Meat reduction meets family reality: Negotiating sustainable diets in households with adolescents

Limited research exists on how the transition towards more sustainable eating takes place at the meso-level of family decision-making, or how children and adolescents engage in and possibly influence the process towards more sustainable diets in families. In this paper, we study how public recommendations that encourage reducing the consumption of meat for the benefit of both health and climate are interpreted, negotiated, and acted upon in Danish families with adolescents (aged 15 – 20) residing at home. We use novel methodological stimuli, including vignettes and a visual sorting task, embedded in qualitative, in-depth interviews to elicit data on parents ’ and adolescents ’ everyday meat consumption/reduction behaviours. Findings reveal that a desire to uphold harmony and family cohesion serves as simultaneous drivers and barriers to reducing meat consumption. Further, we identify barriers to change in the gendered work hidden in the tasks of planning the integration of more sustainable, green dishes into the meal repertoires. Implications are drawn for social marketers, marketers, and public policymakers, encouraging these to use insights into family food decision-making processes as a lever to facilitate the needed green transition of diets in family households.


Introduction
For achieving more sustainable societies, family households are key sites for change (Godin & Langlois, 2021).However, sustainability-related consumer behaviour, including decisions about sustainable diets, has most often been studied from an individual decision-making perspective (Davies et al., 2020;Wendler, 2023).Despite recurrent claims that 'the family is the most important consumer buying organization in society' (Kotler et al., 2019, p. 177), research looking into the importance of the meso-level family interaction concerning sustainability is limited (Davies et al., 2020;Scott et al., 2015).Ignoring that the adoption and practice of sustainable behaviour often take place in, and is shaped by, the social context of the household may undermine effective behaviour change strategies (Scott et al., 2015).
Food consumption in families is a pivotal target for interventions given that food is the strongest single lever to attain environmental sustainability and improve human health (Willett et al., 2019).To achieve environmental sustainability in food systems, the EAT-Lancet commission suggested that global consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes must double, while consumption of other foods, such as red meat, needs to be reduced by more than 50% (Willett et al., 2019).Thus, a radical transformation of the food system is urgently needed, which will entail a transformation of food-related lifestyles in many countries.In Denmark, the current per capita consumption of meat (beef, pork, lamb, and poultry) is 1-kg pr.Week, which is twice the amount of the average world citizen and significantly higher than the European average (Baastrup, Friis, & Schou, 2022).National dietary recommendations taking both health and sustainability into account suggest consumption of meat to be more than halved among the Danish population (Baastrup, Friis, & Schou, 2022;Lassen et al., 2020).However, the number of meals containing meat has remained unchanged since 2016 (Kvist et al., 2022), which illustrates the challenge of meat reduction within a 'meat-loving' culture (Hielkema & Lund, 2021).
There are significant gaps in our understanding of everyday food choices and the negotiations that take place between parents and children (MacDonald et al., 2018), especially concerning sustainable consumption, and the more recent request for consumers to reduce their meat consumption to alleviate the consequences of climate change (Willett et al., 2019) as integrated into dietary guidelines, for instance in Denmark (Lassen et al., 2020).To achieve deeper insights into how dietary choices happen in households, results from previous research indicate that we need to consider negotiations, relations, and emotional aspects of family life (Godin & Langlois, 2021;Gram & Grønhøj, 2016).
The objective of this study is to deepen our knowledge of the family as a consumer unit concerning the requested societal transmission of our food system (e.g., Willett et al., 2019) and more specifically, the articulated need to reduce meat consumption considerably in everyday food behaviours (FVST, 2021).More specifically, the aim of this paper is to study (1) how intra-family negotiations and relations play a role in decisions regarding meat-reduced diets in the family, and (2) which role adolescents (15-20y) play regarding sustaining or facilitating a change in meat consumption in their family. 1.1.Background

Family meals as a cornerstone of the sustainable food transition
Particularly when it comes to the family meal, what is consumed in families is a product of negotiations and compromises by family members, parents, and children alike (e.g., Cross & Gilly, 2014;Gram, 2015).Therefore, the extent to which meat reduction and a transition to more plant-based diets will happen in families and, more generally, within food cultures, is likely to also depend on the outcome of such family interactions within the meso-level of food systems, that span from the individual level perspective (e.g., attitudes, norms) through the household (e.g., family roles and dynamics) to proximal (e.g., retail) and distal levels (e.g., culture, legal frameworks) (Boulet et al., 2021).As transforming food systems at the consumer behaviour level by changing dietary practices and reducing meat consumption is a pertinent issue, it is necessary to achieve a better understanding of drivers of families' food-related consumer behaviours related to meat consumption.In this context, although children's influence on the planning, purchase, and cooking of meals has been documented previously (e.g., Green et al., 2021), very little is known about the impact of intra-family roles and negotiations and the role of children and adolescents regarding meat consumption or reduction in the context of mundane family life (Cairns et al., 2013;Godin & Langlois, 2021).However, studies of parents' choice of unhealthy or high-carbon food for their children indicate that sustainability in the realm of the family should be understood in a broader context of care, harmony, and emotional satisfaction which may undermine dietary or climate concerns (Cairns & Johnston, 2015;Ekström, 1991;Fielding-Singh, 2017b).An important reason for producing meals within households is to construct 'home' and 'family' around shared consumption behaviours (DeVault, 1991).In this view, shared food consumption offers ways to create 'cohesion and stronger ties within the family' (Godin & Langlois, 2021, p. 4), or 'feelings of solidarity and bonding' (Belk, 2010, p. 717) between family members.Thus, producing a family meal is a piece of work that constitutes more than type of food.'Foodwork' refers to 'the work of meal planning, food purchasing, meal preparation, and after-meal clean up' (Bove et al., 2003, p. 32) and the invisible work of planning, coordination, and thinking about what everyone would like to eat (Beagan, 2015;DeVault, 1991).Highlighting how consumption is tied to the way we relate and care for each other, this conceptualization suggests that the physical tasks only capture a fraction of the effort and puts forward the essential parts of the invisible thought and care work that is often hidden or unacknowledged when producing a meal (DeVault, 1991;Marshall et al., 2016).

