family meals essay

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Why eating family meals together is still important today, eating together as a family is more important than ever, because there are more competing distractions, more activity choices outside the home, and a constant bombardment of information from technology..

This article has been updated from its original text.

During the day most of us are out in the community mixing with all kinds of people. Our children are learning about the world from many sources, often without parental filters or input. Even when everyone is home, individuals do their own thing. Perhaps the only opportunity of the day to talk with each other is at the dinner table.

Children in today’s busy world need a shared, safe space to discuss ideas within the understanding company of family, and parents need a routine time to connect with kids.

The way it was

I would like to share what family dinners mean to me. When I was growing up in rural northern California, I could always count on meeting my parents and two sisters at the maple dinner table around 6:30. We all helped getting dinner ready and would sit down together. For at least half an hour we would discuss how our day had gone, talked about matters which concerned us, and made future family plans. After a busy day our evening meal was a chance to gather our little tribe around the table and reconnect with each other. This pleasant time seemed like a reward for the day’s hard work.

Dining was about “us”, rather than the “I” so many families have evolved to cater to. There wasn’t a separate menu for each person. Even the babies had whatever we adults ate, just pureed or minced. If someone didn’t like something they were given a dab, just in case this was the day it suddenly tasted good, which often happened. As kids, we were most enthusiastic about the dishes we had a part in producing.

Conversation was spontaneous and unpredictable, although negative topics were discouraged since they might impair our appetites. Discussion between bites was fun, and often interspersed with fits of giggling with my sisters, to my father’s constant chagrin.

This nightly gathering was a common scene in America in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. People didn’t make plans around dinnertime and you were expected to be at your seat or sitting with your friend’s family at their table. Folks didn’t call during the dinner hour.

Why we don’t eat together as much today

In recent generations, Americans moved from cooking at home to eating out because they think they don’t have time to cook, says Sheryl Garrett, founder of the Garrett Planning Network. But that’s not a sound decision, she says.

“If you think about it, if you count packing the family into the car, driving to the Applebee’s, standing in line for 20 minutes, getting to your table, waiting for your food, checking out, paying the bill of 40 or 50 dollars, and then driving back home, have you saved any time at all? No, definitely not. And you’ve probably spent four times the money you would have at home.”

The variety and convenience of ‘fast food’ has certainly taken a bite out of family mealtimes. And with good reason. Food franchises have learned how to cater to our fast-paced lifestyles by delivering a wide range of food items ‘on the go’ at low cost. Today, with 19% of meals in the US being eaten in cars, we’ve come to depend on ready access to food. But while convenience foods have their place, especially for quick breakfasts and lunches for working people, they are no substitute for family dinners eaten together.

The benefits of eating family meals together

While our smart phones and devices have brought us closer to the rest of humanity, it is the family meal that brings us closer to our own clan. The fabric of family is woven by shared experiences and time spent together. Here are some things we gain when we share meals as a family:

Eating together is more efficient, less expensive and healthier

My mother planned well-balanced meals using few convenience foods because cooking from scratch was always more economical, healthful, and tasty. My dad had a garden and a few fruit trees which provided fresh produce. To supplement, in summer we would go to big farms to do the last picking of strawberries, peaches, plums, and corn. Then we would spend hours freezing or canning summer’s bounty to enjoy all winter.

In the fall my father would go deer hunting and we would have organic venison. Also there were local pasture-fed animals to source from farmers. We knew where our food came from, and it was almost always locally sourced.

When I became responsible for the care of my own children, I grew more interested in nutrition. Being a single adventurous woman in San Francisco I had explored spices, seasonings and ethnic foods, but returned to the idea that freshness was the key to flavor and nutrition. In Laurel’s Kitchen and Diet for a Small Planet , I learned why whole natural foods, minimally processed, improve our health.

Eating together teaches children food sustainability.

When our children were young, one of the common threads of table conversation was acknowledging where our food came from. Each item usually had a story, such as where bananas grew and what kind of trip they had coming to our home. By growing and raising much of our food, the children learned the basics of gardening and took more interest in meals. They might have picked the broccoli, helped make applesauce from apples they picked by climbing trees, or collected the eggs for the omelet.

Children need to learn how the cost of convenience foods goes beyond the purchase price. The environmental costs of individual portion packaging, for manufacturing and disposal, are significant. A major perpetrator of deforestation in the South is the fast food industry. With nearly 100 paper packaging mills in the US South and thousands of restaurants worldwide, major fast food retailers such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC and Taco Bell are leaders in paper consumption and subsequent waste.

Eating together builds closer relationships within the family

It goes without saying that communication is the key to understanding. Although we live as a family, each member is on a different track through life. Spending time together over meals lets us keep in touch with each other on a regular basis. To quote Joseph Califano, Jr, of Columbia University, “One of the simplest and most effective ways for parents to be engaged in their teens’ lives is by having frequent family dinners.”

Nights at the round table

When my husband Greg was a child, his family ate at a round table. The table was inherited from grandparents, and placing it in the dining room suited the shape of the room. But there was another benefit to the round table which was less apparent: because there was no “head” to the table, everyone in the family had an equal place. The ambience was very democratic – the children shared ideas with their parents as equals, and this encouraged the spontaneous and relaxed sharing of ideas.

The neighbors across the street were a fun, vibrant Italian family. But dinnertime was a strict affair, with the father sitting at the head of the large rectangular table and the mother at the opposite end. The father held court during meals, and the kids were expected to “eat up and shut up.” Although Greg spent much of his time in their house, he never stayed for dinner. He seemed to think that the table seating arrangement, which mirrored the traditional family hierarchy, stifled open communication.

It may be a stretch to think that the shape of the table and the seating order can influence communication, but we also dine at a round table in our home, and it has been the center of countless happy times spent with family and friends.

How to change the family dynamic

What if you decide your goal is to gather everyone to the table and have quality meal time together? How do you change the dynamic in your home?

Try setting a modest goal of two times a week and build from there

Eating meals together as a family does not necessarily mean the experience will be wonderful. Even within families, it takes practice to get along. Researchers at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University found essentially that family dinner gets better with practice; the less often a family eats together, the worse the experience is likely to be, the less healthy the food and the more meager the talk.

Simplify the food preparation

Probably the main reason we favor convenience food is the perception that home-cooked meals take more time to put together. This can certainly be the case. But there are shortcuts we can use to make food preparation fast and easy. Soups and stews can be made in quantities large enough to last two or three dinners. And when cooking rice or potatoes, make enough for a few meals. Recipes can be kept simple if you cook using fresh ingredients, and meals will still taste delicious.

Turn off cell phones and texting devices

The interruption of a phone call or text message is a sure way to break the conversation and remind everyone of events beyond the dinner table. It’s bad enough that tele-marketers call during the dinner hour. At our home we unplug the phone during mealtime; it makes our time together more relaxing and conducive to conversation.

Get the family involved in shopping and food preparation

Learning to shop wisely and to prepare food are useful life skills which are becoming more important with rising food prices and economic uncertainty. Young children can be helpful in the kitchen given a little guidance. We taught our kids how to roll out their own tortillas, which was messy, but they were proud to contribute to the meal. And they would eat just about anything if it were wrapped in one of their tortillas. When shopping, we practiced thrift. I remember preparing to order in a breakfast restaurant, and one of our kids asked the waitress for “bacon on sale”, thinking that was what you call “bacon”.

It is hard to fathom that 1/3 of America’s children eat fast food every day, according to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Good quality food, simply prepared, should take less than 45 minutes to put on the table. With good organization and family participation, food can be prepared in advance on the weekend, with some frozen for future meals. Any recipe can be adapted to be more healthful, even just by reducing the oil or butter and substituting whole wheat for white flour.

“If it were just about food, we would squirt it into their mouths with a tube,” says Robin Fox, an anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, about the intangible benefits that family dinner bestows on us. “A meal is about civilizing children. It’s about teaching them to be a member of their culture.”

Being together daily at the table is an important chance to celebrate being a family: by staying in touch, learning about family culture, food, and practicing the social skills of dining and conversation. Family meals are for nourishment, comfort and support. And, food is better eaten with the people we love!

