Browsing by Author "Forgeson, Willow"

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    Mothers, meal kits and morals : creating good eaters, being a good mother and reimagining the good daughter in Aotearoa : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Forgeson, Willow
    The use of meal kits in family foodwork is an increasing phenomenon in Aotearoa and not since supermarketisation has there been such a significant change to the food provisioning system. As a popular food procurement option, meal kits inevitably interact with the enduring entanglement of mothers and family foodwork. I use this significant change in how families are fed to explore the everyday work done by mothers as they navigate the moral meanings of being a good mother and a good daughter. Drawing on extensive autoethnographic practice, coupled with participant observation and co-constructed interviews with five other mothers, I use thematic analysis that positions the everyday experiences of women as integral to understanding the moral work done by mothers when using meal kits to feed their families. This research asks the previously unexplored question of how morally informed ideas of goodness affect the way mothers incorporate meal kits into their everyday foodwork. The importance of the intersubjective identities of mother and daughter, the need to provide competent care to children, and the contradictions present in what being a good mother means, in the context of women’s own lives and wider Western society, are highlighted in my research. I argue that the intersection of the new phenomenon of meal kits with the perennially intertwined morass of motherhood, morals and foodwork is a space where the continuation of gendered foodwork, the resistance to and reproduction of good mothering ideology and the transmission of moral practices across generations is found.