A few people mentioned family dinners in recent comments and it got me thinking about Family Dinners in general. I love learning about the things we all do (in this case, eat meals), but do in such different ways, depending on our families’ needs and priorities.
I would love to know about your own Family Dinner interpretation. Or if not “Family Dinner,” then whatever mealtimes look like in your family. What were evening mealtimes like when you were a kid? What are they like now? What are the top benefits you reap from your family’s way of doing things?
When I grew up, family mealtimes happened, but not daily. I seem to recall Sunday dinners in particular taking place around the table, but there must have been others that we ate together as well. Although now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know how that would have been possible during the week. My parents both worked full-time, and I’m pretty sure my dad came home on the late side most nights. Could it be that we only ate together on the weekends? No matter how often they happened: I have a fuzzy but warm feeling toward Family Dinners, and a general feeling that they were A Thing when I was growing up.
My brother and I each had a nanny when we were kids (we were so far apart in age, we had separate nannies), and I remember clearly his nanny making us dinner. She made this dinner of sauteed canned salad shrimp with carrots and celery sliced on the bias that I loved. I… do not think I would love it now. But I am assuming that she made food for me and my brother, and that we ate it together before our parents came home from work. I will have to check with my mom whether that’s true.
I also remember my mom making lots of wonderful things. Fried chicken, pot roast, a pasta dish with ground beef, corn, and Velveeta that we called “seashells,” tacos, soups. When I was about ten, I made spaghetti or tacos for our family once every week or so. Most Fridays, we ate pizza – for a long time, my mom made it herself but then at some point we switched over to Pizza Hut pizza, which my father brought home in fragrant grease spotted boxes. We ate pizza in front of the TGIF line-up on ABC.
As I mentioned the other day, I ended up eating fast food on the nights I had extracurricular activities. That really ramped up in high school – I can’t remember my exact schedule, except that I am pretty sure I always had piano on Tuesday nights at around 6:00 and I had cheerleading most days after school. (I also remember scarfing down fast-food tacos or nachos at a friend’s house after practice and then going home and eating dinner. Ah, to have the metabolism of a high school cheerleader.)
What I’m trying to say is, I both have fond memories of family dinners and understand how other priorities (work, extracurriculars, convenience) can reduce the number of nights available to eat together as a family, or eliminate them entirely.
Family Dinners have so many potential benefits. For me, the top three are:
- Gathering for a meal as a family allows every family member to interact – without distractions! – and share Quality* Time together. (*Your level of Quality may vary.)
- Meals together allow for important modeling of things like conversational flow, happy disagreement, table manners, etc.
- Eating as a group typically means everyone eats the same meal, which can help picky eaters try new foods and show how other family members deal with foods they don’t love.
Despite the purported benefits, we don’t do a lot of Family Dinners in my house. Part of me feels a little guilty about this, but the reality is that families are different, and do things differently, and that’s okay.
Dinners in our house typically look like this: I make Carla something to eat around 5:30 and then I sit with her at the kitchen counter while she eats. Sometimes I read to her (by the way, we finally finished Where the Red Fern Grows, which I delayed based on your kind warnings, and Carla was completely unaffected. I, on the other hand, had to strenuously suppress my gasping tears so that I could read audibly. Carla kept eyeing me, trying to figure out if I was crying, or just really doing a bang-up job voicing the main character, who was definitely crying.), sometimes we chat, sometimes we listen to Kid Nuz or Wow in the World on our Echo. Once in a great while I will eat with her. Then she showers and goes to bed. Once her bedtime routine is over, which is usually around 8:00 or 9:00, my husband and I eat together in front of a TV show.
Weekends, we often eat dinner together in front of a TV show or movie. (We are watching Junior Baking Show right now and it is just as charming as Great British Baking Show.)