About the Author

Lindsay Seaman Lindsay Seaman is an avid reader and researcher who grew up in rural communities in northern California. In 2010 she retired from her school district career and is now following her passion for organic gardening while helping manage the Eartheasy homestead. She works with Greg in the “research” gardens and orchard, where she enjoys experimenting with new ideas in organic food production.

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Second Opinion

Why the Family Meal Is Important

For many parents, it would be much easier and simpler to forget about family dinners. Jobs, children, after-school activities all contribute to families being constantly on the go, thus feeling the need to eat on the run.

But more and more parents are realizing the importance of shared family time at the dinner table. Often, this is the only time when all family members are all together in one place.

Although family dinners are viewed by some people as another burdensome chore at the end of a tiring day, more American families realize that the benefits of sharing time at day's end cannot be measured by calories alone.

Numerous studies show that eating together not only is an important aspect of family life, but helps make weight control easier.

When a family sits down together, it helps them handle the stresses of daily life and the hassles of day-to-day existence. Eating together tends to promote more sensible eating habits, which in turn helps family members manage their weight more easily.

Here are tips from the experts on family dining:

Expectations

The purpose of a family dinner may differ from family to family. In one family, good table manners might be the most important thing parents want to teach; in another, it might be communicating with one another, learning how to listen, and learning to respect each other.

Children need to learn a little bit at a time, experts say. If dinnertime is an interesting time of day for your child, he is going to learn how to sit, and say, "How was your day?" and "What was the best thing that happened to you today?"

Communication

Dinnertime is a time of respite from the hustle-bustle of everyday life. Your family can review the day that's passed and plan for the day that's coming.

Teach by example

Divide tasks, so Mom alone is not responsible for preparing food, serving, and washing dishes. The chores and joys of feeding, nurturing and cleaning up should be shared.

Don't discuss things that would embarrass or humiliate family members. Certain subjects children may want to discuss might require more compassion, or more individualized listening. Otherwise, there are no taboo topics.

Build self-esteem

Dinner is a perfect opportunity to build self-esteem in children. By listening to what children have to say, you are saying, "I value what you do; I respect who you are and what you're doing; what you do is important to me."

Mealtime can be looked at as an opportunity or as a chore. If it's viewed as an opportunity, then all sorts of possibilities are created; if it's viewed as a chore, then the possibilities don't exist. And it doesn't matter if the food is filet mignon, or pizza and salad.

Parents should let children choose their own seats. If they fight over a favorite seat, help settle the dispute peacefully.

Family dynamics

One parent may feed the kids early, with the intention of protecting the other parent from a raucous meal. But this actually can isolate the absent parent from family dynamics and create distance. Certain scheduling conflicts cannot be avoided, but carving out family meal time on a regular basis can enhance family dynamics.

The Benefit of Family Mealtime

Posted April 1, 2020
By Jill Anderson

A father having dinner with his daughter

Despite family mealtimes being hugely beneficial to kids, only about 30% of families manage to eat together regularly. Anne Fishel , executive director of the Family Dinner Project , knows it's not always easy to find that time but it also doesn't have to be so hard. Through her work, she helps families find fun, creative, and easy ways to make meals a reality. As many families adjust to stay-at-home orders from the Coronavirus, there is a silver lining in that now there is time to enjoy a family meal or two.

Jill Anderson: I am Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. With so many families staying home right now, that means there's also more opportunities for families to eat meals together. Family therapist Anne Fishel says only about 30% of families regularly eat dinner together, despite family meal time being hugely beneficial for kids. She's the executive director of the Family Dinner Project, a nonprofit that helps families find their way back to the dinner table with fun, easy conversations and meals. Before the coronavirus outbreak, I spoke to Anne, and asked her how we wound up being a country full of families that just don't eat together very often.

I mean the numbers certainly have gone down over the last 30 to 40 years. Although it's interesting in affluent families the numbers have gone up, and in low income families they've gone down, which I think speaks to the extra stressors of having to work extra jobs, having unpredictable schedules, not having as much access to healthy food. I think this accounts for why low income families struggle more with it.

But whether families are high income or low income, or live in the Midwest or on either coast, the obstacles to family dinner are pretty much the same all over. We hear that families are too busy, it's too much work to make dinner night after night, once they make it their kids or their partners are too picky. So what's the point? There's too much conflict at the table, families are distracted by technology, teenagers seem not to want to eat with their parents, although the research really flies in the face of that. Teenagers rank family dinner pretty high on their list of things they like to do, and 80% of teenagers say that family dinner is the time of the day they're most likely to talk to their parents.

Jill Anderson: Wow. Tell me a little bit more about what are some of the benefits of having dinner together?

Anne Fishel: Yes.

Jill Anderson: And why it's important?

Anne Fishel: Yes. I'm a family therapist, and I sort of half joke that I could be out of business if more families had regular family dinners, because so many of the things that I try to do in family therapy actually get accomplished by regular dinners. There have been more than 20 years of dozens of studies that document that family dinners are great for the body, the physical health, the brains and academic performance, and the spirit or the mental health, and in terms nutrition, cardiovascular health is better in teens, there's lower fat and sugar and salt in home cooked meals even if you don't try that hard, there's more fruit, and fiber, and vegetables, and protein in home cooked meals, and lower calories. Kids who grow up having family dinners, when they're on their own tend to eat more healthily and to have lower rates of obesity.

Then the mental health benefits are just incredible. Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse, and eating disorders, and tobacco use, and early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience and higher self esteem.

Jill Anderson: The Family Dinner Project has worked with, I think I read 1 million families on this issue.

Anne Fishel: Yes, we've had close to 2 million unique visitors on our website.

Jill Anderson: Wow.

Anne Fishel: We have tons of free online resources of recipes that take less than 30 minutes, and games to play at the table that promote conversation and conversation starters. Then we've worked with thousands of families through our community programs. We host community dinners at schools, and afterschool programs, and military bases, and homeless shelters, and firehouses, and we bring together a lot of families, and we have a great dinner together, we cook together, we eat, we play games, we have conversation, and then the kids will go off with a team member to make dessert for everybody, and one of us will meet with the parents and we'll ask them what are they doing well when it comes to making dinner happen, and what are their obstacles? Then we'll ask the parents to brainstorm their own solutions to these common problems.

Over 10 years, we've kind of collected some of those great work arounds, those real life hacks and collected them in this new book that we wrote called Eat, Laugh, Talk, The Family Dinner Playbook . It's really kind of a celebration of the incredible innovation that families demonstrate when they try to make family dinner happen. It's organized around the main obstacles. If I could just give you an example to show you how innovative families can be.

Jill Anderson: Oh sure.

Anne Fishel: There's a father in the book, a divorced father who has his three sons every weekend, and he very much would like to have dinner with them over the weekend, and they're really not that interested, so they scarf down their dinner and off they go to their screens. One night he said to himself, if you can't beat them, join them. And he said, boys, come to the kitchen, humor me, we're going to make ratatouille over pasta. They did that, and then he had them watch the movie Ratatouille while they ate the dinner, and they would discuss how their ratatouille compared to the movie version. Then sometimes he would turn off the sound, and have them guess what the actors were saying on the screen, and sometimes he would have them be critics, stop the movie and have them critique the different scenes. He used technology to engage them around the table, and that kick-started their practice of having weekend dinners with one another, and he didn't have to show a movie each time.

Jill Anderson: Right. I mean that's not even something I had even thought about, you have so many different family structures, kids moving from maybe one home to a different home-

Jill Anderson: - or different parents' home, and just very different situations.

Anne Fishel: Yes, you have three generational families-

Jill Anderson: Yes.

Anne Fishel: - single parents, you could have a family dinner with friends, or college kids in a dorm who regularly have dinner with one another, I think of that as a kind of family dinner.

Jill Anderson: Really runs the gamut.

Jill Anderson: It's not what you traditionally would think of as a family.

Anne Fishel: Exactly. It doesn't even have to be dinner, some families find it so much easier to have breakfast together, or weekend brunches, or even a late night snack, where you push away from work and meet in the kitchen for cheese and crackers and hot chocolate.

Jill Anderson: Yeah.

Anne Fishel: That would count too. I mean if you think of it, there's 16 opportunities for a family to eat together in a week, seven breakfasts, seven dinners, and two weekend lunches, and any of those would count towards the benefits.