Gender issues in providing (sustainable) family meals
The invisible care practices related to provisioning and cooking food at home constitute a space for gendered work (Godin & Langlois, 2021).Scholars have argued that food is a way for mothers to perform femininity and motherhood and a way to express love for family members (DeVault, 1991;Molander, 2016).Others point out that some women tend to experience everyday foodwork as their personal responsibility and as an unpleasant task (Cairns & Johnston, 2015;Dixon & Banwell, 2004).Despite changes in gender ideology, research still finds that women carry the primary responsibility for foodwork (Cairns & Johnston, 2015;Fielding-Singh, 2017a), while fathers' engagement in foodwork is mostly more supportive acting as 'sous chefs' or helping with shopping, cleaning up or special occasion/weekend cooking (Bonke & Christensen, 2018;Metcalfe et al., 2009).Concerning sustainable behaviour in households, research has drawn attention to a gender-disproportionate responsibility that tends to fall on the shoulders of women (Godin & Langlois, 2021;MacGregor, 2020).Some studies have revealed the gendered and emotional labour required to incorporate organic or local foods into family food consumption (Cairns et al., 2013;Little et al., 2009).It has been argued that such gender and care-related aspects are generally 'silent' (MacGregor, 2020), or have been neglected (Little et al., 2009) in research on sustainable transformation of lifestyles, but they are nevertheless important to uncover to move our understanding of everyday sustainability forward (Cairns et al., 2013), not least when it comes to food consumption, including meat reduction.

Family members' roles in decision-making related to sustainability in the household
Within family decision-making research there has been a shift in perspective from mothers as key decision-makers to a focus on children's influence in family purchases (Howard & Madrigal, 1990;Lindstrøm, 2003).More recently, research on family processes, such as: who initiates negotiations, to what extent do discussions, or conflicts follow, and what are the outcomes of such processes (Gram, 2015;Kerrane et al., 2012), has shown that what is consumed in families is a product of negotiations and compromises by all family members, including children.Children are exposed to and participate in consumption decisions at a young age, and they acquire consumption and negotiation skills early in their lives (Grønhøj & Gram, 2020).In some cases, consumption patterns and knowledge are transferred from children to parents in a process of parental consumer learning (Ekström, 2007), illustrating the significant role of children in today's consumption practices.
With regards to sustainable food consumption in families, some studies have suggested that children and young people may act as catalysts for more sustainable behaviour in 'reverse' or 'reciprocal' socialization processes (Gentina & Muratore, 2012;Singh et al., 2020), while others have argued that children's eating patterns reflect those of their parents (Beagan, 2015) and that influence from parent to child is the dominant direction in establishing (un)sustainable consumption patterns within the family (Grønhøj & Thøgersen, 2017;Matthies & Wallis, 2015, p. 268).However, only a few studies have explored the intergenerational dynamics regarding the establishment of more sustainable consumption patterns in depth.One example is Grønhøj (2006), who showed that consumption behaviours can pass peacefully from one family member to another without much ado.Another is Beagan (2015), who demonstrated how parents display their versions of care both when they support and resist vegetarianism among older children.Carey et al. (2008) noted how parents compromise on ethical beliefs or realign habits to accommodate young children's consumption inputs as a way to maintain good relationships within the family.Children's central role in contemporary family life may explain why their preferences and perspectives are now taken much more into account in questions of what to consume in the family.Thus the terms 'child-centred' and 'intensive parenting' refer to a development where the child is at the centre of family attention and the parent, usually the mother, is supposed to be constantly available and ready to anticipate, interpret, and provide for all children's needs (Hays, 1996).Dixon and Banwell (2004) even suggested that 'children are displacing male adults as the head of the table ' (p. 181).Along a similar line, the term 'negotiation family' refers to a development by which negotiations have become a permanent feature of family life and child-parent relations (Bois-Reymond, 2001;Larsson et al., 2010).However, critics of the idea of a negotiation family have suggested that child-parent relations are still fundamentally hierarchical and unequal (Jamieson, 1998), suggesting that contemporary parents often play down the control they exert over their children (O'Connell & Brannen, 2016;Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989).This view is supported by findings of strong parental control concerning children's eating (Marshall, 2016;O'Connell & Brannen, 2013).These studies bring forward a more pragmatic view on child-parent relations in the context of consumption as there is often a high degree of interdependence between adults and children (Marshall, 2016) and it has been suggested that family food consumption, including children's consumption, may best be understood as 'practices of co-consumption, undermining the idea that the balance of power necessarily resides with one party' (Brannen & O'Connell, 2016, p. 96).Recent research demonstrates how plant-based dietary transitions may be perceived by couples as relationally disruptive since each partner will have to reconfigure how to relate to the other's new eating behaviour (Gregson & Piazza, 2023), which stresses the importance of interdependence in relational consumer contexts.The study by Gregson and Piazza (2023) is based on concepts of flexibility (i.e., how family members adapt to changes) and cohesion (i.e., the emotional bonding between family members), which are key dimensions in Family Systems Theory (Olson, 2011).A moderate level of family flexibility implies democratic approaches to decision-making, where negotiations are open and rules can change.Moderately cohesive relationships balance independence and connection, valuing emotional closeness, togetherness, and joint decision-making while respecting others' independence.These conceptual dimensions are useful for understanding barriers (and facilitators) of dietary transitions including meat reduction in a relational context, such as the family.

