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I’ll just come out and say it:
We rarely eat dinner together as a family.
Our daughter is three and a half and she goes to sleep at 7pm. She eats dinner around 5:30-6 — either with me or the sitter, depending on the day. If I eat with her, I’ll snack on something — but it’s too early for me to eat a full dinner and my husband isn’t home yet at that point.
My husband and I eat dinner together, but it’s often in front of the TV. We both work hard and this is our only time to unwind. I know we should be sitting at the nice dinner table, savoring our food, and discussing our day, but 70% of the time we’re too wound up for that. We eat, watch some TV — usually a show we have on DVR — and then I go back to work for the night. We do have a rule that one or two nights during the week there is no work after our daughter is in bed and on those night we do often cook dinner or get take out and eat it together at the table. Our patterns aren’t ideal, but I do feel that we find other ways to find time to communicate — like while I am cooking and he is cleaning up in the kitchen.
As our daughter gets older, however, I am increasingly stressed out about the fact that we don’t all eat together. I don’t know why. I rarely ate dinner with my parents when I grew up — they both worked late and I ate at my grandparents’, on my own. We’re very close and I don’t feel at all that we lacked something because we didn’t have this tradition of a family meal. But I’ve seen some research that indicates that having a regular family meal has a positive impact on kids as they grow up. And I also like when we all do have a chance to eat together — which we try to do on weekends, for lunch or breakfast.
I realize that as our daughter gets older she will go to sleep later and we will have more opportunities to sit down for dinner together. I am also hopeful that I won’t be working 18-hour days for the rest of my life and I will have more time to invest in a family dinner (and more energy saved up through the day for it). But for now, I feel like I’m failing in this part of my work-life juggle and I am crossing my fingers that letting this slide for a while isn’t causing anyone — like my daughter — any harm. (Good thing I cook semi-frequently — because otherwise I’d compound this guilt with not being able to cook dinner for my family every night.)
Do you usually sit down for a family meal? Is it important to you or do you think that there other ways to bond and spend time together which are equally effective? Am I wrong to not focus on this more? Anyone else out there totally exhausted by the end of the day to sit and talk during dinner?
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Family, Work/Life Balance.
Tags: family dinner, family time, working families
April 10th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
You’re only failing at his part of the juggle if you judge yourself by someone else’s standards. Which is to say that, really, you’re not failing. As your daughter gets older, she’ll be better able to sit through and appreciate a family dinner. Right now, you spend quality time with her in other ways, and that’s good.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Being one of the few working moms in the neighborhood, this issue bugs me as well. My husband is home earlier enough for a family meal one night per week. By the time I get home with my 3 year old son after 5 PM, it’s all I can do to get dinner on the table for him and I. Most nights, my husband is on his own with leftovers or soup and a sandwich. I’d like to think if it wasn’t just me at the end of theday trying to run a load of laundry, spend quality time with my son and put dinner on the table we’d be better off. However, my son and I don’t watch tv and I am halfway through working on adjusting my son’s expectations that once I sit down, I do get to finish my food before getting back up again. I am trying to convince my husband that it would be fun to cook waffles or pancakes as a family on weekend morings.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I’m a new reader of your blog, and I must say that I am thankful to have found you! This topic really strikes a chord with me. I’m a relatively new mom to my 8-month old son. Obviously, we have some time before sitting down to a family meal, but this is something I’ve always hoped to make a priority. But now that I see how our day-to-day lives go, I’m seeing how difficult it will be to accomplish. Along the same lines, I also hope to be able to attend future after-school events, such as athletic games… but by the time we finish our work-day and the commute back home, the game would be over!
It is such a relief to hear your experience and struggles with it - thank-you for sharing.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Great topic. Relax. As long as there’s love and quality time, who cares where and when or whether food/a dinner table is involved. As a child, we ate a “proper” dinner together each and every night and it wasn’t particularly fun. In fact, my father preferred that we not speak at all. So it’s definitely the family dynamic and the love that’s most important.
I really relate to what you say about too tired to have a conversation. Sometimes my husband is talking when we’re at the dinner table and I’m sort of spacing, quite honestly, because my brain needs a break.
Finally, that statistic about families eating together always irritates me. I can only imagine how many working moms have been made to feel guilty when they hear it. (Do you think men are out there agonizing about this stuff? Um, like, none…)
April 11th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Your nights sound EXACTLY like ours. And I also have that gulit (there it is again) about not all eating together. But, also like you, growing up our family dinners were few and far between because everyone was so busy. And I think I turned out okay. And, both my sister and I are VERY close with our family. (Sometimes I think we’re all too close.)