Jill Anderson: Right. If you know you're going to have a day where dinner is going to be impossible on a weekend together, maybe you can try to do a breakfast or some other time.

Anne Fishel: Sure.

Jill Anderson: I imagine doing this every day would be the dream, but is there a goal?

Anne Fishel: Yeah, I think it's really up to each individual family to find their way. The research has focused on five meals a week as being kind of the tipping point for a lot of these benefits, but I'm not sure that they've carefully calibrated it, I mean some researchers have looked to see, do you get the same benefits with two meals a week? Some of the academic benefits seem to really count on five meals or more, and the goal is to have at least one good enough meal together a week. If a family can make that happen, often more will follow.

The idea that has to be five or more can become an obstacle. It can kind of a tyranny of perfection. I think we really want to get away from that in all regards. It doesn't have to be a perfect number, it doesn't have to be perfectly cooked, doesn't have to be perfect manners, the secret sauce of dinner is really not about the food at all. The secret sauce is, is it enjoyable? Do kids feel that when they speak, somebody wants to listen to what they have to say? Is there not much criticism, or anger, or conflict at the table? These are the things that I think families really should focus on.

Jill Anderson: I want to talk more about that. It's not so much the act of eating together as much as it is about that connection, and making it quality time together, which I know myself as a parent is hard to do, especially with a young child.

Anne Fishel: There are developmental challenges when the kids are young, and then again when they're teenagers, but I think when they're young you want to set kind of realistic expectations-

Jill Anderson: Right.

Anne Fishel: - and some kids, if you can get them to sit for five or 10 minutes, I think that's something you can build on as the years go on. Sometimes if parents put a little bit more thought into how they're going to engage their kids at the table, and less focus on the foods that that can make for a more enjoyable dinner.

Jill Anderson: Oh yeah.

Anne Fishel: Maybe picking a game that you want to play that will really delight a child, and help a child talk more fully about their day than just asking them what did you do in school? Or how was your day? But instead maybe everybody goes around the table and says a rose, a thorn, and a bud. Rose is something funny or positive, a thorn is something difficult or challenging, and a bud is something you hope will happen tomorrow.

Jill Anderson: That's great.

Anne Fishel: Yeah.

Jill Anderson: I'll have to try that tonight, because I definitely am a parent guilty of saying how was your day and getting nothing because my child is so young.

Anne Fishel: Yes, there are 52 weeks of recipes and games to play at the table, and conversation starters for all different ages, and I think it can be fun as a parent just to go through, and kind of pick and choose what you think might work at your table with your family.

Jill Anderson: Can we talk about the conversation with teenagers, or when they get a little bit older, I would assume, and I'm sure a lot of parents would assume, their teenagers want nothing to do with them at the dinner table, and then it turns out that's not really true.

Anne Fishel: It's not true. No, when kids are given the choice, or when they're asked in a survey, would you rather eat with your parents than by yourself in front of a screen or with your peers? 80% choose their families. It's because teens know that it's the most reliable time of the day to have time with their parents, and adolescents still need that and want that. In a funny way adolescents have the most to gain from family dinner when you think of the reduction in high risk teen behavior that comes with regular family dinner.

I think it's kind of a question of accommodating, making some changes, engaging teenagers more in choosing the menu, or maybe cooking one meal a week, or cooking a course, or finding out a country that they're interested in and picking some menus from or some dishes from that country and making that, or asking a teenager to make a playlist of favorite songs to play during dinner and talking about that, and maybe not talking about things that you know really upset your teenage kid. Maybe not talking about that D they got on their math quiz, or how messy their room is, or the missed curfew over the weekend. Maybe waiting for those conversations until everyone's eaten, and maybe having it one-on-one instead of at the dinner table.

Jill Anderson: Wait, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, which was there's academic benefits to eating together-

Jill Anderson: - and I don't know that people would necessarily equate eating together as having some sort of benefit academically.

Anne Fishel: Yes, these are very dramatic benefits, with young kids, preschoolers, the organic language that happens at the dinner table turns out to have 10 times as many rare or uncommon words sort of embedded in those conversations, as parents talk about being late because they hit a lot of traffic and they were so upset they wanted to tear their hair out, whatever, there are a lot of words that kids don't pick up in their picture books or on the playground, and kids who have a larger vocabulary learn to read earlier and more easily. This was a study done at the Harvard Ed school actually, a kind of a longitudinal literacy study done by Snow and Beals.

Then moving along the age continuum, kids who eat regular family dinners in elementary school and in high school get better grades, and the effect is stronger than even doing homework, or doing art, or sports.

Jill Anderson: Have you looked at all at the college student population? They're sort of transient, sometimes they move home for a month or two.

Anne Fishel: Yes. The dinner table is in some ways the the microcosm of what's going on in the family in general. It's the place where parents first feel maybe the emptiness of the empty nest, as they night after night sit at the same kitchen table and they have two empty seats where their children would be seated. I think there's something like that that happens when young adult kids come home, and maybe they weren't expected. Maybe the parents, the single parent, or two parents, they're sitting in different seats now that it's just the two of them, and they notice they have to rearrange their seating to accommodate a young adult, or maybe they've gotten in the habit of eating much later than they used to, or maybe the college student has become a vegetarian and wants to change the way the parents eat.

So you see some of these developmental frictions, or changes, or adaptations at the dinner table, and as a family therapist, it's kind of a fruitful place to work out some of the changes, who's going to accommodate, and how's that going to happen? Are you going to keep eating at nine o'clock the way you've been doing since your college kid has been away? Are you going to reach some understanding?

Jill Anderson: It's just renegotiating?

Anne Fishel: I think often college kids come back with some new ideas about food that they may want to introduce their families to, and I think one of the kind of earmarks of families who do the best, making the transition from teenage to young adulthood happens when parents really welcome the adventures and journeys that their kids take outside the family, and those journeys might be in exploring new cuisines, new ways of eating. It's sort of an opportunity I think, for parents to say, teach us, make something you've learned, or let us adapt to things that are important to you now that you've had a new experience in college.

Jill Anderson: I hear a little bit about parents, they want to get their kid to bed earlier, and both parents are not home at the same time, and so then I becomes this what time to eat issue.

Anne Fishel: Right. Yeah, it's like which ritual is going to get privileged? Is it going to be the bedtime ritual or the dinnertime ritual? Couple things come to mind, one is a family dinner doesn't have to be everybody.

Anne Fishel: Family dinner is one parent and a child, it could still be a family dinner, and then if there's another parent and he or she comes home late, then the child at least still had a family dinner. But maybe on the nights when the whole family can't eat together, there's more focus on breakfast.

Few years ago, Cheerios came to us and said, we know you have the Family Dinner Project, but how about the family breakfast project? We created games, and food, and conversation starters for breakfast, building it around a seven minute breakfast, because that's how long it is when you press your snooze alarm before it goes off again. We thought even busy families could fit in a seven minute breakfast, so they're conversation starters and games that sort of tilt towards anticipating the day rather than reflecting back on it.

Jill Anderson: I'm still a little bit taken aback by that statistic you mentioned earlier, that only 30% or 40%-

Anne Fishel: Have dinner.

Jill Anderson: - have dinner together, and while that's not the worst number you could ever hear.

Anne Fishel: And that's regular.

Anne Fishel: There more families who have it one time a week, or twice a week. It's not that the other 60% are never having family dinner.

Jill Anderson: Right, it's still surprising to hear that. What would you say if there was one thing for families to think about doing? How do you start?

Anne Fishel: I think I would start with making a commitment to having it once a week, and then I would ask a family, what would you like to work on? If you were to make one small change, where would it be? Would it be in trying a new food? Would it be having more fun at the table? Would it be finding out more what goes on in each other's days? Would it be talking about the news? Or talking about who we are as a family, and what our identity is, and what we value as a family? I would ask a family, if you were to make one small shift, small addition to family dinner, in what realm would you want to do it?

Jill Anderson: Do you find that if you approached this to big, thinking let's do this every night, it's just-

Anne Fishel: It doesn't work.

Jill Anderson: It doesn't work.

