Like most kids, the vegetables tucked in the bottom right section of my three-way divided dinner plate were my least favorite part of family meals. Zucchini and buttered asparagus were “slimy,” carrots were a “gross color” and broccoli always found a creative way to get stuck in my two front teeth.
From being force-fed vegetables to having interrogatory discussions with parents, family dinners were never my favorite. Especially when the table conversations matured, in tandem, as we got older, topics tended to veer toward college, report cards and the future. For some of us, family dinners are insufferable, especially within high-pressure households.
Needless to say, when I entered middle school and my parents, who both work full-time jobs (like 74% of families in Marin), decided to sweep away family dinners, I was ecstatic. Without mandatory vegetables, zucchini and asparagus vanished from my palate; and when the dinner conversations ceased to exist, interactions with my parents diminished too.
At 11 years old, my family joined the 70% of American households who don’t regularly have family dinners (according to the Harvard School of Education). At the time, I couldn’t have been more pleased. Eating a strict diet of ramen and quesadillas, and shutting my parents out, in classic seventh-grader fashion, I enthusiastically embraced my new normal.
Over time, I stopped eating dinner altogether. Without my parents regulating my meals, my food intake began to span sporadically throughout the day and almost never occurred when I was sitting down. As for the food I ate, it was determined on a qualitative metric of what required the least amount of effort and wouldn’t become gross if I neglected to eat it within a few hours.
My relationship with my family consisted mostly of watching “Million Dollar Listing,” a glamorous real estate show, in our living room, or my parents asking for tech support. Consistent group conversations, regular day recaps and check-ins were firmly a thing of the past. Although we connected in other ways, the regularity that came with consistent meals was lost.
The familial detachment and the degradation of children’s nutrition that arises without regular family meals is not a narrative that is unique to me – it is a reality for children around the country.
In fact, according to the Food Industry Association, children who have more than three family meals per week are more likely to maintain both a healthy weight and diet than children who don’t.
Moreover, for kids who have regular family meals, there is a substantial decrease in the likelihood of them using drugs, smoking or drinking, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The correlation between drug use and family dinners has less to do with the food being consumed, but rather, everything to do with the conversations that take place between children and their parents.
Joseph Califano Jr., the chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, emphasizes the importance of open dialogue between families.
“This year’s study again demonstrates that the magic that happens at family dinners isn’t the food on the table, but the conversations and family engagement around the table,” Caifano said.
Beyond substance-abuse prevention, the Family Dinner Project – a nonprofit based in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Psychiatry Academy that champions helping spread family dinners across the country with education and family therapy services – lists higher self-esteem, lower rates of obesity, healthier eating patterns and a lower likelihood of developing eating disorders as some of the key benefits for children who regularly engage in family meals.
Eating consistently as a family can be difficult, especially in such a career-driven community, but it is one of the most fundamental and rudimentary ways to support children’s wellbeing and the unity of a family as a whole.
There is no “late” starting point or right way to approach it. My family managed to recuperate family dinners after a four-year hiatus – and while it was unexpected, it was a redemption I’m infinitely grateful for. Sharing meals is sharing love, something all families have room for.
Grace Gehrman is a student at Redwood High School in Larkspur.
