Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr.
- Nickie Charles
- Date:
- [1988]
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![66 Women, food and families why this practice seemed more common among middle class couples than others. And time was also needed to prepare this more elaborate type of meal and with small children around this is often in short supply. I used to, I can't now, I'd love to do. I often used to do it for special birthdays and things, things I really knew he enjoyed then I would make prawn cocktails to start with, a full three course, I used to love doing that, and a special sweet... we'd have a bottle of wine as well... but now he'd probably turn round and say we haven't got the time or - he puts me off a lot more than I would -1 would probably try and do things myself but it would mean palming the kids off on him while I got cracking, or else eating at 9 or 10 o'clock at night which is really too late. Because of exigencies of time and money these elaborate meals à deux were not a common feature of most of the women's lives. However, affection and caring were expressed through food provision in other ways. Many women bought or cooked food for their partners that was not eaten by other members of the family: I occasionally get him things that he maybe wouldn't think was a treat but things that I know he likes that I don't like like cod roe, you know, I mean they're not dear but... or crab he likes and I don't like it, so I do odd things like that, I wouldn't say they were any dearer but it's things he likes and he eats on his own. I sometimes do a curry for him on a night for a treat; they [children] won't eat it. Or I sometimes make him egg curry pie for his pack up. So often men's preferences were catered for in this way, as a way of'treating' them. But also women gain pleasure from providing food that is enjoyed. As one woman put it: 'I think that if I make a special effort to make something nice it is appreciated - put it that way - and I'd probably partly do it because I know it would be appreciated.' It was very rare in our families for men to prepare and cook special food for women. If men 'treated' women with food or used food to demonstrate their affection it usually took the form of buying sweets or chocolates or, more rarely, taking them out for a meal. This happened, if at all, on women's birthdays or, more usually, on their wedding anni¬ versaries. In fact, many of the women, when asked what they would consider a treat for themselves, told us a meal out would be a treat because they would not have to do the cooking:](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18028706_0079.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