Anne Fishel: Yeah. Yeah, I think that can be overwhelming, and can make families just want to give up on it. Some families, nobody likes to cook. I remember a family like that who nobody liked to cook, but they wanted to have dinner together, and so they decided to have one dinner out a week, and I made them a conversation jar, it was a jar stuffed with whimsical, thought provoking, funny questions on little slips of paper, you can download them on our website, because they wanted to have a sustained conversation at the restaurant for 45 minutes, and so they brought the conversation jar to the restaurant. Just said, forget about cooking at home, maybe later on we'll tackle that, but for now we just want to have a good conversation with the three kids and the two parents.

Jill Anderson: That's what this is all really about.

Anne Fishel: Yeah, it really is. There's just so few opportunities each day for families to be together, and to connect, and relax, and have a good time.

Jill Anderson: And get rid of your phones.

Anne Fishel: And well, get rid of your phone, that's one option that many families take to have a technology free time of the day. Other families I know take a slightly different stance where you can bring a phone if you want to share something with the family, a photo you took, or a funny text, that's okay. Or sometimes families say, we'll just use our phones to resolve factual debates, do fish sleep? Who won the world series in 1990? That kind of thing.

Jill Anderson: I mean, it sounds like there really is no wrong way to do this-

Jill Anderson: - other than just not trying to do this at all.

Anne Fishel: Yes, it's a very flexible format, the family dinner. We're not trying to make this a nostalgia project, or kind of bring back a fantasy from the 1950s with a spotless kitchen and one parent, usually the mother home slow roasting a pot roast. The idea really is to try to involve as many people as possible to make the work a little bit lighter, and to focus more on what happens around the table then the food, I mean, everyone loves food too.

Jill Anderson: Anne Fishel is the executive director and co-founder of the Family Dinner Project. She is also a family therapist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. She is director of the family and couples therapy program at Massachusetts General Hospital. The Family Dinner Project just recently released the Eat, Laugh, Talk, the Family Dinner Playbook .

I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe.

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The Tradition of Families Getting Together to Eat Meals is Disappearing - Task 2 Band 9 Essay Sample

Updated: Mar 16

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

The tradition of families getting together to eat meals is disappearing.

What are the reasons?

What are the impacts?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experiences.

You should write at least 250 words.

Task 2 Band 9 Essay Sample (The tradition of families getting together to eat meals is disappearing.)

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Model Essay 1

In recent years, the traditional practice of families congregating for meals has seen a notable decline. This essay posits that the primary reasons for this shift are the accelerating pace of life and the pervasive influence of technology, which have, in turn, led to significant social and health-related consequences. The ensuing paragraphs will delve into these causes and their implications in detail.

The frenetic tempo of contemporary life serves as a primary catalyst for the erosion of shared meal times. With adults ensnared in long working hours and children engaged in educational and extracurricular commitments, synchronizing schedules has become a Herculean task. This disjointedness is further exacerbated by the omnipresence of technology. Mobile devices and social media, while connecting us globally, paradoxically alienate us from those physically nearest to us, including our family members at the dinner table. The allure of screens often supersedes the appeal of sitting down to a shared meal, leading to a fragmentation of family bonds.

The ramifications of this trend are multifaceted. Socially, the diminution of family meals erodes the fabric of familial intimacy, as these gatherings traditionally served as a crucible for bonding, sharing experiences, and imparting values. Health-wise, there is a tangible shift towards convenience foods with compromised nutritional value, given the absence of communal cooking and eating. This shift predisposes individuals to lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Moreover, the loss of structured meal times deprives family members of a crucial anchor in their daily routines, potentially exacerbating stress and feelings of isolation.

In conclusion, the decline of family meal traditions is symptomatic of broader societal shifts towards faster-paced living and the pervasive influence of technology. This evolution bears significant social and health consequences, underscoring the need to reassess and perhaps recalibrate our daily priorities and practices to nurture family cohesion and well-being.

Model Essay 2

The ritual of family meals, once a cornerstone of domestic life, is gradually vanishing, a phenomenon driven by modern lifestyle changes and technological advancements. This essay contends that the erosion of this tradition stems from the accelerated pace of contemporary life and the pervasive reach of digital technology, leading to profound impacts on family dynamics and individual health.

The acceleration of daily routines, now marked by increasingly demanding work schedules and a multitude of educational commitments, significantly impedes the feasibility of regular family gatherings at the dinner table. In parallel, the digital age has ushered in an era of gadgets that command the undivided attention of individuals, further isolating family members from one another and curtailing meaningful interactions. The consequence of these dual forces is a notable decline in the opportunities for familial interactions, once readily facilitated by shared meals. These gatherings served not only as a nutritional necessity but also as a vital channel for communication and bonding, nurturing relationships and fostering a sense of belonging among family members.

This shift from traditional meal times significantly impacts social cohesion and nutritional habits in families. Less frequent shared meals reduce the transmission of family values and erode unity. Nutritionally, the preference for fast, often unhealthy options over home-cooked meals is linked to increased diet-related issues like obesity and heart diseases. This trend towards convenience undermines nutritional quality and disrupts eating patterns, which can heighten stress and affect mental well-being. Ultimately, these changes in dining habits have far-reaching effects on family health and unity, underscoring the importance of preserving mealtime traditions for the sake of both social bonds and physical health.

In summary, the diminishing practice of family meals reflects broader societal changes, with significant consequences for both the social fabric of families and the health of individuals. This trend calls for a conscious effort to reclaim these valuable moments of togetherness, highlighting the importance of prioritizing family interactions and well-being in the face of modern challenges.

Sample Essay 3

There is a popular view that a familial culture of having dinner together is becoming a thing of the past. It might be because parents’ excessive work stress is leaving less time for the children. However, it has a far-reaching consequence, as the children are getting deprived of familial connection and a proper raising. The following paragraphs are going to elucidate the idea with appropriate logic and examples.

Nowadays, the fast-paced environment of people’s lives has been changing the boundary of the families. It has become almost impossible that family members could spend quality time together. These days, people’s general level of income are relatively lower than ever before. That is why, to stretch out salaries all through the month, most of the parents are required to work full time. As a result, by the time they arrive home, offspring have had their meal. Eventually, parents and children cannot have the valuable time together which is must for the children’s proper raising.

In fact, this absence of family gathering is coming up with a huge cost, as parents are losing the chance to listen to their children and failing to build a strong emotional connection with them. A proper family dinner used to give both parents and children a chance to interact closely and convey messages to the Kids regarding the right manners or other valuable lessons. But this incredible chapter is becoming obsolete because of the unprecedented changes in the modern lifestyle. As a result, lesser parental time is not only depriving children from gaining a proper growth, but also it is breeding childhood traumas which can eventually lead to an adult mental illness.

To conclude, with the advent of modernisation and the resulting financial strain, parents are getting heavily involved in their professional aspect which has an extremely detrimental impact on their children’s proper growth in the long run.

Sample Essay 4

In the past, family members tended to dine together on several occasions. While these events are disappearing due to the extended working schedules and family structures, this development would lead to the lack of communication and unstable relationship.

The reduction of family reunions results from the heavy workloads and increased nuclear family. Most of the companies set up the urgent and short time notice deadlines for employees. As a result, most of the employees require to work overtime to complete the given targets, which consumes their spare time that could be otherwise used to hang out with their family members. In addition, there is a rising trend of nuclear families, living away independently from their parents, grandparents, or other relatives. These unprecedented changes are leading up to the reduced frequency of family gatherings and meals together.

However, the substantial reduction of family meals is detrimental to family members’ relationship and communication. To be specific, mealtime is one of the most important time for a family since it gives the members a chance to interact closely and convey messages regarding several family decisions. Therefore, lesser mealtime is not only depriving from building a strong emotional connection, but also deepening any unsolved misunderstanding between family members. For instance, previously grandchildren used to meet their grandparents or other relatives in family festivals or reunion meals, whereas this generation is now mostly unfamiliar with older ones, and this is mainly attributed to the absence of family dining. These phenomena are deterring people from even meeting their family members, let alone close interactions.

In conclusion, extended working hours and the rise of nuclear family structure are the root reasons for the reduced culture of family dining. However, this development negatively affects the relationships and interaction between family members.

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Interested in partnering with the family dinner project, bring us to your community with workshops, partnership programs, and more learn more, the familydinnerproject.org, on the path to college, reflecting on family dinner.

