Having family meals; a declining pastime?

[Bruno]

Light dinner around 9:30pm that is only half an hour before my bedtime. Really great you all eat together for lunch.

An hour after mine!! Haha, been getting up at 4 for 28 years, only 6 left.

 

[John_NJ]

It certainly hasn't raised the standard of living by my definition... Oh it's allowed us to do is buy a bunch of cheaply made Chinese junk that breaks quick.

I know this is a sticky subject for many people.

I got married in 1991, and our first child was born in 1994.

My wife and I were both frugal savers by nature with good paying jobs- I was a carpenter and she was an executive secretary working for Chemical Bank at 270 Park Ave, NYC.

It was an easy decision that my wife would stop working and stay home to raise the baby.

Our friends and neighbors were shocked - “how can you afford to do that?”.

And - “we wish we could do that but…”.

She raised two more children and never really went back to work full time.
No Disney Land vacations, no eating at restaurants, no new cars every few years, etc etc and so forth.

And it got really difficult a few times but we managed and now are on auto-pilot.

We just finished dinner by the way- me, my wife and my son and daughter.

Hamburgers with fried onions, homemade potato salad and about an hour of conversation about our days, what’s going on, etc- just like most other nights.

Yes, I have some personal insight on this topic.

 

[JKalchik]

She raised two more children and never really went back to work full time.
No Disney Land vacations, no eating at restaurants, no new cars every few years, etc etc and so forth.

@John_NJ , I have a suspicion that you & yours may have a slightly different (and better, IMO) understanding of finances and money than most.

FWIW, Dad was 5th generation Bohemian in this country. He & his siblings were among the first in the clan (settled on MI's Leelanau Peninsula,) to move more than a few miles away. He & my mother moved about 60 miles away from the homestead after they were married a few years, as a middle-ish family member, there wasn't much place left for him. As such, Sunday dinners for us were just us. We'd make a Sunday drive over to see Grandma a couple of times a year. And, growing up on a farm in the 2nd half of the 20 Century....... a little closer to the poverty line than I care to remember. We scraped by with what we had more often than not. It drives me crazy when my g/f & I are driving to see very expensive farm equipment like planters, balers and harvesters just sitting out in the weather. The clan has spread out, there were about 60 of us at a clan reunion last month (first one in well over 20 years,) travelling in from all over the country. Only 1 of Dad's siblings are left, and I will just about guarantee you that we will ALL travel for his final services.

One thing that has been started up is a monthly video call among my siblings, nieces, nephews & grand kids. We're spread out from the western edge of New York City, west to Colorado, and south to North Carolina.

Sorry for the minor diversion.

 

[Ed P]

An hour after mine!! Haha, been getting up at 4 for 28 years, only 6 left.

The problem is, is that you are still going to find yourself waking up at around 4 even though you didn't go to bed until after 2. Sometimes you can go back to sleep, sometimes not, but it's hard to reset that internal alarm clock.

 

[Brett-EDH]

I know this is a sticky subject for many people.

I got married in 1991, and our first child was born in 1994.

My wife and I were both frugal savers by nature with good paying jobs- I was a carpenter and she was an executive secretary working for Chemical Bank at 270 Park Ave, NYC.

It was an easy decision that my wife would stop working and stay home to raise the baby.

Our friends and neighbors were shocked - “how can you afford to do that?”.

And - “we wish we could do that but…”.

She raised two more children and never really went back to work full time.
No Disney Land vacations, no eating at restaurants, no new cars every few years, etc etc and so forth.

And it got really difficult a few times but we managed and now are on auto-pilot.

We just finished dinner by the way- me, my wife and my son and daughter.

Hamburgers with fried onions, homemade potato salad and about an hour of conversation about our days, what’s going on, etc- just like most other nights.

Yes, I have some personal insight on this topic.

we fled NYC in 92 becuase we didn't want to be in that rat race. the rest is history. it's all worked out.

 

[MartinB]

I know this is a sticky subject for many people.

I got married in 1991, and our first child was born in 1994.

My wife and I were both frugal savers by nature with good paying jobs- I was a carpenter and she was an executive secretary working for Chemical Bank at 270 Park Ave, NYC.

It was an easy decision that my wife would stop working and stay home to raise the baby.

Our friends and neighbors were shocked - “how can you afford to do that?”.

And - “we wish we could do that but…”.

She raised two more children and never really went back to work full time.
No Disney Land vacations, no eating at restaurants, no new cars every few years, etc etc and so forth.

And it got really difficult a few times but we managed and now are on auto-pilot.

We just finished dinner by the way- me, my wife and my son and daughter.

Hamburgers with fried onions, homemade potato salad and about an hour of conversation about our days, what’s going on, etc- just like most other nights.

Yes, I have some personal insight on this topic.

My first child was in 1995.
My wife is always worked and we haven't ever hurt for $.
We had the vacations.... They learn to ski at a young age. Took trips every winter until high school prohibited it...spring practice right thru breaks.
Kids never lacked.....travel sports, vacations, ski trips, European trips in high school

But for everything you gain there's something lost.
I got lucky had good kids, never got in any trouble
not all of their friends parents were as lucky.

 

[John_NJ]

Family Dinners Are Key to Children’s Health. So Why Don’t We Eat Together More?

Gathering around the dining table has become harder as families’ schedules fill up, with the loss of family meals having far-reaching implications for children and teens.

www.wsj.com

“It’s so basic that people forget about it,” says Ellen Rome, head of the Center for Adolescent Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Gathering around the table, Dr. Rome says, is “a useful mechanism for creating connected-ness and role-modeling behaviors that parents want children to emulate.”

 

[Timothy F. Lewis]

This is what happened here last night…

 

[Joan]

I soo love the Sunday weekly get-together their family has on "Blue Bloods". And like a lot of you here, there is only the two of us, but we eat every meal together.

Just wanted to add, saw the start of the new season of "Blue Bloods" the other night and they still do it.

 

[John K BBQ]

For some reason I missed this thread when it was new. Before my kids turned into ornery teenagers we probably had family dinners 4 or 5 times a week, at the table, no TV (this is despite my wife and I both working full time). Things changed in the mid-to late teenage years as kids started making more of their own plans/ spending more time with friends and then we were down family meals 2 to 3 days a week. Very happy that my son is coming home to visit from college every 3 or 4 weeks so far (he's only a 90 minute drive down the road). He likes to cook and eat with us still which is great... of course my ornery teenage daughter made plans with her friends this weekend so she didn't participate.

One reason why some family's aren't having dinners together is over-programming of after-school schedules. Most of the over programming I've been witness to has been sports related.... I have nothing against sports but some kids are practicing and having crazy away game schedules on traveling teams to the point where they don't really have time for much else, and moms and dads are splitting duties as one parent goes to softball games all weekend, and the other parent stays home to watch the other kids. As we say on the forum to each their own, but I'm very happy my family hasn't had to deal with that kind of imbalance. Maybe this was an option for city kids back in the 80's and early 90's when I was growing up but it was basically unheard of where I grew up out in the sticks.

My wife and I have dinner together almost every night when we're in the same town. My travel schedule gets a little busy sometimes and I miss her & being around the home (and BBQ grills) that I love when I'm gone too much.