Sampling and participants
The findings presented are drawn from in-depth interviews with parents and adolescents (15-20 y) conducted in Denmark.Families were recruited in autumn 2021 via social media (Facebook and LinkedIn) and the authors' networks.We openly proclaimed our interest in food provisioning in families, everyday routines, and perspectives on sustainable food consumption.The focus on meat reduction was not made explicit from the outset as we wanted to gauge the awareness of meat consumption or reduction as a sustainability issue.The recruitment targeted parents, who signed up on behalf of the family through one of the authors or directly through a short survey.Recruitment criteria included having a minimum of one adolescent living at home, and we also sought (and achieved) a variety in the educational and geographic background of the recruited families as well as diverse family compositions (see Table 1).Most adolescents in the families went to high school, while few were full-time employed or spent their last year in primary school including boarding schools.Finally, we included families who consumed meat to varying degrees, and families with some members avoiding meat completely.To carry out this purposive sampling, one participant from each household was asked to complete a short survey before the interviews to record basic background information such as family composition, living area, family size, age of children, occupation, and eating patterns of family members.
In total, we interviewed nineteen mothers (incl.One stepmother), eleven fathers (incl.Two stepfathers), and twenty-six adolescents.In all Note: All participants' names are pseudonyms; 'Boarding school' refers to a Danish independent residential school for pupils between 14 and 17 years old.In 2020/ 2021, 59 % of pupils spent their last year of primary school in boarding schools (UVM, 2022).a The person did not participate in interviews.
but two cases, mothers were our initial contact, and the majority of our adult participants were mothers although a relatively high number of fathers joined the interviews.Despite our focus on adolescents, it should be noted that we often refer to the broader term of 'children' in our findings/discussion section, because siblings proved to be important in the sense that adolescents and parents often referred to siblings in their explanations of food choices and routines.Each family was given a box of luxury chocolate worth 200 DKK as an incentive.

Study design
We used a qualitative, reflexive research design, employing a theorybuilding, abductive approach grounded in data while drawing on central family decision-making literature in an iterative process, in which theoretical concepts were used to sensitize empirical data (Dubois & Gadde, 2002).As an example of this approach, while collecting and analysing data, an ongoing literature search took place to combine and compare with new or unexpected findings.In-depth, individual interviews combined with family interviews were used, which allowed for an in-depth exploration of the priorities and concerns of individual family members while also giving room and access to explore family member negotiations, interactions, and enactments (Grønhøj, 2006;Halkier, 2010).All interviews were conducted by the first author and audio recorded, and they were transcribed verbatim in the original language by research assistants and subsequently checked for accuracy by the first author.Ethical approval was obtained from Aarhus University's Research Ethics Committee (ref. # 2021-0273,142), and informed consent was obtained in writing from all participants with parents approving the participation of children living at home.