Note: This essay was originally written by teen Paul Clancy as part of the college application process. He included it in his Common Application as a response to the question “Describe a place or environment in which you are perfectly content, why is it meaningful to you?” Paul is currently studying at the University of Illinois — Champaign.

I did not always appreciate our family dinner. When I was younger and more selfish I was not interested in spending that much time with my family. Now, I understand that my family is the cornerstone to my success and family dinner is the cornerstone to my family’s success. Family dinner creates a sense of community and stability. Even if everything in my life seems to be crumbling to pieces, I know that mahogany table set for dinner will stand tall among the rubble. I can always look forward to a beautifully prepared meal filled with laughter and conversation to glue me back together.

One of the best aspects of our family dinner is that it has morphed over time. It has seamlessly aged with the rest of my family. At first, dinner would last ten minutes. Conversation topics changed quicker than lightning could strike. It started with “how was your day?” and ended with “where is your shirt?” My parents struggled to control four children under the age of 6. The combined attention span of us kids was less than a nanosecond. None of us kids knew what we truly needed but we certainly knew what we liked. The room would echo with screams for dessert, television and story time. Inevitably a glass or two of milk would be spilled. Afterwards my dad worked to clean off all of our faces and my mom struggled to clean the dishes. We were a messy bunch, wearing each meal’s color on our faces.

As my brothers, sister, and I began to enter the tween and teenage years, the intensity of conversation was amped up by agreement and debate from across the table. Fights at a Clancy family dinner are unique because my mother is an attorney and my father is a judge. Pulling hair and throwing food was not tolerated, so we kids learned to use our words as weapons and as shields. My parents reinforced the notion that a well-placed adjective is just as powerful as a sucker punch. Synonyms of stupid and annoying were as plentiful as the creamy mashed potatoes, yet my parents always managed to exhibit a sense of control over dinner. Groundings were handed out not only for bad behavior but also for taboo language. Although the weekend of a 12-14 year old is nothing incredibly enticing, the reactions of a Saturday night quarantine rivaled those of capital punishment. However, by the end of dinner, tensions would usually fall and most problems could be soothed with some ice cream and words of wisdom.

Now with three kids in high school a 7 o’clock dinner time is hard to come by. However, everyone makes sacrifices to be present. I find that once I sit down I no longer want to leave. Family dinner creates this fulfilling energy that I cannot find anywhere else. I always leave that mahogany dining table feeling happier than when I sat down.

Family dinner has helped make me the young man I am today. It has taught me the importance of listening, but it has also showed me how to make my point heard. I have become more loyal, responsible, and accountable. Most importantly, I have created a unique bond with my family that will not be broken. Lee Iacocca summed it up best stating, “The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.” I could not agree more.

Follow YES! For Teachers

Six brilliant student essays on the power of food to spark social change.

Read winning essays from our fall 2018 “Feeding Ourselves, Feeding Our Revolutions,” student writing contest.

For the Fall 2018 student writing competition, “Feeding Ourselves, Feeding Our Revolutions,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” by Korsha Wilson and respond to this writing prompt: If you were to host a potluck or dinner to discuss a challenge facing your community or country, what food would you cook? Whom would you invite? On what issue would you deliberate?

The Winners

From the hundreds of essays written, these six—on anti-Semitism, cultural identity, death row prisoners, coming out as transgender, climate change, and addiction—were chosen as essay winners. Be sure to read the literary gems and catchy titles that caught our eye.

Middle School Winner: India Brown High School Winner: Grace Williams University Winner: Lillia Borodkin Powerful Voice Winner: Paisley Regester Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Lingo Powerful Voice Winner: Hayden Wilson

Literary Gems Clever Titles

Middle School Winner: India Brown

A Feast for the Future

Close your eyes and imagine the not too distant future: The Statue of Liberty is up to her knees in water, the streets of lower Manhattan resemble the canals of Venice, and hurricanes arrive in the fall and stay until summer. Now, open your eyes and see the beautiful planet that we will destroy if we do not do something. Now is the time for change. Our future is in our control if we take actions, ranging from small steps, such as not using plastic straws, to large ones, such as reducing fossil fuel consumption and electing leaders who take the problem seriously.

Hosting a dinner party is an extraordinary way to publicize what is at stake. At my potluck, I would serve linguini with clams. The clams would be sautéed in white wine sauce. The pasta tossed with a light coat of butter and topped with freshly shredded parmesan. I choose this meal because it cannot be made if global warming’s patterns persist. Soon enough, the ocean will be too warm to cultivate clams, vineyards will be too sweltering to grow grapes, and wheat fields will dry out, leaving us without pasta.

I think that giving my guests a delicious meal and then breaking the news to them that its ingredients would be unattainable if Earth continues to get hotter is a creative strategy to initiate action. Plus, on the off chance the conversation gets drastically tense, pasta is a relatively difficult food to throw.

In YES! Magazine’s article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” Korsha Wilson says “…beyond the narrow definition of what cooking is, you can see that cooking is and has always been an act of resistance.” I hope that my dish inspires people to be aware of what’s at stake with increasing greenhouse gas emissions and work toward creating a clean energy future.

My guest list for the potluck would include two groups of people: local farmers, who are directly and personally affected by rising temperatures, increased carbon dioxide, drought, and flooding, and people who either do not believe in human-caused climate change or don’t think it affects anyone. I would invite the farmers or farm owners because their jobs and crops are dependent on the weather. I hope that after hearing a farmer’s perspective, climate-deniers would be awakened by the truth and more receptive to the effort to reverse these catastrophic trends.

Earth is a beautiful planet that provides everything we’ll ever need, but because of our pattern of living—wasteful consumption, fossil fuel burning, and greenhouse gas emissions— our habitat is rapidly deteriorating. Whether you are a farmer, a long-shower-taking teenager, a worker in a pollution-producing factory, or a climate-denier, the future of humankind is in our hands. The choices we make and the actions we take will forever affect planet Earth.

India Brown is an eighth grader who lives in New York City with her parents and older brother. She enjoys spending time with her friends, walking her dog, Morty, playing volleyball and lacrosse, and swimming.

High School Winner: Grace Williams

Apple Pie Embrace

It’s 1:47 a.m. Thanksgiving smells fill the kitchen. The sweet aroma of sugar-covered apples and buttery dough swirls into my nostrils. Fragrant orange and rosemary permeate the room and every corner smells like a stroll past the open door of a French bakery. My eleven-year-old eyes water, red with drowsiness, and refocus on the oven timer counting down. Behind me, my mom and aunt chat to no end, fueled by the seemingly self-replenishable coffee pot stashed in the corner. Their hands work fast, mashing potatoes, crumbling cornbread, and covering finished dishes in a thin layer of plastic wrap. The most my tired body can do is sit slouched on the backless wooden footstool. I bask in the heat escaping under the oven door.

As a child, I enjoyed Thanksgiving and the preparations that came with it, but it seemed like more of a bridge between my birthday and Christmas than an actual holiday. Now, it’s a time of year I look forward to, dedicated to family, memories, and, most importantly, food. What I realized as I grew older was that my homemade Thanksgiving apple pie was more than its flaky crust and soft-fruit center. This American food symbolized a rite of passage, my Iraqi family’s ticket to assimilation.

Some argue that by adopting American customs like the apple pie, we lose our culture. I would argue that while American culture influences what my family eats and celebrates, it doesn’t define our character. In my family, we eat Iraqi dishes like mesta and tahini, but we also eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. This doesn’t mean we favor one culture over the other; instead, we create a beautiful blend of the two, adapting traditions to make them our own.

That said, my family has always been more than the “mashed potatoes and turkey” type.

My mom’s family immigrated to the United States in 1976. Upon their arrival, they encountered a deeply divided America. Racism thrived, even after the significant freedoms gained from the Civil Rights Movement a few years before. Here, my family was thrust into a completely unknown world: they didn’t speak the language, they didn’t dress normally, and dinners like riza maraka seemed strange in comparison to the Pop Tarts and Oreos lining grocery store shelves.

If I were to host a dinner party, it would be like Thanksgiving with my Chaldean family. The guests, my extended family, are a diverse people, distinct ingredients in a sweet potato casserole, coming together to create a delicious dish.