When family is staying with us, we tend to do Family Dinners almost every night. It’s nice in some ways… there’s something pleasant about the ritual of getting everything on the table, and sitting together and being forced to talk to one another instead of look at a screen. But it also reminds me of why I don’t love it: the table has to be set and I use way more serving dishes and there’s so much more clean up afterward. (It’s so small and stupid, but I absolutely hate dealing with place mats or tablecloths.) Plus, people often get out their phones after they’re done eating and sit at the table and stare at their phones, which drives me bonkers. Plus plus, finding a time for all of us to eat together means that my husband has to rush home, often bringing home work to do later in the evening; that he has to skip exercising, which is important for his mental and physical health; and that Carla is often awake much later in the evening than she should be. It’s fine, because it’s for a short duration. And sometimes – over holidays, for instance – things like work and school-night bedtimes aren’t a factor. Maybe if eating together at the table every day were already a habit, it wouldn’t feel like such an ordeal. But it does feel like kind of an ordeal.
I admit that I’m a little envious of people who sit down nightly to a Family Dinner all together. It sounds so wholesome and idyllic. And I do try to encourage us to eat at the table as a family at least once in a while. There ARE all the benefits I mentioned above (and probably more!) to sitting around the table together for a meal. But I am the only one in my immediate family who cares about it, and I can really only manage it on weekends, and not every weekend day, and sometimes I just don’t have the mental/emotional energy to wheedle my family into doing it at all.
This most recent time my in-laws were visiting, my mother-in-law and Carla were setting the table, and Carla told her something like, “Oh, we usually eat in front of the TV.” And my mother-in-law laughed, like Carla was trying to pull something over on her, and said, “On a Sunday?!” in a tone of incredulity. That’s the kind of (unintentional) thing that makes me feel ashamed of our dinner habits. As though there is only One Way to do dinner, and I (all on my own, as though my husband has no role) am doing it wrong.
Well. My own feelings of shame are something to deal with on my own. I would never look at YOU, for instance, and say, “Oh my gosh, HER family doesn’t sit down together for dinners every night?! What are they thinking?!” or otherwise judge you. So why am I so hard on myself for the very same thing? The million-dollar question, isn’t it.
I remember reading a blog post ages ago – I swear it was from Swistle – that I think about every time I feel a little guilty for not making Family Dinners a priority around my house. It was something like, “Eating together as a family makes me dislike my family,” and it was so freeing. (Oh yes: Here it is.) If you are likewise unable to sit together for regular Family Dinners, for whatever reason up to and including you hate it, I hope that my own report of how we do things releases you from that obligation.
My husband and I have a close and loving relationship with one another and with our child. Carla is reasonably versed in table manners (whether she uses them is a different topic all together). We find ways to be close and share details of our day at other times. For instance, Carla’s bedtime routine is one of my favorite times of day. I mostly no longer read to her at bedtime (I read to her at other times of the day, but bedtime reading is her father’s province), but there are always at least a few minutes at night when the three of us are snuggled up together in Carla’s bed, chatting about the day behind us and the day ahead, giggling over something silly, or talking through a challenge. It’s not always like this, especially on Call Weeks, when my husband may not make it home in time for bedtime, or on nights when Carla just wants to read her own book to herself (which I thoroughly encourage), but I don’t feel like anything is missing just because we don’t sit down together for a meal each day.
Carla is extremely picky, and maybe some of that could have been avoided if we’d all been sitting together, eating the exact same food together, every night for her whole life. But… maybe not. And that ship has sailed, so there’s no point in me beating myself up over it any more than I already do.
life of a doctor's wife 
We always had family dinners when I was a kid. My parents worked but somehow dinner appeared like clockwork. Maybe because they were on schedules all. the. time? Anyhow I enjoyed reading about your childhood memories. I don’t think I’d have eaten the nanny’s shrimp meal back then– or now.
Why did I love it, Ally? It sounds… awful, right now. The thought of sautéed celery??? HORK. I don’t even think there was any seasoning!
We do a lot of family dinners, because we mostly all get home at / eat at the same time- but they are quite casual, which keeps them easy. Like sometimes I use serving dishes, but sometimes people just serve themselves from the stove, and generally, when people are done eating, they peel off and go wherever. It basically takes the pressure off the family dinner experience. But there have also been times where schedules drove us to not all eat together, and I thought that was fine too.
When you are emailing your mom to ask her about nanny dinners, will you also ask her if she still has the Seashells recipe? That sounds like EXACTLY the kind of food I loved best in childhood (and frankly now).
