Family Time

            Upon reading a fellow classmate’s blog about breakfast, I began to ponder the question of why families no longer sit down to breakfast together. Then, as I thought about it a little more, I realized that I could count the people I know that still eat dinner as a family on one hand. Eating meals as a family seems to be a thing of the past. No longer do families regularly eat dinner together. But why is that?

            I did a little bit of research to find the answer to that question and it’s very straight forward. According to an article I read, there are two main factors that I stood out. First off, the women of our world today are a lot more independent than they were forty years ago. They are getting jobs and therefore can’t be that “stay at home mom” with a piping hot meal ready for the family the moment they walk in the door. Instead, they are cramped for time because of work and barely fit dinner into their busy lifestyles. On top of that, kids are a lot more active than they used to be. Therefore, parents have to drive them around, pick them up, and keep track of them all afternoon, which is another huge time killer. And does this benefit us?

            Apparently not. Families that do not eat dinner together put their children at a significantly higher risk of being obese because the kids are more likely to go get fast food as they are not eating at home. Kids are also more likely to get into drugs because of the lack of influence they get from their parents, since they no longer spend “dinner time” with their families. Overall, I think our nation’s families are becoming disconnected, and a lot of that has to do with not spending just fifteen minutes eating dinner together. One can only wonder what might happen if we began eating dinner together again.