In her article “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” Korsha Wilson writes, “each ingredient that we use, every technique, every spice tells a story about our access, our privilege, our heritage, and our culture.” Voices around the room will echo off the walls into the late hours of the night while the hot apple pie steams at the table’s center.

We will play concan on the blanketed floor and I’ll try to understand my Toto, who, after forty years, still speaks broken English. I’ll listen to my elders as they tell stories about growing up in Unionville, Michigan, a predominately white town where they always felt like outsiders, stories of racism that I have the privilege not to experience. While snacking on sunflower seeds and salted pistachios, we’ll talk about the news- how thousands of people across the country are protesting for justice among immigrants. No one protested to give my family a voice.

Our Thanksgiving food is more than just sustenance, it is a physical representation of my family ’s blended and ever-changing culture, even after 40 years in the United States. No matter how the food on our plates changes, it will always symbolize our sense of family—immediate and extended—and our unbreakable bond.

Grace Williams, a student at Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, enjoys playing tennis, baking, and spending time with her family. Grace also enjoys her time as a writing editor for her school’s yearbook, the Pioneer. In the future, Grace hopes to continue her travels abroad, as well as live near extended family along the sunny beaches of La Jolla, California.

University Winner: Lillia Borodkin

Nourishing Change After Tragedy Strikes

In the Jewish community, food is paramount. We often spend our holidays gathered around a table, sharing a meal and reveling in our people’s story. On other sacred days, we fast, focusing instead on reflection, atonement, and forgiveness.

As a child, I delighted in the comfort of matzo ball soup, the sweetness of hamantaschen, and the beauty of braided challah. But as I grew older and more knowledgeable about my faith, I learned that the origins of these foods are not rooted in joy, but in sacrifice.

The matzo of matzo balls was a necessity as the Jewish people did not have time for their bread to rise as they fled slavery in Egypt. The hamantaschen was an homage to the hat of Haman, the villain of the Purim story who plotted the Jewish people’s destruction. The unbaked portion of braided challah was tithed by commandment to the kohen or priests. Our food is an expression of our history, commemorating both our struggles and our triumphs.

As I write this, only days have passed since eleven Jews were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. These people, intending only to pray and celebrate the Sabbath with their community, were murdered simply for being Jewish. This brutal event, in a temple and city much like my own, is a reminder that anti-Semitism still exists in this country. A reminder that hatred of Jews, of me, my family, and my community, is alive and flourishing in America today. The thought that a difference in religion would make some believe that others do not have the right to exist is frightening and sickening.

This is why, if given the chance, I would sit down the entire Jewish American community at one giant Shabbat table. I’d serve matzo ball soup, pass around loaves of challah, and do my best to offer comfort. We would take time to remember the beautiful souls lost to anti-Semitism this October and the countless others who have been victims of such hatred in the past. I would then ask that we channel all we are feeling—all the fear, confusion, and anger —into the fight.

As suggested in Korsha Wilson’s “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” I would urge my guests to direct our passion for justice and the comfort and care provided by the food we are eating into resisting anti-Semitism and hatred of all kinds.

We must use the courage this sustenance provides to create change and honor our people’s suffering and strength. We must remind our neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, that anti-Semitism is alive and well today. We must shout and scream and vote until our elected leaders take this threat to our community seriously. And, we must stand with, support, and listen to other communities that are subjected to vengeful hate today in the same way that many of these groups have supported us in the wake of this tragedy.

This terrible shooting is not the first of its kind, and if conflict and loathing are permitted to grow, I fear it will not be the last. While political change may help, the best way to target this hate is through smaller-scale actions in our own communities.

It is critical that we as a Jewish people take time to congregate and heal together, but it is equally necessary to include those outside the Jewish community to build a powerful crusade against hatred and bigotry. While convening with these individuals, we will work to end the dangerous “otherizing” that plagues our society and seek to understand that we share far more in common than we thought. As disagreements arise during our discussions, we will learn to respect and treat each other with the fairness we each desire. Together, we shall share the comfort, strength, and courage that traditional Jewish foods provide and use them to fuel our revolution.

We are not alone in the fight despite what extremists and anti-semites might like us to believe. So, like any Jew would do, I invite you to join me at the Shabbat table. First, we will eat. Then, we will get to work.

Lillia Borodkin is a senior at Kent State University majoring in Psychology with a concentration in Child Psychology. She plans to attend graduate school and become a school psychologist while continuing to pursue her passion for reading and writing. Outside of class, Lillia is involved in research in the psychology department and volunteers at the Women’s Center on campus.

Powerful Voice Winner: Paisley Regester

As a kid, I remember asking my friends jokingly, ”If you were stuck on a deserted island, what single item of food would you bring?” Some of my friends answered practically and said they’d bring water. Others answered comically and said they’d bring snacks like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or a banana. However, most of my friends answered sentimentally and listed the foods that made them happy. This seems like fun and games, but what happens if the hypothetical changes? Imagine being asked, on the eve of your death, to choose the final meal you will ever eat. What food would you pick? Something practical? Comical? Sentimental?

This situation is the reality for the 2,747 American prisoners who are currently awaiting execution on death row. The grim ritual of “last meals,” when prisoners choose their final meal before execution, can reveal a lot about these individuals and what they valued throughout their lives.

It is difficult for us to imagine someone eating steak, lobster tail, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream one moment and being killed by state-approved lethal injection the next. The prisoner can only hope that the apple pie he requested tastes as good as his mom’s. Surprisingly, many people in prison decline the option to request a special last meal. We often think of food as something that keeps us alive, so is there really any point to eating if someone knows they are going to die?

“Controlling food is a means of controlling power,” said chef Sean Sherman in the YES! Magazine article “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” by Korsha Wilson. There are deeper stories that lie behind the final meals of individuals on death row.

I want to bring awareness to the complex and often controversial conditions of this country’s criminal justice system and change the common perception of prisoners as inhuman. To accomplish this, I would host a potluck where I would recreate the last meals of prisoners sentenced to death.

In front of each plate, there would be a place card with the prisoner’s full name, the date of execution, and the method of execution. These meals could range from a plate of fried chicken, peas with butter, apple pie, and a Dr. Pepper, reminiscent of a Sunday dinner at Grandma’s, to a single olive.

Seeing these meals up close, meals that many may eat at their own table or feed to their own kids, would force attendees to face the reality of the death penalty. It will urge my guests to look at these individuals not just as prisoners, assigned a number and a death date, but as people, capable of love and rehabilitation.

This potluck is not only about realizing a prisoner’s humanity, but it is also about recognizing a flawed criminal justice system. Over the years, I have become skeptical of the American judicial system, especially when only seven states have judges who ethnically represent the people they serve. I was shocked when I found out that the officers who killed Michael Brown and Anthony Lamar Smith were exonerated for their actions. How could that be possible when so many teens and adults of color have spent years in prison, some even executed, for crimes they never committed?

Lawmakers, police officers, city officials, and young constituents, along with former prisoners and their families, would be invited to my potluck to start an honest conversation about the role and application of inequality, dehumanization, and racism in the death penalty. Food served at the potluck would represent the humanity of prisoners and push people to acknowledge that many inmates are victims of a racist and corrupt judicial system.

Recognizing these injustices is only the first step towards a more equitable society. The second step would be acting on these injustices to ensure that every voice is heard, even ones separated from us by prison walls. Let’s leave that for the next potluck, where I plan to serve humble pie.

Paisley Regester is a high school senior and devotes her life to activism, the arts, and adventure. Inspired by her experiences traveling abroad to Nicaragua, Mexico, and Scotland, Paisley hopes to someday write about the diverse people and places she has encountered and share her stories with the rest of the world.

Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Lingo

The Empty Seat

“If you aren’t sober, then I don’t want to see you on Christmas.”

Harsh words for my father to hear from his daughter but words he needed to hear. Words I needed him to understand and words he seemed to consider as he fiddled with his wine glass at the head of the table. Our guests, my grandma, and her neighbors remained resolutely silent. They were not about to defend my drunken father–or Charles as I call him–from my anger or my ultimatum.

This was the first dinner we had had together in a year. The last meal we shared ended with Charles slopping his drink all over my birthday presents and my mother explaining heroin addiction to me. So, I wasn’t surprised when Charles threw down some liquid valor before dinner in anticipation of my anger. If he wanted to be welcomed on Christmas, he needed to be sober—or he needed to be gone.

