Breakfast by Heather Arndt Anderson

Author:Heather Arndt Anderson [Anderson, Heather Arndt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2013-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

Children Learn to Cook

Thanks to convenience foods and packaged mixes, a freshly cooked, hot breakfast was still a possibility for American children, and did not rely on mother’s attention. In the 1920s, advertisements for Aunt Jemima pancake mix appeared in Boys’ Life magazine, but even earlier, Teco’s corn- and rice-based self-rising mix assured boy scouts that the pancakes made from Teco and water were “good as those mother makes at home,” all while conserving precious wheat to “serve the cause of freedom” during World War I.

Teaching culinary self-sufficiency to children began at breakfast. Even if a child was too young to cook his own pancakes, he could pour cereal and milk into a bowl and waddle, sleepy-headed and pajama-clad, to the television. He would not have to disturb his parents, who may be sleeping in on the weekend. By the 1920s, children were certainly capable of pouring milk over their own cereal, as Shredded Wheat proposed in a 1928 ad, with its image of a ruddy-cheeked boy cradling boxes of cereal under his arm with the tagline “Getting his own breakfast.” As of the 1990s, approximately 80 percent of children prepared their own breakfasts—only snacks have a higher rate of child-selection and preparation.51

In 1948, one article noted that “nine out of ten women bring a box of corn flakes or their children’s current favorite ready-to-eat cereal to the table. Mothers find the youngsters like to pour their own or use individual packages when available.”52 Serving the cereal box and empty bowl at the table instead of pouring the cereal in the kitchen and bringing the filled bowl to the table had, until then, been a novelty for housewives, and as was the case of eating in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, the once uncouth habit was eagerly accepted into common custom.

For some mothers, letting children prepare their own breakfasts was not just a time-saver, but an intentional parenting decision. “Even very little children are happy when they think they are useful,” wrote abolitionist and women’s rights activist Lydia Maria Child in 1831. It is probably no coincidence that such a champion for women’s rights should promote putting children to work when it may be of particular service to their long-suffering mothers. Preparing breakfast for a child who is able to help himself does not teach the child independence or life skills, yet many mothers—who would never tolerate a ten-year-old’s request for help tying shoes, for example—continue to make breakfasts that children could easily accomplish on their own. Some mothers felt this did their children a disservice in the long run. “I fail my children if I treat them like guests in their own home,” wrote one woman in a 1988 issue of Working Mother magazine.53 This was particularly true in the latchkey-kid days of the 1980s, when both parents—or the primary caregiver, in the growing number of single-parent households—typically worked outside the home. Average children had to pull their own weight to contribute to the success of the household.

In the 1908 children’s cookbook When Mother Lets Us Cook, the first recipe is for boiled eggs.

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