When I was a kid, we sometimes ate around the table and sometimes ate in the living room while watching TV (news and/or science-y/documentary shows), and I don’t remember what decided which way we did it on any particular night. My dad did most of the cooking (my parents have a one-person-cooks,-the-other-person-cleans arrangement, and my mom used to delegate the clean-up to the kids, so who got the best end of THAT deal??); when I was a teenager, I used to cook sometimes (relatively easy stuff such as Hamburger Helper or various delicious Velveeta-y casseroles), mostly because it got me out of cleaning up.
My own household eats in the living room while watching TV. We have tried eating around the table, with this feeling that Families Ought To, and we don’t like it. After awhile we were like “Why are we doing something we don’t want to do, when there is no rule that we have to?”
In recent years, with the kids having jobs and doing extracurriculars, dinnertime is getting a little more complicated—but they all know how to make some basics (pasta, eggs, English muffin pizzas, tacos made with leftover taco meat), so anyone who isn’t here at The Usual Dinnertime just makes their own food. (We WILL wait dinner and all eat together if it’s, say, less than an hour different than the usual time.)
Alas, the seashells recipe is lost to the sands of time. I asked for a few years ago, but mother looked for it and thought she had gotten rid of it during the move from my childhood home to where she lives now. And – worse! – this was after she admitted having only a very fuzzy recollection of this magical concoction in the first place!
I am Very Envious of people who have the “one person cooks, the other cleans up” deal in place. I wish I’d implemented that LONG ago. The best I get is my husband rinsing the dishes and I place them; that isn’t nothing, but I still have to wipe down counters etc. AND I make the meal 90% of the time. Seems too late to turn that ship around though. Maybe.
Does he make anything that you like, and that you could claim he makes so much better than you do? That worked on my dad: my mother convinced him that he made The Best egg salad, so much better than hers, honey we should have that again! At least it would be a step in the right direction.
He is a much better cook than I am, but I am the one available to do the planning and shopping and cooking.
We are like you. We usually eat mostly together but I don’t stress over it. And it’s very casual, with food served from the stove and get your own plate and no setting the table.
With three children, I have a control group and you didn’t cause Carla’s pickiness. My kids have grown up in the same house and one was regular kid picky (and now that she’s thirteen, she eats mostly like a regular person), one medically picky who needs to go back to feeding therapy, and one who eats almost everything while still being a first grader. It’s just who they are as people.
As a picky person myself, I do try to keep the “it’s just who they are” thing in mind… but sometimes it FEELS like I caused it.
As a child we mostly had family dinners around the table. My mom didn’t work, and we didn’t have many extracurriculars. My brothers played sports, but practice was right after school. In my own family we rarely ate together, mainly at holidays or on vacation. Both daughters had activities stretching into the evening, my husband worked late and to be honest, I’m not much of a cook. I too feel guilty about the dream dinners that we were “supposed” to be having but there are many other ways to connect as a family.
Why do so many of us have this collective ideal of dream family dinners? Where did that come from?
We used to sit at the table for dinner every day, but during the initial covid lockdown we got into the habit of watching tv. So now, we just take our plates to the couch rather than the table. Occasionally we still eat at the table, especially if time is short. We generally eat very late anyway (8pm?) so on soccer practice nights dinner is usually pushed back a bit. We tried eating before soccer, but it was a struggle to have it made by 5, and they were always hungry afterwards anyway. So, now they have a big snack first. The advantage of tv is that we have a shared culture and lots of bonding laughs over whichever series we are watching at the moment.
We eat together the majority of meals we’re at home together but mostly because we tend to be on the same schedule. I will often read while the kids eat since I don’t tend to eat breakfast. On most weekend nights they eat separate because my husband and I eat something different for an at-home date night. I think this has less “bonding” impact than some of the other activities we do together as a family.
In my household growing up though we ate EVERY SINGLE MEAL TOGETHER ALWAYS with no exceptions. And listen, I think we all turned out fine, but it’s not like we’re the insanely amazing humans because we had Clam Chowder together on Thursday night.
