Dinner together – it’s okay if only one parent could make it
MY HUSBAND does not eat dinner with our girls and me during the workweek. He stays at the office late, sometimes coming home when they’re in bed.
Every study I’ve ever read on the topic explains the importance of family dinners, how eating together correlates with kids who are better adjusted and have higher grades, healthier eating habits and less of an inclination for drug addiction. So, like so many things parenting-related these days, I wondered whether we were doing it all wrong.
I started asking friends, parents at our kids’ elementary school and others outside my social circle whether their families eat together in the evenings.
More often than not, they said no, they don’t all eat dinner together. One parent (yep, it’s not always the mom) is often in charge of dinner while the other is at the office.
So if we all know what the research says, why do so many of us not do this one thing for our kids? The truth is it’s not so simple.
The reality of our modern jobs is such that they don’t end at 5 or 6 pm. My work as a freelance writer and editor is flexible, but my husband (an editor at The Washington Post) has a more demanding schedule.
But of course, I wondered what kind of damage we’re actually doing to our kids. I called a few parenting experts to find out.
Here’s what they said: It’s best for the whole family to be together. But as long as one loving caregiver is consistently there for dinner, we’re giving our kids the stability they need.
“Family dinner is a proxy for warmth and structure in a family,” said Lisa Damour, psychologist and author of the best-selling book “Untangled,” about adolescent girls. “One parent can provide warmth and structure.”
If that’s not possible, then an invested grandparent or nanny can get the job done.
“The more grown-ups who are investing in children in regular ways with time and energy, the better,” she said. “Ideally, you have both loving grown-ups tending to them and making them a priority. But my view as a psychologist is there are thousands of ways to get it right in a family. There is not one ideal we hold up as good family life, and there is no substitute.”
Damour said single parents don’t have a choice. In twoparent families, the one who is not around for dinner can pick another time to be with the kids, such as breakfast or the time between dinner and bedtime.
“It’s a time to sit together and be in each other’s company. Slow things down for a moment,” she said.
Damour said one of her favourite times of day with her daughter is their happy, 10minute walk to school, just the two of them.
Still, there’s a lot of pressure to all eat dinner together.
One friend who eats dinner with her kids while her husband is at the office told me she’s so embarrassed about missing out on this one much-talked-about parenting must- do that she never tells anyone.
Another friend said that many evenings when she eats with just her daughter, there’s a voice in her head wondering whether she’s doing something wrong.
There’s plenty of reason for these doubts.
In addition to the benefits I already mentioned, studies say kids who eat dinner with their families have lower rates of depression and higher selfesteem. Dinner conversation is better for a child’s vocabulary than reading, and there’s not much of a better bonding experience than talking about our day. Regular family meals also lower the rates of obesity and eating disorders in children and adolescents. That’s pretty powerful. Many of us grew up in homes where we all ate together as a family, and it seems odd to not continue the tradition.
Alyson Schafer, a parent educator and author based in Canada, said it’s “absolutely more rare” for families to eat dinner together today than in past generations.
Jobs are more demanding and often require longer hours. Some people have two jobs to make ends meet. Others work in pressurecooker professions that require late hours.
“Look at the way families are functioning in 2017 versus the 1950s,” she said. “Back then, kids were seen and not heard. Dad didn’t change diapers. Maybe dinner was the only time you saw your kids.”
Today, she said, at 7 pm parents might be playing a board game with their kids.
Schafer said the latest research shows that benefits of family dinners come if you can eat together four to five times a week, including weekends.
“Nobody does it all the time,” Schafer said. “But can you move it from none to one, can you move it from three to five?”
She said she advocates for dinners together as often as possible because food brings a feeling of security and comfort for both kids and parents that is deeply wired in the brain.
“There is something reptilian about that,” she said. “Many people have this relationship between food and taste and love and connection.”
If your spouse works later, she recommends eating with your kids and having a small snack or glass of wine with your partner when he or she comes home to eat.
Schafer told the story of a family she counseled who would pick up their young children from day care at the end of the day, when the kids were famished and exhausted. They would cry the whole drive home and while dinner was being prepared. So the parents decided to bring food to the day care and have a picnic dinner outside. It wasn’t traditional, but it worked for them.
She also cautions against signing up kids for too many evening activities.
“We’re overscheduling our kids,” she said. “People think its more important to have your kids in hockey or martial arts. It comes at a cost. What helps relationships is less stress, moving a little slower.”
For each family, that looks different.
“It’s the quality of the relationships and sense of routine that matter,” Damour said. “I don’t care how you get it done.”
So, is it my preference that my husband is at work while we eat dinner? No. Nor is it his.
Are we ruining the kids? Nope, not that either.
He often eats breakfast with them, and on a recent morning he managed to squeeze in a chess match before everyone headed out for the day. We also find other ways to be together as a family, such as weekend activities and vacations.
In these modern times, when workplaces expect us to be connected 24/7, we all do the best we can. With some good structure and a lot of love, the kids are going to be all right. — WP-Bloomberg