Mother’s Day Special: On Eating, Love and a Little Loss of Control

What is it like to raise a “fussy eater”? When children refuse to eat properly, what are mothers really anxious about?

This special Mother’s Day episode starts with “fussy eaters” and goes far beyond picky eating, feeding strategies and menu design – into generational memory, women’s labour, intimate relationships and self-identity. Three mothers trace a journey from the childhood trauma of eating nothing but dumpling wrappers, through a moment of breakdown over a single rice ball, to the “binge-eating rebound” of adolescent children, collectively unpacking the complex emotions behind the simple act of eating. Perhaps the question was never just about whether the child will eat, but about how we learn to live alongside uncertainty, failure and expectation in the act of raising a child.

This is not merely a story of culinary self-improvement – it is a deep conversation about the pressures of motherhood and women supporting one another. You will hear how mothers play “anthropologist” in restaurants, conducting fieldwork; how they find an escape from the anxieties fuelled by social media and expert advice; and, above all, how they feed themselves before looking after that “fussy eater”.

01:26 Mother’s Day – why are we talking about “fussy eaters”?

02:35 A child who only ever ate dumpling wrappers – memories and wounds spanning thirty years.

03:44 Is a child’s pickiness mere stubbornness, or a sensitive gift for recognising “good flavour”?

09:25 Juggling work and children in Singapore: when the “rice ball experiment” flops and your husband couldn’t care less, a mother’s breakdown is just a step away.

13:41 Surely they’ll grow out of it? Not a chance! The sweet burden of a teenage boy who eats “three dinners a day”.

19:14 Cooking is not just physical labour – it is also invisible emotional labour and expectation management.

22:52 How does “scientific feeding” manufacture anxiety? The fear ruled by growth curves: that kitchen scale weighing every vegetable and the falling percentage.

34:06 Generational inheritance: why did my mother forbid me from the kitchen yet expect me to carry on her cooking tradition?

42:00 Mothers’ guilty little wish: when the children are out, we can finally eat a meal with a bit of heat in it.

51:53 Why do tomatoes taste like rubber nowadays? How industrialised ingredients affect children’s appetites.

62:09 Perhaps the meaning of cooking is not to coax one more mouthful from your child, but to pass on a feeling of being loved.

63:45 Even Lu Xun used to sneak children’s pastries! Only by feeding yourself well can you become a good mother.