It's all about the children: a participant-driven photo-elicitation study of Mexican-origin mothers' food choices

Teams of trained promotoras (female community health workers from the area) collected all data in Spanish. Ten Mexican-origin mothers living in colonias in Hidalgo County, TX completed a creative photography assignment and an in-depth interview using their photographs as visual prompts and examples. English transcripts were coded inductively by hand, and initial observations emphasized the salience of mothers' food practices in their routine care-giving. This was explored further by coding transcripts in the qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti.An inductive conceptual framework was created to provide context for understanding mothers' daily practices and their food practices in particular. Three themes emerged from the data: 1) a mother's primary orientation was toward her children; 2) leveraging resources to provide the best for her children; and 3) a mother's daily food practices kept her children happy, healthy, and well-fed. Results offer insight into the intricate meanings embedded in Mexican-origin mothers' routine food choices.This paper provides a new perspective for understanding food choice through the eyes of mothers living in the colonias of South Texas -- one that emphasizes the importance of children in their routine food practices and the resilience of the mothers themselves. Additional research is needed to better understand mothers' perspectives and food practices with larger samples of women and among other socioeconomic groups.Mexican-origin women in South Texas colonias (neighborhoods) have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the U.S. [1], while also maintaining lead roles in their families regarding food and health [2-7]. Existing quantitative studies have provided limited insight into understanding dietary patterns and general food choice for Mexican-origin women/mothers living in a border region like colonias [2,8-19]. Previous work for understanding food-related behaviors among Mexican-origin women interpreted behavior