Interview procedure
Interviews were held in the families' homes and took place between October 2021 and January 2022.In each household, we conducted three interviews on the same day: in the first interview, parents and adolescents were interviewed together, subsequently, the parents and the adolescents were interviewed separately.Getting participants to talk indepth about mundane, everyday food-related activities can be difficult, and we found that interviewing parents and adolescents together in the first interview helped obtain access, particularly to the youth.For this paper, we used interviews with parents and adolescents together and interviews with parents on their own, which resulted in forty interviews in total.
The interviews followed two different semi-structured interview guides (see Appendix 1).The first interview with parents and adolescents together aimed at providing an overview of the family's food consumption, and families were asked to recall a typical day and talk about their food-related activities during the day.Inspired by Randers et al. (2020) and Verfuerth et al. (2019), participants were then requested to engage in a collaboration task that involved parents and adolescents helping each other sort nine statements on food preferences, values, and principles, such as; 'eating together', 'homemade food', 'price', and 'meat-free days' including also a visual exercise sorting seventeen pictures of different food items and meals (see Fig. 1 for an example and Appendix 2 for an overview of included pictures and statements).The instructions were to sort according to the family members' perception of how well the statements and food items/meals fit with their family's way of everyday eating.This process led to family members articulating tacit understandings of everyday food behaviours that might otherwise be taken for granted to the extent that they were not easy to explain.
The visual exercise was designed based on the Danish dietary advice taking sustainability into account (FVST, 2021), rankings of favourite dishes in Denmark (Hoff et al., 2020), and reports of Danes' food routines and values (Groth et al., 2009;Hesselberg, Skjøt, Grønhøj, & Bech-Larsen, 2021).The exercise was used as a point of departure for a family discussion of different eating behaviours and priorities, while the actual placing of items was not used in the data analysis.In sum, this exercise proved very powerful for making the participants talk about why they ate the way they did and uncover different food preferences within each family.The twenty family interviews took thirty to 60 min to complete.
The subsequent interviews held with parents lasted on average 60 min and sought more depth concerning how the family decided what to eat including how different taste preferences were handled.These interviews began with open questions about everyday family interaction about food.Typical follow-up questions asked participants to comment on whether adolescents or other family members were part of day-to-day activities of foodwork including planning meals.Furthermore, parents were asked to reflect on the term 'sustainability' and its relation to their own family household and food consumption.To facilitate this discussion and bring forward perspectives people may struggle to articulate, posters with current sustainability-related food advice (FVST, 2021) were used as input (see Appendix 3).The final part of the interview focused on child-parent relations, and a vignette highlighting different parenting styles and follow-up questions was used to help participants recall and reveal specific mundane situations relevant to the topic.

Data analysis
Data analyses followed a thematic, analytical approach (Braun & Clarke, 2022).In the first steps, transcripts were read and reread, and all authors, having analysed the same transcripts, met to collectively discuss codes that were used to sort data.The process of coding and the descriptive codes themselves, such as 'individual preferences', 'roles', 'eating together', and 'new food', helped to reduce data content and provided an initial take on what concepts were of analytic interest to the research questions.By rereading coded data, consolidating literature, and writing up the analysis in a recursive process, we developed three themes all exploring central patterns of family relationships and (un) sustainable food consumption to contribute to theory about the role of intra-family negotiations and relations for family decision-making and consumption (Dubois & Gadde, 2002).A collaborative qualitative analysis software (NVivo) was used for organising and analysing the data.

Results
Upholding harmony and cohesion in family foodwork was a central goal for families in our study, also in the question of meat reduction (or not).This was one of the key findings resulting from the abductive, thematic analysis of the data, where three key themes addressing our research questions were elicited, all of which reflected the overarching goal of harmony and family cohesion.The elicited themes were 1) 'Cohesion and the family dinner'; 2) 'Child-centred approaches and family routines; and 3) 'Change as a collaborative effort' (see Table 2).

Cohesion and the family dinner
All families stressed the importance of the daily family dinner as a time when household members would sit down to 'check in' on each other in otherwise busy and separate everyday lives without much contact, especially with older children due to activities outside of the home.In some families, dinner would be the only time during the day the family would gather.For David, a divorced father of two boys aged 16 and 19 (F17), dinner was used to overcome 'teenage isolation' in the family context.David expressed his openness to new types of food and suggestions from the sons: 'If the boys suggested it [legumes] then I would always be game for trying it with them.'For David, the critical point was not the type of food but instead to spend time with the family.Nearly all parents showed this kind of openness to specific food choices if it was for the greater good of fostering close familial relationships.Making adaptions and giving individual attention were clearly a part of constituting the family as a group, and for 19-year-old Ida, her mother, and her stepdad (F5) it meant eating beef more regularly.They ate beef from time to time to 'maintain family peace' since the older brother, who lived with them part-time, did not want to eat vegetables for a whole week.Or in that case 'he would probably leave for daddy's place', Ida, the daughter, explained.A similar situation was described by Diana, a mother of three:

'Sometimes the older sister [who moved out of home] calls home and asks:
"Mum what are you having for dinner tomorrow?""We are having x and y", I would say and then she might not want to come for dinner anyway, but then I ask her what she would like and tell her "We change the menu and then you come home and eat with us!' (Diana, F4) The older sister liked eating beef when she visited the family.Ignoring these individual preferences towards beef would have severe, negative consequences for family cohesion in very tangible ways and the families were not prepared to risk that.Therefore, it became highly important for the families to adapt and keep the family together.
More typically, however, parents, and mothers in particular, spoke of their willingness to be flexible in less tangible ways.They spoke about the challenge of maintaining harmony and satisfying family members' diverging food preferences at the same time.This issue was raised in relation to more sustainable and healthy food choices including meat reduction, fish, vegetables, and legumes.'It has bothered me that I was not able to give Stephanie [the 18-year-old daughter] more of the green food she wants' Marianne (F13) said.The reason Marianne felt unable to provide more of the green food was due to concerns for the younger sister who would only eat 'traditional' food.Karen, a single mother of two daughters aged 17 and 18, expressed a similar experience: 'We talk about meat, and it can get a little … we stand at different positions so to speak.One of my daughters wishes to avoid meat and instead eat more fish due to climate concerns, and the other one does not want to avoid meat whatsoever'.(Karen, F11) Hence, Karen found herself in a dilemmaa desire to reduce meat consumption due to climate concerns and to satisfy one of her daughters and at the same time wanting the family to share meals all three together.She imagined a situation: 'I know if I cook a dish with fish, one of my daughters would not eat any of it and that is like … It would not destroy the harmony as such she would simply go for bread instead, but I do not think that would be nice for any of us'.(Karen,F11) The examples above demonstrate that family cohesion in different forms could be one potential barrier to implementing more sustainable Shared dinners did provide an important symbolic terrain, used expressively by the family members to communicate, build family relationships continuously, and show care for each other.When individual family members changed their food or meal preferences, it constituted a challenge to the fragile family meal 'equilibrium' and to the practice of shared dinners, and it was therefore seen as a potential threat to family harmony and cohesion.

