McKay School of Education > News > Professors Research Implications of Food Stress on the Family
Professors Research Implications of Food Stress on the Family
Since 1998, Erin Whiting from the McKay School and Carol Ward from the Sociology Department have been traveling together to a Native American reservation in southeastern Montana to conduct research on poverty and food security. For the fifth time, their research is about to be published. The latest article, “Food Provisioning Strategies, Food Insecurity and Stress in an Economically Vulnerable Community: The Northern Cheyenne Case,” is expected to appear in an early 2010 edition of Agriculture and Human Values.
Although being food insecure—not having consistent access to food—is stressful in itself, Whiting and Ward’s article focuses primarily on the added stress that comes with trying to provide food for an entire household when there are not enough resources to do so adequately. In their research, Whiting and Ward explored different food provisioning strategies used by some, such as relying on family and friends, hunting, gathering road kill to eat, church and community assistance, and using government-implemented institutions such as the food stamp program.
Whiting and Ward found that institutional programs, such as food stamps, are more stressful than independent provisioning strategies, such as hunting, even though they often provide more food. Whiting suggested that one reason for the difference in stress is that federal programs are created for a whole nation in mind and do not cater to local economic conditions. Additionally, because the Native American reservation is a rural area with limited infrastructure, it can be difficult to meet requirements and access the benefits from these bureaucratic programs.
Whiting and Ward’s research examines the implications of food stress for households. Whiting explained that families struggling to provide food at home are forced to put other things on the back burner. “It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” she said. Maslow theorized that before human beings can accommodate any other needs, they must first satisfy their physiological demands. From an educational perspective, this means that families are more likely to focus on school when food is assured at home.
Whiting moved to the McKay School of Education in fall 2008 after two years as a visiting professor in the Sociology Department. Whiting received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in sociology from BYU before earning a PhD in rural sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2006. She currently teaches a secondary education class on multicultural education and a master’s level class that addresses education and democracy. Her expertise is in stratification and social class, including the impacts of poverty, race, and ethnicity in society.
19 October 2009