I’ll confess I also let my kids eat dinner in front of the TV. We do it, so I feel lilke I can’t forbid them from going it (at least not with a straight face) - and again, I did it as kid.
I do try to have a weekly dinner where we do sit down together. Some weeks it happens and some weeks it doesn’t. And then there are nights like last night when it was so nice outside we sat together and ate outside. We also go out to eat together, usually about once a week, so that’s a good opportunity too.
I think family dinners are only ONE way to develop closeness and communication in a family. And I think it gets easier to do it as the kids get older - in part because they will be more interested in eating what we’re eating. But I think we are close family even absent the family dinners. I think the guilt on this one comes from all the media on that research. Families are not one size fits all.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
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April 11th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
We do try to have family dinners together on most nights. I go straight home from work and cook, and try to have dinner ready when DH and DS (4yo) come in about 35 minutes later. I find it helpful to have a meal plan and even some things chopped and prepped in advance. With some forethought, you CAN get a good meal on the table in about 30 minutes.
DS recently learned about making toasts and we toast together before eating. Last night he toasted me for making dinner
We find this dinner time to be very special - we catch up on our day, and find that we eat healthier. DS is more likely to try new foods if we are eating them too!
I realize this does not work for everyone, and there are days when I just want to throw on pjs when I walk in the door. But honestly, I put in the effort for the bonding. An added bonus is that while DH puts DS to bed, I clean the kitchen and by 7:30 there is time to truly sit and relax!!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:40 am
I think it’s all in what you make it. In alot of families, “dinner time” is the only time they spend together, so that’s their important family time. Other families’ schedules don’t work like that, but they have their family time in other ways… My schedule differs from week to week, as does my children’s. Some weeks we eat dinner together every night, and other weeks it may only happen 2 or 3 times. On those weeks we may have a leisurely weekend breakfast and “catch up”… As long as everyone spends quality time together and communicates that’s what counts!
April 14th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I’m going to preface my comment with a caveat that this is not judgment about anyone else (including you, Nataly) who does things differently, but just a reply to the question “do you usually sit down for a family dinner?” and an explanation of why we do it the way we do.
I’m a psychologist specializing in kids and families, and I DO feel very, very strongly about the family dinner, for reasons Nataly mentioned above. There is a lot of research that suggests that kids whose families sit down for a communal dinner most nights of the week do better in many areas of functioning, and for me personally, that’s huge. The other thing I happen to feel very strongly about is extremely early bedtimes for young children, i.e. the philosophy of certain pediatric sleep experts who espouse 6-7 p.m. bedtimes. (It works wonders for my girls.)
So, for the past few years (my oldest is 3-1/2, my second is 1-1/2), our family has sat down to eat dinner–together–at 5 p.m. The baby goes to bed at 6 p.m. The toddler goes to bed at 7 p.m. Yes, it’s tough. It’s a total rat-race to get cooking, dinner, bath, and bedtime done in that short a time (worse when the baby was still nursing at bedtime–there was that to fit in, too!). But we did it–every single night.
True, we are able to do it because my husband is lucky enough to have a 10 minute commute; I am home full-time during the days to cook; and my husband and I are both willing to adjust our own preferences (like for dinner at 7, not 5!) to be in line with what our children need at this young age. We do it because family dinner is a top priority for us. And we also assume we won’t have to squeeze it in at 5 p.m. forever; later on, the girls will go to bed later, giving us more flexibility in terms of how late my husband (or I) can work, who does the cooking, what time we eat, etc.
I feel fortunate that we’ve made family dinner work so far. I think it’s good for kids, but it’s one of those issues that is different for every family, and therefore there is no one right way to “do” dinner. Also, it wouldn’t have to be dinner; why not family breakfast instead, if evenings are too crazy? (I know, mornings are crazy too!)
Good luck!
April 15th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Growing up, my family had dinner together at 6pm SHARP - every night. It didn’t matter what friends we dragged along with us (everyone was welcome), so long as we were there at 6 o’clock. We loved having a set time and place to see each other!
I have a 1 year old now, and we eat as a family every night. We have one of those hook to the table high chairs so my son can be part of the family dinner too! I know it can seem hard to find enough time to sit down together, but as families grow up, school activities, teenage jobs, friends, etc. will make it even harder.
Doesn’t it make sense to set a precident now, so that it will be easy to follow later when things are even more hectic?