Child-centred approaches and family routines
The details of everyday mealsthe dishes that families typically eat, the times that families eat, and the distribution of labourare often accommodated to children's preferences and their daily schedules.Our findings demonstrate how child-centred approaches to parenting both challenge and drive changes towards more sustainable consumption.

Child-centred approaches as a barrier for change
Some parents talked of making smaller adaptions to the meal to satisfy children and accommodate their preferences, such as adding bread to the meal or leaving out onions from the meat sauce.Others talked about more extensive adaptions such as serving two different dishes for the same dinner or avoiding specific types of food such as fish solely because children did not like eating it.Finally, some parents talked about completely child-designed meals, 'we always start out by asking our daughter what she likes for dinner because the two of us eat everything', one father explained (Eric, F7).And Tina (F1), a single mother of two sons aged 10 and 16, said: 'Sometimes I cook something for you [to son] that I do not even like eating myself.Sausages for example' -'or patty shells', the 16-year-old son responded (Tina and Casper, F1).
The child-centred approach to food induced parents to consume in ways that followed children's tastes and wishes, and for some of the families that was a driver for change in a sustainable direction while for others, the child-centred approach made it difficult to introduce new foods or dishes and to change family food consumption.Parents, for whom it was a challenge to implement new and more sustainable food behaviours, often reported unintended consequences of child preferences to sustainable eating in the sense that children themselves did not consider how their preferences contradicted a change towards more sustainable eating.Diana, the mother of three with a 19-year-old son living at home, explained how they would always ask their son if there was something he would like for dinner and the typical answer would be 'lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise, steak, or chicken' (Diana, F4).Diana stated firmly, 'he would never suggest meat-free dishes,' and when asked about the food situation when the son moves out, she said: 'More fish will go on the table, and we are probably replacing spaghetti bolognaise for other dishes with vegetables because he does not really want that'.(Diana, F4).A similar situation was expressed by Ellen, a mother of two, who tried to serve lentil soup and other meat-free dishes without much success, 'you [to son] and your sister mostly like traditional dishes such as minced beef steak or meatballs' (Ellen, F6).Ellen predicted a 'paradigm shift' with more dinners in the city and more green salads at home when the children move out.Often children did not explicitly oppose the food.As a mother of three children between 13 and 18 explained: 'It is not because the children complain.They would never do that.But of course, they eat less so sometimes I adapt a little' (Elisabeth, F12).The mother reflected further on the children's influence and explained how her husband, who most often prepared dinner, also adapted: 'He is like "oh our daughter likes this so I will try to cook it".Parents did not force food choices on children and especially not on older children, instead it became their job to serve something the children found desirable and wanted to eat by themselves.The child-centred eating behaviours, including the desire to satisfy children, spread joy, and make sure children had adequate amounts of food to eat, were key challenges for families when pursuing change in a more sustainable direction.

Child-centred approaches as a driver for change
On the flip side, parents also talked about children as initiators or key reasons for implementing new types of more sustainable food in the family context.Linda, a mother who ate mainly vegetarian with her family, explained how things changed: 'We have always eaten lots of vegetables, but before our oldest daughter became vegetarian five years ago, we were not aware that we consumed 'We learnt how to be in the 'vegan world' without breaking down the family, because I decided, when my oldest daughter became vegetarian, that we would support her and cook with that in mind'.(Teresa, F20).'Our son found a video where they make pasta carbonara with blended white beans.We watched it together, ready to cook, but I made sure the night before that we had all the ingredients'.(Vivian, F18) A green suggestion needs to be supported by adolescents to be successful.
'I had like to eat more fish and if I cook it, they will smile and eat nicely but it would still be my project.They would not be excited and that limits the desire to pursue it, right'.(Elisabeth, F12).'If our daughter suggested meat-free days, I am sure we would adapt and find it interesting.
[…] If I suggested it, I would be outvoted right away by the children' (Ellen, F6).
meat every day for dinner.But something happened when she became vegetarian, and thanks to her we changed'.(Linda, F14) While children in some families, as discussed, opposed the introduction of new and more sustainable ways of eating, interviews also indicated that children had introduced new food products (e.g., legumes) and new ways of eating.Some parents described how children had turned to become vegetarians or suggested new and more sustainable foods when they returned from boarding school, for example, the married couple Rebecca and George: 'Our son asked if we could eat more legumes because he was used to that from boarding school, and we thought: good idea!''(Rebecca, F9), and a mother described how her daughter 'did not come back with new suggestions but rather new demands for eating more green salads,' (Marianne, F13) and she credited the 17-year-old daughter for 'driving the family's increased consumption of legumes'.In those families, children did not prepare green dishes themselves, but they clearly had an influential role in changing family diets and in making their parents adapt to their wishes or 'demands'.Two brothers described the change process in their family, and they illustrated how vegetarian eating was peacefully passed on from one family member to another starting with the children: 'Meat has slowly been phased out.In the beginning, our oldest brother cooked a separate vegetarian dish, while the rest of us ate meat, and then slowly when my middle brother also became vegetarian, we simply ate less and less meat and then it was easy for me to become vegetarian too (…) and half a year after our oldest brother became vegetarian the family only ate meat once a month, as I remember'.(Daniel,17,F3) Their mother concluded: 'Now we have been eating primarily vegetarian for 6-7 years'.(Susan, F3).Thus, when children's preferences implied less meat or more vegetables and legumes, the child-centred approach did give rise to a change in family food consumption in a sustainable direction.