There is no right way to do family dinner. It has to make sense for each family and I think there is enormous guilt in our culture over doing something the right or wrong way which is complete and utter nonsense. If things seem like they’re working well and everyone is happy, it is likely a very wonderful arrangement. No excuses or changes, needed. Carla gets bucket-loads of love and she gets lots of time with you both and sometimes that happens together around a table and sometimes it does not and that’s lovely and good and normal! You do you, my friend. And you’re doing a fantastic job.
This made me laugh: ” I think we all turned out fine, but it’s not like we’re the insanely amazing humans because we had Clam Chowder together on Thursday night.” Fair point, Elisabeth!
When I was a kid, we ate dinner as a family during the week, no tv allowed. My mom worked part time and cooked and my dad got home just in time for dinner. On Saturday’s my parents went out for dinner and we got to eat “kid food” with a babysitter. Sunday’s were a mix of dinner with the grandparents, Chinese food, or my mom cooking.
I try to eat dinner with my 3 year old most of the time. Now that he stays up till 8, I don’t like waiting till after he’s in bed. Not sure what will happen when baby #2 arrives in a few months. I think it’s going to be a lot of Trader Joe’s meals! He keeps crying that he wants “something else” for dinner, like cookies, but I’m trying to hold firm that he can eat what I made or be done. I include at least 1 food that he likes, last night he only ate French fries and refused the rest of dinner. It’s a struggle!
It is such a struggle! Keep fighting the good fight!
Growing up, we always ate dinner together at the dining table. 99% of the time my mom would cook and 1% of the time we had fast food or got pizza. After dinner my dad and I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. We lived far away from extended family, so for the most part it was just the three of us. My only complaint is that my parents were staunch Clean Plate Club and I did not get to chose what or how much to eat.
Today we always eat dinner together, always at the table, and for the most part we cook. Early in the pandemic we decided to do a regular weekly takeout night on Friday to support our local restaurants and to always have burger night on Saturday because it’s fun, and sometimes we get takeout in the middle of the week just ‘cuz. No matter how frustrated I get about cooking or how early we have to eat on some nights, I always love the time together. When my MIL was alive we did big family dinners every Sunday and it was wonderful. We still try to get together for a family meals when we can, but it’s less than once a month.
It’s just my opinion, but I think that picky eating is inborn and also…hey there’s nothing wrong with it!!! We all like what we like. I think the only rule that my stepkids ever had was that you have to eat SOMETHING at each meal and I think it’s a much healthier approach than “if it’s on your plate you’re eating it”.
There are so many ways to be a family/ do family things/ eat dinner. I think it’s fantastic! It’s all about what works.
We have dinner together as a family pretty much always; right now J has wrestling two nights a week and so I just save him a plate to eat at 8:30 when he gets home. Interestingly, this is exactly what happened when the boys were quite small and my husband worked long and unpredictable hours: I would eat dinner with the boys at 5:30 and save him a plate for when he got home, at which time I was frantically doing bath/ bedtime. That was a very long time ago, it feels like.
Anyway, we have dinner together every night, at the table, which is directly beside the kitchen. Only on Sundays or dinners that are quite involved do I put serving dishes on the table. Otherwise, I leave everything on the kitchen island or on the stove, and everyone grabs their plate from the table and fills it, like a very small buffet. It works great for us. My older son’s job has always been setting the table, and my younger one’s job has always been wiping down the table and chairs after dinner. We have music on usually but when it’s football season and the Patriots are playing, my husband will have the TV on in the background; he can’t see it but he can hear it. No phones are allowed at the table, that is my biggest rule. We usually talk about what we did that day, or the boys talk about wrestling or weightlifting, and I stare into the ether. But no phones! We have a fairly frequent dinner guest (husband’s cousin’s husband) who is always checking his phone and texting at the table and if he wasn’t so nice I would have stabbed him with his own steak knife at this point. But he’s the sweetest so I let it pass. Oh! And sometimes we do “three good things” where each of us say three good things that happened that day. It was something I started during a pretty wretched time (my husband was going through some big health things) and we just kept it up.
Oh, great post, Suzanne. I loved reading your childhood memories.
Growing up, my family ate breakfast and dinner together. There are 7 children so it was a long table. LOL We were a fairly tame/not too talkative bunch then so they were fairly quiet times (An aside: we are not quiet anymore when we get together for meals! LOL) My parents would talk, ask us questions, etc. I do have mostly fond memories of those days.
