EE2 Draft

  As America becomes more and more modernized, long-standing traditions are losing their importance and decreasing in prominence. Food and eating practices are no exception. One such example is the idea of the family meal. According to recent studies, almost half of American families eat a meal together 3 times or less throughout a typical week (CBS). This is a significant shift from the America of a few decades ago, where a housewife prepared a meal for the family to eat together upon a husband’s return from work. Gender roles and family structures have evolved, understandably so, but this doesn’t mean that the practice of eating together should be abandoned. Even with my personal bias about the importance of the family table aside, there are researched benefits to eating as a family, including improvement to household relationships, childhood development, decreases in childhood obesity, and even curbing of eating disorders.

            Growing up in my household, eating together was never an inconvenience, or even something that we had to think about- it was just what we did. From a young age, my mother, brother, and myself sat down together first thing in the morning to share breakfast, even if it was just a quick bowl of cereal. My dad had already left for work by this point in the day, but I’m sure had he been there, he would have joined us, too. During the week, we would of course eat at school, but on weekends, lunches were eaten as a group, too. Nearly every Sunday, all four of us would come together to cook and eat a big brunch, complete with breakfast potatoes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. As we grew older and our schedules didn’t line up so nicely anymore, some of these family meals went away, but one thing always remained constant- family dinner. Every night of the week, in unspoken but well-established tradition, we gathered around the table for our nighttime meal. Homework was halted and plans were scheduled around mealtime, even as I grew into a teenager with a separate social life. This was the time of day when we would reconnect, sharing what was going on in our lives, with lots of sarcasm and joking sprinkled in. This sounds slightly idealistic, but I can honestly say that losing those 30 nightly minutes of quality time was one of the hardest things for me about moving away to college. With this brief background in mind, I will examine the benefits of the family dinner, what made it work so well for my family, and why I will insist on continuing this practice when I have a family of my own someday.

            Family dinners have proven to be important in child development. In an article written for the journal Childhood Development, Helen Klein explains the three major ways in which regular family meals are beneficial for children. The first is stability. Children benefit from knowing that regardless of what else has happened in a day, there is something reliable at the end, bringing order and comfort (Klein). The second is individual growth. What this means is that over dinner, children can express themselves- in terms of feelings, desires, and interests. This exchange is also an important way for children to develop conversational skills both of speaking and listening (Klein). Community is Klein’s third benefit. The first community that any of us experience is that of our family. A family gathering like dinner emphasizes this sense of community, where people can express themselves and be heard in a safe environment. This may also be the reason that family meals remain important to us through our adult lives, and why special occasions like holidays or birthdays are usually celebrated with a meal (Klein). Links between academic and cognitive performance and family meals have also been studied; however, findings in different studies contradict each other, with some finding an effect and others finding no significant difference. However, the elementary benefits discussed by Klein are, for the most part, accepted. It’s difficult to quantify how crucial those 3 things are into the holistic picture of becoming a functional adult, but having experienced the safe, loving environment that family meals provided in my family, I can personally place high importance on them.

            Something easier to analyze quantitatively is the effect of the family meal on health. A study published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics observed 182,836 children and teens aged 2-17. The study’s authors analyzed factors such as weight, eating habits, and disordered eating, and compared them to meal frequency. What they found was that participants who ate 3 meals a week or more with their families were more likely to be in a healthy weight range, more likely to have healthy eating patterns, and less likely to engage in disordered eating, as compared to the participants who ate less than 3 meals a week as a family (Hammons and Fiese). A more detailed study published in Obesity focused on 16,882 adolescents ages 9-14, and compared their rates of family dinner consumption with rates of overweightness. Their findings corroborated the conclusion that less frequent consumption of family dinner led to more unhealthy weights. As the frequency of family meal consumption went up in their participants, the overweight prevalence consistently went down, with the most overweight group being those who reported to never eat dinner with their family, and the least overweight group reporting that they ate dinner with their family daily (Taveras et al). Of course, it is important to remember that the correlations found in these studies do not necessarily indicate causation. In other words, other factors, likely socioeconomic ones, could be at play; not everyone who fails to eat dinner with their families is going to end up overweight. However, it’s a connection that is worth some attention. In my experience, this could likely be explained by the varying content of meals eaten with or without the family presence. Growing up, our meals were always cooked by my mom, who prided herself in making them balanced and healthy. Some variation of protein, starch, fruit, and vegetable would be found on our plates nightly if Mom cooked the meal. Adolescents who don’t have the luxury of a parent cooking a meal for them are much less likely to eat so healthy, instead going for what’s easy, or what simply tastes good, which could be a contributing factor to the higher tendency to be overweight for this group.

            So what does this all mean? I’m not accusing anyone who chooses not to eat family meals of being wrong. But for me, the family meal, specifically dinner, is a value I hold dear. When I return home in two short weeks, I know that I will quickly resume the tradition of eating dinner with my family, and furthermore, I know that when I have children someday, they will grow up with what was one of the most important, comforting rituals that I can remember in my childhood. The research to back up why family dinner is important only strengthens my position. Even as traditions fade, this is one I will always cling to.

Works Cited

Hammons, Amber J., and Barbada H. Fiese. "Is Frequency of Shared Family Meals Related to the Nutritional Health of Children and Adolescents?" Pediatrics 127.6 (2011): n. pag. Print.

"How Americans Eat Today." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

 Klein, Helen A. "Family Dinners." Childhood Education 77.2 (2001): 102. Print.

 Taveras, Elsie M., Sheryl L. Rifas-Shiman, Catherine S. Berkey, Helaine R.H. Rockett, Alison E. Field, A. Lindsay Frazier, Graham A. Colditz, and Matthew W. Gillman. "Family Dinner and Adolescent Overweight**." Obesity 13.5 (2005): 900-06. Print.