associate of the Population Research Institute, at Penn State. Her research focuses on intergenerational relationships across the life course and their implications for the health, well-being, and development of family members. Dr. King’s most recent work focuses on elucidating the factors that promote the development of strong ties between children and their stepfathers, and the ways in which stepfathers can promote children’s well-being.