Children need to acquire new preferences as they mature: eat a wider range of foods, interact with more objects, learn to engage in new behaviors, and be able to adapt to new contexts. French mothers talk of “l'education du goût” (Suizzo, 2004), explaining that children's taste and preferences need to be educated. In this chapter, I focus on the different means parents use to channel and educate their children's preferences, as well as the multiple means of channeling preferences in the food domain.

CATEGORY TEACHING

To channel children's preferences, parents need to ensure that children know the categories to which objects and events belong – children need to learn to label and to evaluate. Parents and other socialization agents often use the fact that they have deciphered the child's preferences to comment on objects, label them, and explain what they are used for and how they are not to be used, and their potential use (e.g., when Meike, at 17;19, points to a doll's stroller and says “auto,” her father responds, “No, this here is your doll's stroller,” Miller, 1979, p. 283).