Change as a collaborative effort
Throughout our interviews, we were struck by the struggle and frustration parents felt concerning planning meals and getting new ideas for food.Many participants described a handful of dishes for which they went back for the lack of anything better.As Kate stated, 'I think it is difficult to come up with new ideas and we get stuck with the same things' (Kate, F8).The data indicated that much of the invisible thought work required to plan meals, come up with new ideas, and implement new ideas was often characterised by gendered work.Women in our study revealed doing more of this labour and found it rather stressful, while men more often contributed to shopping, cooking, and cleaning.For example, a 19-year-old son stated that when his mother asked for help: 'only one out of ten times me or dad have ideas'.(Oliver,19,F8).His father added: 'I tell Kate [the mother] that I cook if she comes up with ideas.But I am sure she would like someone to share this task with, but I am just not good at it.'(Michael, F8).Kate replied: 'Yes -because I think it is difficult to come up with ideas too' (Kate, F8).

And a single mother stated:
'To come up with ideas that is the worst!If my daughters just prepared a meal plan, I would gladly cook it' (Karen, F11).
In some families, women felt more or less 'left' with the demanding task of planning and coming up with (new) ideas, 'usually, there is no one to ask for ideas because they are out and about,' one of the mothers reported (Joan, F19).Some of the participants spoke about roles in relation to sustainable eating.For example, Marianne elaborated on the situation when their daughter 'demanded' less meat and more salads: 'While my husband stood there with his meat and gravy dishes, he could not manage to implement rich salads.Peas and similar was what he came up with' (Marianne, F13).
It became Marianne's job to implement new styles of food with less meat and more vegetables.Similarly, Mary explained how she cooked many vegetables and reduced meat consumption while her husband cooked more 'traditional' food (F16).Martin, her husband, clarified: 'I would like to cook more green food with less meat, but I tend to go back to old habits.But I do try to use more beans and lentils though' (Martin, F16).
To overcome 'old habits' and try out new ideas many parents emphasized the role of children as initiators or sources of inspiration.One mother reported: 'Our son suggested eating more beans and then I try to implement it and "take it on my shoulder" so to say' (Rebecca, F9).
And Joan recalled a situation with her daughter: 'Suddenly, Agnes wanted to eat healthier so she bought lots of haricot beans, but she did not really want to eat them herself so I tried to Google to see how we could make something delicious, and I tried to cook them in the oven'.(Joan, F19).
Despite shared tasks of cooking and shopping, it tended to be the mother's job to implement such new ideas.Implementing children's ideas or wishes was often difficult and parents looked for guidance.As expressed by the mother, Elisabeth: 'After our daughter became vegetarian, my husband asks her very much for help to cook or to come up with ideas, "I do not have the imagination," he says.But most often our daughter replies: "It is a bad time right now'''.(Elisabeth,F12) This family wanted to eat more vegetarian to accommodate their daughter, but the parents struggled to implement it, and there was little help from the daughter.The interviews illuminated how carrying out change and implementing new and more sustainable ways of eating in families involved collaboration between family members where children were often initiators, while parents, and most often mothers, carried out the work of transforming and implementing suggestions and ideas into everyday consumption.Parents were often aware of roles and dynamics within the family and some of them openly discussed the way children were heading the table.For example, Ellen, one of the mothers, said: 'If one of the children came home and suggested less meat, I think we would adapt.But if I suggested it, I would be outvoted right away'.(Ellen,F6).
A similar thought was expressed by the couple, Jane and Eric (F7): Jane: 'If our daughter came home to say, "I would like two meat-free days a week," her dad would be like "We do that sweetie!".Eric: Or 'if Jane suggested it with support from our daughter, I think we would do it too'.However, if one of them suggested it without support from the daughter 'then it is a failure for sure!', they explained.