Countless dinners, holidays, and birthdays taught me that my demands for sobriety would fall on deaf ears. But not this time. Charles gave me a gift—a one of a kind, limited edition, absolutely awkward treat. One that I didn’t know how to deal with at all. Charles went home that night, smacked a bright red bow on my father, and hand-delivered him to me on Christmas morning.

He arrived for breakfast freshly showered and looking flustered. He would remember this day for once only because his daughter had scolded him into sobriety. Dad teetered between happiness and shame. Grandma distracted us from Dad’s presence by bringing the piping hot bacon and biscuits from the kitchen to the table, theatrically announcing their arrival. Although these foods were the alleged focus of the meal, the real spotlight shined on the unopened liquor cabinet in my grandma’s kitchen—the cabinet I know Charles was begging Dad to open.

I’ve isolated myself from Charles. My family has too. It means we don’t see Dad, but it’s the best way to avoid confrontation and heartache. Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like if we talked with him more or if he still lived nearby. Would he be less inclined to use? If all families with an addict tried to hang on to a relationship with the user, would there be fewer addicts in the world? Christmas breakfast with Dad was followed by Charles whisking him away to Colorado where pot had just been legalized. I haven’t talked to Dad since that Christmas.

As Korsha Wilson stated in her YES! Magazine article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” “Sometimes what we don’t cook says more than what we do cook.” When it comes to addiction, what isn’t served is more important than what is. In quiet moments, I like to imagine a meal with my family–including Dad. He’d have a spot at the table in my little fantasy. No alcohol would push him out of his chair, the cigarettes would remain seated in his back pocket, and the stench of weed wouldn’t invade the dining room. Fruit salad and gumbo would fill the table—foods that Dad likes. We’d talk about trivial matters in life, like how school is going and what we watched last night on TV.

Dad would feel loved. We would connect. He would feel less alone. At the end of the night, he’d walk me to the door and promise to see me again soon. And I would believe him.

Emma Lingo spends her time working as an editor for her school paper, reading, and being vocal about social justice issues. Emma is active with many clubs such as Youth and Government, KHS Cares, and Peer Helpers. She hopes to be a journalist one day and to be able to continue helping out people by volunteering at local nonprofits.

Powerful Voice Winner: Hayden Wilson

Bittersweet Reunion

I close my eyes and envision a dinner of my wildest dreams. I would invite all of my relatives. Not just my sister who doesn’t ask how I am anymore. Not just my nephews who I’m told are too young to understand me. No, I would gather all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins to introduce them to the me they haven’t met.

For almost two years, I’ve gone by a different name that most of my family refuses to acknowledge. My aunt, a nun of 40 years, told me at a recent birthday dinner that she’d heard of my “nickname.” I didn’t want to start a fight, so I decided not to correct her. Even the ones who’ve adjusted to my name have yet to recognize the bigger issue.

Last year on Facebook, I announced to my friends and family that I am transgender. No one in my family has talked to me about it, but they have plenty to say to my parents. I feel as if this is about my parents more than me—that they’ve made some big parenting mistake. Maybe if I invited everyone to dinner and opened up a discussion, they would voice their concerns to me instead of my parents.

I would serve two different meals of comfort food to remind my family of our good times. For my dad’s family, I would cook heavily salted breakfast food, the kind my grandpa used to enjoy. He took all of his kids to IHOP every Sunday and ordered the least healthy option he could find, usually some combination of an overcooked omelet and a loaded Classic Burger. For my mom’s family, I would buy shakes and burgers from Hardee’s. In my grandma’s final weeks, she let aluminum tins of sympathy meals pile up on her dining table while she made my uncle take her to Hardee’s every day.

In her article on cooking and activism, food writer Korsha Wilson writes, “Everyone puts down their guard over a good meal, and in that space, change is possible.” Hopefully the same will apply to my guests.

When I first thought of this idea, my mind rushed to the endless negative possibilities. My nun-aunt and my two non-nun aunts who live like nuns would whip out their Bibles before I even finished my first sentence. My very liberal, state representative cousin would say how proud she is of the guy I’m becoming, but this would trigger my aunts to accuse her of corrupting my mind. My sister, who has never spoken to me about my genderidentity, would cover her children’s ears and rush them out of the house. My Great-Depression-raised grandparents would roll over in their graves, mumbling about how kids have it easy nowadays.

After mentally mapping out every imaginable terrible outcome this dinner could have, I realized a conversation is unavoidable if I want my family to accept who I am. I long to restore the deep connection I used to have with them. Though I often think these former relationships are out of reach, I won’t know until I try to repair them. For a year and a half, I’ve relied on Facebook and my parents to relay messages about my identity, but I need to tell my own story.

At first, I thought Korsha Wilson’s idea of a cooked meal leading the way to social change was too optimistic, but now I understand that I need to think more like her. Maybe, just maybe, my family could all gather around a table, enjoy some overpriced shakes, and be as close as we were when I was a little girl.

Hayden Wilson is a 17-year-old high school junior from Missouri. He loves writing, making music, and painting. He’s a part of his school’s writing club, as well as the GSA and a few service clubs.

Literary Gems

We received many outstanding essays for the Fall 2018 Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye.

Thinking of the main staple of the dish—potatoes, the starchy vegetable that provides sustenance for people around the globe. The onion, the layers of sorrow and joy—a base for this dish served during the holidays. The oil, symbolic of hope and perseverance. All of these elements come together to form this delicious oval pancake permeating with possibilities. I wonder about future possibilities as I flip the latkes.

—Nikki Markman, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California

The egg is a treasure. It is a fragile heart of gold that once broken, flows over the blemishless surface of the egg white in dandelion colored streams, like ribbon unraveling from its spool.

—Kaylin Ku, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, Princeton Junction, New Jersey

If I were to bring one food to a potluck to create social change by addressing anti-Semitism, I would bring gefilte fish because it is different from other fish, just like the Jews are different from other people. It looks more like a matzo ball than fish, smells extraordinarily fishy, and tastes like sweet brine with the consistency of a crab cake.

—Noah Glassman, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

I would not only be serving them something to digest, I would serve them a one-of-a-kind taste of the past, a taste of fear that is felt in the souls of those whose home and land were taken away, a taste of ancestral power that still lives upon us, and a taste of the voices that want to be heard and that want the suffering of the Natives to end.

—Citlalic Anima Guevara, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas

It’s the one thing that your parents make sure you have because they didn’t. Food is what your mother gives you as she lies, telling you she already ate. It’s something not everybody is fortunate to have and it’s also what we throw away without hesitation. Food is a blessing to me, but what is it to you?

—Mohamed Omar, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri

Filleted and fried humphead wrasse, mangrove crab with coconut milk, pounded taro, a whole roast pig, and caramelized nuts—cuisines that will not be simplified to just “food.” Because what we eat is the diligence and pride of our people—a culture that has survived and continues to thrive.

—Mayumi Remengesau, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Some people automatically think I’m kosher or ask me to say prayers in Hebrew. However, guess what? I don’t know many prayers and I eat bacon.

—Hannah Reing, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, The Bronx, New York

Everything was placed before me. Rolling up my sleeves I started cracking eggs, mixing flour, and sampling some chocolate chips, because you can never be too sure. Three separate bowls. All different sizes. Carefully, I tipped the smallest, and the medium-sized bowls into the biggest. Next, I plugged in my hand-held mixer and flicked on the switch. The beaters whirl to life. I lowered it into the bowl and witnessed the creation of something magnificent. Cookie dough.

—Cassandra Amaya, Owen Goodnight Middle School, San Marcos, Texas

Biscuits and bisexuality are both things that are in my life…My grandmother’s biscuits are the best: the good old classic Southern biscuits, crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. Except it is mostly Southern people who don’t accept me.

—Jaden Huckaby, Arbor Montessori, Decatur, Georgia

We zest the bright yellow lemons and the peels of flavor fall lightly into the batter. To make frosting, we keep adding more and more powdered sugar until it looks like fluffy clouds with raspberry seed rain.

—Jane Minus, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

Tamales for my grandma, I can still remember her skillfully spreading the perfect layer of masa on every corn husk, looking at me pitifully as my young hands fumbled with the corn wrapper, always too thick or too thin.

