What has happened to family dinner?
I don’t mean, where has it gone—countless health experts, celebrity cooks, and columnists have pontificated on its supposed endangerment—but when did it become so precious, so symbolic, so loaded?
In a recent piece in The New York Times, Virginia Heffernan calls her lack of flair for weeknight dinner her “shortcoming”. She writes, “Where I ought to have a lively intellectual curiosity about food preparation, I generally have a despairing blank.” She goes on to poke fun at the heavy-handed language that litters many of today’s family cookbooks (“The single most powerful thing anyone can do to protect their health, to live a healthy life and to have a healthy future is to go into their own kitchen and cook food themselves,’ decrees Katie Couric, who I suspect also dined out on occasion, in The Family Cooks). But she never really lets herself off the hook for not working recipes like Pork Shoulder Ragu with Papardelle into her repertoire. When a such an accomplished professional and obviously committed parent “despairs,” with a tongue planted not-so-firmly in cheek, over dinner, it makes me think we’ve gone off the rails a bit when it comes to the concept.
Many would opine that, at least evolutionarily, a parent’s ability put together healthy meals for her children is more 
important than her ability to, say, turn a clever phrase. I, too, realize that family dinner is more than food consumption after 5 pm. We don’t need studies—although there are loads—to realize that gathering around the table for a healthy meal is good for growing minds and bodies. But it’s the hand-wringing, all-or-nothing, nearly Puritanical idea of it that’s troublesome.
Part of the problem is that “family dinner” conjures some stuck-in-the-gravy notions: Mom, dad, and children gathered around a home table bedecked with bowl after bowl of home-cooked goodness. Combine that with our modern-day realizations of what’s healthy—less boxed and processed meals, more whole foods, veggies, and organic proteins—and we have a mash-up of The Waltons and the White House garden to aspire to: a tall order for any short order cook (which any parent, at least part of the time, essentially is.)
It’s no wonder that a recent study of moms by North Carolina State University researchers revealed that most are stressed about family dinner. Lower-income moms, understandably, are worried about getting food on the table at all. Middle-class mothers, meanwhile, are vexed by the fact that they sometimes have to rely on packaged convenience foods from time to time, or can’t always afford to buy organic. Apparently, no matter who you are, or what your household income is, your family dinner probably isn’t cutting it—at least when you compare yourself to whatever supermarket magazine, Food Network show, or Pinterest board happens to catch your eye in a given week.
Our mothers weren’t likely to have these hang-ups. My own mom is a great home cook, and made a hearty, tasty meal almost every weeknight when I was growing up. But most dinners were eaten with my big sisters as my mother went about her business in the kitchen—she ate later, with my dad, who worked until 8 pm most nights. The meals that most shaped my manners and taste buds were not these reliable home-cooked meals, but rather, the dinners out that we had once every few weeks or so, often at roadside restaurants on the way to the Delaware beach town where my parents had a cottage. It was at the Milford Sail Loft, not the family dinner table, where I learned to put my napkin on my lap, practice my indoor voice, and enjoy more challenging foods, like baked flounder or tomato wedges with Roquefort.
Early in my parenting days, I stressed about family dinners too—until I realized that stress has a strange souring effect on the meal, no matter how carefully sourced and beautifully presented the food. These days, I really do like to cook for my family, and try my best to balance wholesomeness and flavor with my own sanity. Organic greens, fresh fish, and homemade quick breads are in regular rotation, but so are canned soups, frozen chicken nuggets, and boxed mac-and-cheese (the orange kind, no less). When I try a new dish, I’ll break it up and serve it in components for my kids—a few pieces of slow-cooker pork alongside some plain pasta, rather than a full-on “ragu.” I try to share recipes on this blog that I think are easy and tasty, not Pinterest-perfect.
As for that family dinner tableau? Often, it’s three kids perched on counter stools, just like my sisters and I in the 80s; it gives my husband and I a chance to catch up and connect later, which strikes me as healthy for the larger family dynamic, too. Maybe once a week, a child might have to dine solo, while a sibling is off at an activity. (They might flip through a book while dining, which we all know is a really great way to eat from time to time.) And a couple times a week, typically Wednesdays and Sundays, we try to sit down as a family. Sometimes, the food is at a restaurant, and while I haven’t gotten the kids to try blue cheese dressing yet, they have mastered at least a couple “restaurant rules,” such as not crawling under the table and playing with a fellow diner’s shoelaces. Once in awhile, that restaurant is McDonalds, and the table is a car seat-constrained lap. I don’t beat myself up about that. In fact, it’s a Happy Meal for all involved.
I propose that we broaden the “family dinner” concept to “what’s-best-for-your-family dinner.” Every family has different schedules and needs—sometimes special ones that make the idealized notions of adventurous eating and polite conversation all but unattainable— and as long as we’re trying our best to serve reasonably rounded meals much of the time and sitting down together when it makes sense, it shouldn’t matter what dinner looks like on any given night. Food isn’t love; love is love. Family dinner is just one more ingredient to a healthy childhood, and some weeks, for a lot of us, a pinch is all you need.
Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want.” Photo credit: Georges Nijs via Flickr.
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