Mom-Shaming Hits the Dinner Table

Dr. Colleen Reichmann, an eating-disorder and perinatal psychologist, calls the load the “food-parent” role: the parent who shoulders the planning, shopping, packing, cooking, and emotional stress of feeding children. In her view, it is “endless work throughout every day, seven days a week.”

The 70% Domestic Task

Reichmann, a Philadelphia mother of two, defines the food parent as the adult responsible for

• planning meals that satisfy nutrition and preference demands
• buying groceries within a budget
• packing school lunches that will actually be eaten
• inventing new dishes for selective-eaters
• coping with uneaten food and leftover waste

“It’s not just making dinner,” she emphasizes. “It’s all of the thought and labor behind all of that.”

When Dinner Becomes a Minefield

Reichmann, who once handled every food task herself, says societal patterns push mothers into the role. “The way our society is set up, mothers just slide into taking things on without realizing it,” she explains.

Even after moving to a more balanced split with her partner, Reichmann still does most of the research on what and how to feed her kids-work complicated by one child’s highly selective eating.

“Honestly, for me it’s very upsetting,” she says of nightly rejections. “I really have to do a lot of self-soothing through making meals.”

After she posted about the food-parent burden on Instagram, hundreds of mothers echoed her frustration:

• “I was crying last night over my toddler’s not eating.”
• “The mental hoops I jump through each day…is exhausting.”
• “Throwing leftovers away… I cried over it this week.”
• “If you have a child in a bigger body, that’s seen as the mother’s failure.”

The Cultural Weight on Moms

Reichmann points out that even when fathers take over food duties, they rarely feel the same pressure. “Eating issues are so skewed toward women in our society,” she notes. Mothers carry the worry of passing on their own disordered eating while still stressing nutrients and health, all within a body-positive framework.

Pressure intensifies with the current push to avoid processed foods. “It starts to feel like it’s just another way to constantly be failing as a mother,” Reichmann says.

Lightening the Load

Reallocation looks different in each household, but Reichmann suggests a first step: list every food-related chore, then hand off the task that feels most triggering-whether that is grocery shopping, managing sensitivities, or handling waste.

“Think of it as a really weighted domestic task,” she advises. “If other things have a 10% weight, being a food parent has 70% and needs to be dispersed a bit more.”