Discussion
In the current study, a family approach was used to explore how intra-family negotiations and relations play a significant role in meat reduction with a special focus on the role of adolescents (15-20 y).The findings highlight several critical issues that either constrain or enable change towards more sustainable, meat-reduced eating in family households.
First, shared dinners retain their importance in contemporary family life (Holm & Andersen, 2022) even though fast food, eating alone, eating in front of television, and eating on the run generally comprise increasing shares of food consumption (Hoff, Stamer, Madsen, Strømsted, & Liebst, 2021;Kvist et al., 2022).We find that shared dinners provide an important symbolic terrain that marks familial caregiving and is used expressively by the family members to communicate and build family relationships continuously.Thus, the family dinner plays an important role in establishing cohesive relationships within the family by counterbalancing family member's separate lives outside of the home.However, new individual preferences held by parents or children toward more sustainable eating constitute a challenge to the fragile family meal 'equilibrium' and it is seen as a potential threat to family harmony and cohesion.To avoid disharmony and/or conflict, a process of adaption takes place towards a new family meal 'equilibrium' that incorporates the new green preferences.Thereby, individual preferences are transferred and become part of the family's dietary behaviour which demonstrates a certain level of flexibility where 'rules' can change based on open negotiations in the family.However, we also find that individual preferences towards sustainable eating are withdrawn or toned down to minimize disharmony and to show consideration for other family members.In those cases, change towards more sustainable consumption is hindered for the time being since cohesion is prioritized against flexibility.As demonstrated by previous research, sustainable consumption preferences and behaviours challenge household communication (Grønhøj, 2006) and can bring family members into moral dilemmas (Heath et al., 2014;Longo et al., 2017) or be a source of tension (Beagan, 2015).Our findings contribute to this line of research in that harmony and family cohesion, as embedded in shared dinners, are challenged when individuals change their preferences towards sustainable eating.The desire to maintain harmony and family cohesion, therefore, acts as an important mechanism in change processes towards more sustainable eating in family households.
Second, while foodwork involves making distinctions between individuals in the family and personalizing their meals (DeVault, 1991), the degree to which we find the act is child-centred is somewhat surprising and articulates a strong intensive parenting ideology (Hays, 1996).Parents have a desire to accommodate children's preferences and while some parents did not recognize an adaptation to children's preferences, they all revealed some degree of attention to children involved in decision-making, when describing their everyday routines.Conceiving everyday meals as child-centred and embedded in harmony follows extant research, which reports an intimate and intricate relationship between food choices, 'good parenting', and intergenerational caregiving (e.g., Cairns et al., 2013;Moisio et al., 2016).This study contributes with new empirical evidence on the links between child-centred dietary choices and the change towards more sustainable eating.The findings suggest that older children play a crucial role in transforming family eating in a more sustainable direction.Counter to Godin and Langlois's (2021) suggestion that mothering and care work act as barriers to the establishment of more sustainable consumption practices at the household level, our data shows a twofold relation.Adolescents who prefer familiar dishes with well-known ingredients such as rice, beef, pasta, and chicken, tend to hinder change directly by objecting to new types of food, or more likely, indirectly by parents' desire to accommodate children's perceived wishes and bring happiness to the table.On the other hand, families who change eating behaviour in a more sustainable direction, do so based on adolescents' wishes to consume less meat and more legumes and vegetables.Whether adolescents prefer meat reduction or not may reflect more widely the social, and youth environment they take part in, since peers are found to be essential in forming children's (healthy) food preferences (Ragelien ė & Grønhøj, 2021).It is seen as crucial to young people's feelings of social belonging and self-acceptance to be 'cool' and 'fit in' (Pedersen & Gram, 2018;Pedrozo, 2011) and to construct both collective and individual identity through consumption (Kjeldgaard & Askegaard, 2006).In some cases, concern for the environment appeared to be part of the reason for changes in family consumption, but in general, environmental consequences did not seem to play a major role.Instead, we identify how the very same desires, that is, satisfying children's needs, upholding harmony, and bringing the family peacefully together, drive changes in family consumption.The key here is that the same underlying dynamics seem to be in play no matter whether adolescents prefer meat-reducing diets or not; parents seek to strengthen family cohesion by listening to children's preferences.Thus, this paper demonstrates how child-centred approaches to food serve as simultaneous drivers and barriers to changing food consumption in a more sustainable direction, and we suggest that children act as important 'gatekeepers' in transforming ways of eating at the household level.
Thirdly, our data illuminate how successful change towards more sustainable ways of eating involves collaboration between family members.Older children often act as initiators while parents, and most often mothers, carry out the work of transforming and implementing suggestions and ideas into everyday consumption.Contrary to previous research suggesting that sustainable consumption behaviour in families takes the form of either a 'reverse' socialization process (Singh et al., 2020) or with parents influencing children (Matthies & Wallis, 2015), we find a strong interdependence between parents and children in the implementation of more sustainable eating behaviour in a process of co-consumption (O'Connell & Brannen, 2016).In line with this, Kerrane et al. (2012, p. 829) argued that 'siblings and parents themselves are often co-opted into the influence process as important co-actors' helping to ensure the success of children's influence 'attempts'.The idea of co-consumption in which parents and children take on distinct but cooperative and interdependent roles to establish new consumption behaviours contrasts more competitive, persuasive, or conflict-ridden approaches to understanding the intra-family transfer of consumption behaviours.
Finally, we identify how a disproportionate distribution of the planning work challenges the transformation to more sustainable food consumption in families.While it could be argued that gender equality is relatively high in Denmark (EIGE, 2021) with Danish parents to a high degree sharing the task of visible foodwork (Grønhøj & Gram, 2020;Philippe et al., 2022), the findings still indicated that much of the invisible thought work required to plan meals, to come up with dishes, and to implement new ideas were often characterised by gendered work.Existing research argues that private-sphere environmental behaviours are a gendered territory (Godin & Langlois, 2018;Murphy & Parry, 2021).While the deployment of sustainable technologies can lead to 'more work for father' (Strengers & Nicholls, 2018), household sustainability, including green eating, is more likely to disrupt women's lives and create 'more work for mother' (Dzialo, 2017;Mackendrick, 2014).Recent research indicates that domestic foodwork responsibilities are part of today's cultural expectations for men in the Nordic countries (Neuman, 2016), with fathers being highly involved in feeding their young children (Grønhøj & Gram, 2020;Philippe et al., 2022).Our findings contribute with new knowledge on the notion that the work needed for implementing a green transition at the meso-level of family households is gendered, but it also remains hidden in the demanding tasks of planning and preparing new and more sustainable dishes that satisfy all family members.