With my own family, my son was a very picky eater! And he had ants in his pants! To make him sit down to eat was a double-punishment. So we fed him on the sly and on the move. He’d play while we fed him — and I have memories of me doing this, too, as a toddler/early elementary, eating but not sitting down to do so. It’s true the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — Sigh.. But I do have pictures of him as a toddler sitting at the table with a stack of pancakes — he’d sit only a few minutes and take a couple of bites and he’d be like, “I want down!” He also was allergic to a few things so it was hard for us all to sit down and eat the same thing, specially in the beginning when we were trying to find out what he was allergic to. Then school and extra-curriculars came in. He was the happiest when he was moving so he was busy with sports. Many times, we ate fast-food…and ate it in the car on the way to sports. Once he got older, we’d sit at the table to eat occasionally but it wasn’t a priority for us. Like you, we did a lot of hugs and snuggles in bed or on the couch, and in the car to/from school and activities…we got our family time in. My husband’s job made it possible for him to be very available (only needed to check on things for an hour or so) and I was working very little part-time so we played a lot together. Went to parks, waterparks, went to the club and played tennis (my son’s sport until he was in 5th grade — in addition to group sports like baseball and flag football, etc.), and swam, etc. I, too, feel like maybe we should’ve been eating meals together more but it just didn’t happen often. It’s what worked for us, and I guess I made peace with it early on to reduce stress on all of us.
Every family is it’s own universe and family dinners together at the table don’t necessarily mean enjoyable family time. My mom had stories of her very formal, family dinners in her childhood – suits/nice clothes required, fancy dishes and strictly enforced table manners. Warm family communication was not her parent’s strong suit….Quite the opposite. With my kids and spouse we eat together when everyone is home (increasingly rare with so many activities) and I enjoy chatting about our days. It does drive me crazy that finishing work later than I’d like and being the activity chauffer often we don’t start cooking until late and eat like 8pm…but it is what it is.
I love your bedtime routine with Carla. Sounds so cozy and lovely. I can count on one hand the number of times my parents read to us when I was a kid. There are 5 of us, so maybe bedtime was very hectic.
As a kid, we ate most dinners as a family. My dad worked late a lot (mostly when we were older) so sometimes he ate later. I do laugh at the ‘I hate eating as a family’ thought. My brother chewed with his mouth open and he sat across from me- we had assigned seats. Also, I feel like family meals is when I was extra annoyed at how my folks thought my brother walked on water. Lots of favoritism at the table.
When we were older, sports and jobs interfered with family dinners, so we did it less often.
Coach works late as a physical therapist. We eat as a family when we can. Most of the time, when the kids were really young, it was just me and them. Honestly, I’d be so tired by the time we sat down to eat – that I’d just sit and chat with them and we had lots of laughs. Then I’d send them up for baths. And then I’d read to them.
As an aside, my SIL made the high school b-ball team. My MIL made her quit because practice was in the middle of the dinner hour. We laugh about that now. Let nothing come between a basketball player and his/her practice.
I love topics like this because every family is so different! I like how Laura Vanderkam talks about how we shouldn’t be so focused on family dinners and that instead, maybe your family has a family breakfast instead. It’s still quality time no matter what meal it is! But for some families, a meal together just isn’t realistic due to schedules.
But growing up, we always had dinner together. It was around 6pm and it always included a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. And much of it was homemade. I don’t know how my mom did it as she worked full time! Although she did not have a commute to contend with which really simplifies things. When my older siblings were in activities and couldn’t be at dinner, my mom made a plate for them to reheat when they got home.
These days, we do all eat together, but the kids almost always eat something different from the adults. I look forward to the day when we all eat the same thing but we have some selective eaters. We eat dinner around 5:30. Pre-kids, we would eat around 6-7 but our appetite has adjusted to theirs so we are hungry at 5:30. But then I need a snack after dinner, usually an apple or popcorn. I don’t love dinner but I can see how it will get better when we don’t have a toddler. Paul is a joy to be around; Will loves to throw things and then say ‘uh oh.’ It annoys us to no end and results in a messy floor, but I can see how much better it is when they are PK or older!
