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The purpose of this paper is to provide knowledge on barriers to preventive action on early childhood overweight in non-western migrant families. It investigates the underlying understandings of the parental role in relation to weight control present in health-care professionals and in families.

The study is based on qualitative interviews with parents who are engaged in interventions aimed at helping them and their children to adopt a healthier life style, and on interviews with health-care professionals.

This study shows that the participating parents, all low SES and living under different forms of insecurity, perceived their parental task for the present as creating well-being for their children, and they were, therefore, reluctant to enforce dietary changes. The health-care professionals, in contrast, considered the need for change through a perspective on future risks.

The results are based on a rather small sample and the link between insecurity, family dynamics and health practice needs further research.

The participating parents represented a group that is rarely included in scientific research and the study, therefore, contributes valuable knowledge on health behavior in ethnic minority families. The empirical analysis provides new insights for health professionals regarding the suitability of the universal model of parental feeding styles. It illuminates the implications of implicitly applying this model in health interventions which involve vulnerable categories of parents such as refugees to western societies.

This chapter contributes to the literature on domestic food provisioning and food insecurity in contemporary Europe, focusing on lone-parent households living with a disability or long-term health condition, either of a parent and/or a child, in the United Kingdom and Denmark. Taking a comparative case approach, it examines parents' strategies to achieve food security through practices of ‘domestic food provisioning’ that draw on resources within and outside the household. Taking account of the multiple layers of context in which provisioning practices are embedded, this chapter identifies factors or mechanisms that enhance or reduce food security for families living with a disability or long-term health condition. At the micro-level of food preparation, these families experience challenges including cooking and requirements for labour-saving equipment, providing meals that meet the needs of selective eaters (often children), the need to rely on their children's help and for outsourced domestic labour through buying ready-made foods. At the meso-level of procurement and ‘physical access’ to shops, transport is crucial, with households experiencing differences in service provision. At the macro-level of national welfare systems and ‘economic access’ to food, this chapter points to evidence that Britain provides insufficient financial provision for those with a disability or long-term health condition compared with Denmark, differences reflected in the depth and rates of poverty and food insecurity between these countries. However, as the cases in both countries demonstrate, welfare benefits provide insufficient financial resources to access adequate nutritious food or meet customary norms.