Practical implications
The findings from this research carry important implications for public interventions, social marketing, and marketers that aim to encourage consumers to model sustainable eating behaviours.Our participants were largely aware that meat consumption should be reduced to achieve environmental benefits.However, our research highlights the need to understand the family as a consumer unit for whom social relations and cohesion are driving forces.We note that collaboration and sharing (e.g., eating together, cooking together, exchanging ideas) resonated with our participants which may represent a possible theme for future sustainable eating initiatives.Instead of public policy and interventions that tend to draw on individualistic approaches (Shove, 2010), links to the social dimensions of food may prove beneficial in the promotion of sustainable eating campaigns.Further, if plant-based foods are conceptualised and marketed as a way for bringing the family together people may be more receptive to trying them.Another opportunity to support intra-family collaboration is interventions targeting fathers (e.g., Moura, Grønhøj, & Aschemann-Witzel, 2023).Such interventions could open the door to a renegotiation of food responsibilities in the home and provide new skills and interests which can lead to change towards more healthy and sustainable food consumption.Finally, this paper highlights older children's potential for facilitating sustainable eating behaviours by acting as initiators or 'gatekeepers' at home.For our young participants, food programmes in school proved to be an important source of inspiration for new green ways of eating and therefore strongly support educational institutions' environmental awareness.This is an important message for both policymakers and educational management.

Future research and limitations
In this paper, we capture the dynamics at play between family members concerning changing diet in a more sustainable direction by representing the multiple voices within the family unit.The family approach we put forward here contributes by supplementing the research on food consumption and sustainability that occurs on a microlevel dominant perspective with meso-level perspectives (Davies et al., 2020;Jamieson, 2016).However, based on our findings, we recognize that future research would benefit from examining more closely fathers' motivations, experiences, and difficulties of changing family food consumption in a more sustainable direction.Another opportunity for future research is to broaden our limited focus on meat reduction and thereby understand how intra-family relations and harmony impact other sustainability-related family behaviours, for instance, transport or energy use.Future research, using a more targeted approach that focuses on families who are attempting to manage a green dietary transition could potentially provide even richer details about how such change processes unfold, including insights into how family cohesion versus flexibility may moderate such dietary shifts (cf.Gregson & Piazza, 2023).Lastly, we examined lower-middle-to upper-middle-class families in one country: Denmark, and with most parents having a higher education.Dynamics around food consumption may differ across social class and countries, especially outside of Scandinavia which is of particular relevance for this study as Denmark is the country with the highest percentage of mothers in the workforce (>80%) (OECD, 2016).Therefore, the gendered practices in foodwork may be less pronounced in Denmark.Future research should, therefore, explore meat reduction in families across geographies, educational backgrounds, and family characteristics, including LGBTQI + households who are not represented in this study.

Conclusion
This study contributes with new knowledge of barriers and drivers of transforming family food consumption in a more sustainable direction, exploring how requirements of meat reduction are handled in the context of family decision-making.In Danish family households, the extent to which families engage in meat consumption or reduction depends on intra-family negotiations and relations that go beyond individual preferences and environmental concerns.Family food consumption is driven by the desire to uphold harmony and family cohesion with a special attention to children's preferences.Therefore, children act as important 'gatekeepers' to change household food consumption in a sustainable direction, while parents, and most often mothers, carry out the demanding tasks of transforming and implementing new green preferences, including meat-reduced dishes and ideas into everyday consumption.When family households succeed in reducing their meat consumption, this is a result of collaboration between parents and children.

Table 1
Demographic details of participants.

Table 2
Meat reduction in families: Honouring harmony and family cohesion.Theme 1: Cohesion and the family dinner ExamplesThe family dinner unites the family.'It is important for us to eat together so we wait for one another and eat late.Eating together is a "safe space" for us'.
'We have several days without meat, but it is not because we think about meat as such (Julie (18 y)).We are getting better at reducing meat.Or more correct, you [to Julie] are getting better, and you are so good at cooking without meat' (continued on next page) J.Hesselberg et al.