At first I thought I didn’t have anything to add to this conversation, but I think I do. When I was growing up, my family was the very definition of working poor. My mom worked nights, my dad worked days, and we only had one car, so they basically did a key handoff and rarely saw each other. We obviously didn’t have dinner at the table every night and to be honest, outside of restaurant situations, I have no memories of my immediate family ever doing so.
I also rarely remember eating dinner someone else made for me. By the time I was seven or eight, it was presumed I’d make myself a sandwich or mac & cheese or soup or eat cereal for dinner.
So. I guess I don’t really know what the message is. I think you’re beating yourself up for an idea (the weekday family dinner) that never really existed, even when we were young. Maybe for our parents? Or our grandparents? And I think that if you’re feeding your child (even if it’s nuggets on the go!), keeping track of her schedule for her, and talking to her about what’s going on in her life, I think you’re probably doing a great job. And you should be proud that raising a confident, excited child who wants to do the things and be around others!
Yes, I really don’t know where this idea of Family Dinners came from. Or why it feels important. It’s certainly not even POSSIBLE for some families, as you point out, and that doesn’t reflect on the quality of the family. Like so many things I’ve internalized, this causes me stress even though I intellectually know it’s stupid, and/or based on a completely outdated way of life.
Life is too short for you to feel guilt over something that isn’t important to YOU. Right? Carla receives a lot of love and attention and is nutritionally taken care of. Just because it’s not the norm, or at least what people might consider the model, doesn’t make it wrong.
Growing up, I don’t recall any family dinners together. I’m sure they happened on occasion, but not enough for me to create memories. My parents were divorced, and my Mom worked a lot; we mostly fended for ourselves.
I always tried to do family meals with my girls, but they were both in different activities in the evenings, so it was usually a two-on-two situation. I do wonder if I asked them what their dinner memories are and if they would have anything in particular to add.
Oh, Suz, if it were easy to stop feeling guilty over things that aren’t important to me, I would have done it long ago! About many things! I am an over-worrier, that’s for sure!
When Beth still worked at her office the kids and I usually ate together and then I’d sit with her when she got home and ate, so we have the pandemic and remote work to thank for the fact that we eat all together most nights, though. (Her office is hybrid and she only goes in once or occasionally twice a week. This change seems to be permanent.) Back in the day, though, I counted it as family dinner if at least one kid and one parent ate together.
Still catching up on your posts! I loved this discussion, and had to comment. I grew up always eating dinner as a family. However this was 60 years ago – my mother didn’t work outside the home and we didn’t do any sports or other activities. Back then, with 5 kids it wasn’t a thing. I also raised my kids eating at the table together but often raced through dinner before heading to swimming, soccer or hockey. I love my kids’ takeaway from this. About 10 years ago, my youngest son, age 20 or so, was in college and sharing a house with a few guys. I called him one Sunday and he said he was busy as they were having “family dinner”. What? A bunch of them got together every Sunday and had a nice sit down meal. I found this so touching that they saw the value in this No judgement here at all– today’s schedules just don’t seem to allow for this on a regular basis.
Your son’s family dinners sound amazing ❤️
I’d agree that every family definitely has to figure out what works for them and their schedules.
Having said that, family dinners and other meals were a big deal in my house. My parents – both teachers – made sure to set the table and have breakfast together in the morning and we would always have dinner together at night. Meals together is something we cherish as a family to this day, and we go “all out” for special occasions (nice dinner setting, I even create a “menu card” for special occasions like Christmas, even if I can’t be with my family to eat the meal).
I also remember lots of family gatherings for “Kaffee und Kuchen” (coffee and cake).
Since we don’t have kids, family dinners in our house just mean “eating together” (which can be at the table or sometimes on the couch – with or without TV)… but we do make it a point to eat the meal together.
This is a very interesting discussion! I don’t really think I remember family dinners growing up. My mom worked a regular 9-5 and my dad usually worked the overnight shift, so he wasn’t often around for dinnertime. I remember my mom making my brother and me dinner… but I cannot for the life of me remember if she ate with us!
I don’t know if you follow The Lazy Genius but she JUST did a podcast about this very thing, and it might be useful to you: https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/lazy/falldinnertime.