—Brenna Eliaz, San Marcos High School, San Marcos, Texas

Just like fry bread, MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) remind New Orleanians and others affected by disasters of the devastation throughout our city and the little amount of help we got afterward.

—Madeline Johnson, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama

I would bring cream corn and buckeyes and have a big debate on whether marijuana should be illegal or not.

—Lillian Martinez, Miller Middle School, San Marcos, Texas

We would finish the meal off with a delicious apple strudel, topped with schlag, schlag, schlag, more schlag, and a cherry, and finally…more schlag (in case you were wondering, schlag is like whipped cream, but 10 times better because it is heavier and sweeter).

—Morgan Sheehan, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

Clever Titles

This year we decided to do something different. We were so impressed by the number of catchy titles that we decided to feature some of our favorites.

“Eat Like a Baby: Why Shame Has No Place at a Baby’s Dinner Plate”

—Tate Miller, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas

“The Cheese in Between”

—Jedd Horowitz, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Harvey, Michael, Florence or Katrina? Invite Them All Because Now We Are Prepared”

—Molly Mendoza, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama

“Neglecting Our Children: From Broccoli to Bullets”

—Kylie Rollings, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri

“The Lasagna of Life”

—Max Williams, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas

“Yum, Yum, Carbon Dioxide In Our Lungs”

—Melanie Eickmeyer, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri

“My Potluck, My Choice”

—Francesca Grossberg, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Trumping with Tacos”

—Maya Goncalves, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Michigan

“Quiche and Climate Change”

—Bernie Waldman, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Biscuits and Bisexuality”

“W(health)”

—Miles Oshan, San Marcos High School, San Marcos, Texas

“Bubula, Come Eat!”

—Jordan Fienberg, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

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Family Meals and Child Academic and Behavioral Outcomes

Daniel p. miller.

Boston University School of Social Work

Jane Waldfogel

Columbia University School of Social Work

Wen-Jui Han

Silver School of Social Work, New York University

This study investigates the link between the frequency of family breakfasts and dinners and child academic and behavioral outcomes in a panel sample of 21,400 children aged 5–15. It complements previous work by examining younger and older children separately and by using information on a large number of controls and rigorous analytic methods to discern whether there is causal relation between family meal frequency (FMF) and child outcomes. In child fixed effects models, which controlled for unchanging aspects of children and their families, there were no significant (p<.05) relations between FMF and either academic or behavioral outcomes, a novel finding. These results were robust to various specifications of the FMF variables and did not differ by child age.

In recent years, a substantial body of literature has examined associations between family meal frequency and a number of child and adolescent outcomes including academic performance and learning ( Eisenberg, Olson, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, & Bearinger, 2004 ), substance use and abuse ( Eisenberg, Neumark-Sztainer, Fulkerson, & Story, 2008 ), and behavior ( Sen, 2010 ). With few exceptions, previous work has indicated the positive value of shared family meal times and of family dinner in particular. Indeed, the evidence from this work has been compelling enough so as to capture the attention of the popular press who have extolled the “Magic” of the family meal ( Gibbs, 2006 ), and the Council of Economic Advisors to President Clinton who concluded that “teens who continue to connect with their parents by eating dinner with their family…fare better” ( U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, 2000 , p.22).

And yet, much of the previous literature on the relation between family meal frequency (FMF) and child outcomes has been limited. A recent review of research on FMF identified a reliance on cross-sectional data as a major weakness of the majority of previous studies ( Fiese & Schwartz, 2008 ). Although the review identified some notable exceptions to this trend, studies have been limited in other ways, e.g. by inconsistently operationalizing FMF ( Fiese & Schwartz, 2008 ) and using only limited controls or basic analytic methods to address possible sources of bias.

This study sought to improve upon and complement previous work in three ways. First, it utilized longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey – Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a large panel dataset of U.S. children between the ages of five and 15 and conducted separate analyses by child age group, whereas previous analyses have focused almost exclusively on adolescents. Second, the study examined associations between various operationalizations of the frequency of both family breakfasts and family dinners and a variety of child outcomes, providing for a more nuanced examination of the importance of FMF than has been allowed for or explored in previous work. Last, taking advantage of the longitudinal and comprehensive scope of the ECLS-K, the paper provided more robust estimates of the relation between FMF and child outcomes by controlling for an extensive set of characteristics of children, their parents, homes, and schools and by using panel data analysis methods to control for unobserved factors of children that might otherwise bias results.

The paper proceeds in the following way. We begin with a review of previous research on FMF and child outcomes and also summarize previous theoretical work pertinent to this relation. Next, we describe our data and analytic strategies. We then provide and interpret our results before making recommendations for future research.

Research from scholars in a variety of different fields has examined the importance of family meals to child and family functioning ( Larson, Branscomb, & Wiley, 2006 ). Although family meals are of relatively short duration -- the average family dinner lasts just 20 minutes ( Fiese & Schwartz, 2008 ) -- previous work has highlighted the unique and powerful role of shared family mealtimes in modeling behavior for children and conveying cultural traditions ( Larson et al., 2006 ), and in providing an opportunity for parents to engage in activities that promote literacy, learning, and healthy behavior ( Larson, 2008 ).

In general, family meals are thought to present an opportunity space to promote the healthy development of children ( Larson et al., 2006 ). As a result, the frequency with which such opportunities are available should be related to child and family wellbeing. According to Fiese, Foley and Spagnola (2006) , family meals are comprised of both ritual (symbolic) and routine (activity) elements, each of which may be instrumental to a child’s positive developmental outcomes. Both routine and ritual practices can act as markers for healthy family functioning; respectively, they are indicative of greater organization and a greater sense of belonging and closeness for children ( Fiese, Tiomcho, Douglas, Josephs, Poltrock, & Baker, 2002 ).

A number of previous studies have examined the relation between family meal frequency and adolescent cognitive and social outcomes, frequently finding a positive relation. A separate body of literature has also examined the relation between family meals and child nutrition ( Burgess-Champoux, Larson, Neumark-Sztainer, Hannan & Story, 2009 ), eating behaviors ( Neumark-Sztainer, Wall, Story, & Fulkerson, 2004 ), and child overweight and obesity ( Anderson & Whitaker, 2010 ). However, as the mechanisms relating family meals to these outcomes are likely different than those for academic outcomes and child behavior, we do not consider them here. As described below, this study investigated the effects of family dinner and breakfast frequency on child reading, math, and science scores, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors, each of which has been linked to family meal frequency in previous empirical or theoretical work.

For instance, one study found that family meal frequency was inversely associated with low grade point average among middle and high school girls ( Eisenberg et al., 2004 ). Shared family mealtimes may help promote language development in particular; research has demonstrated that exposure to certain types of talk during mealtimes may foster later reading scores and vocabulary size ( Snow & Beals, 2006 ). These findings are confirmed by a series of unpublished studies by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), which have reported a consistent relation between family dinner frequency and teen academic performance, such that children who reported typically eating 5 to 7 family dinners per week were more likely to report receiving mostly As and Bs in school and less likely to report receiving mostly Cs ( CASA, 2007 , 2009 , 2010 ).

Children and adolescents eating more meals together with their families have also fared better on measures of psychological adjustment and have engaged in fewer risk behaviors. As noted, family meals may provide connection to important family and cultural rituals, which may in turn be beneficial for children’s psychological functioning. In addition, shared family meals may provide increased opportunities for communication and monitoring that may be related to a young person’s opportunity or inclination to engage in risky or harmful behavior ( Sen, 2010 ). For example, one study found that 6 th to 12 th grade students who ate 5 to 7 family dinners per week had significantly lower odds of engaging in a number of high risk behavior patterns such as alcohol, drug, and tobacco use, depression-suicide, violence, antisocial behavior, and school problems when compared to those who typically ate 0–1 dinners ( Fulkerson, Story, Mellin, Leffert, Neumark-Sztainer, & French, 2006 ). Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), Sen (2010) found that the frequency of family dinners was associated with decreased substance use and running away for adolescent females and decreased alcohol use, physical violence, property destruction, stealing, and running away for adolescent males. One study by Eisenberg and colleagues (2004) found that young people who ate 5 to 7 dinners together with their families were less likely to use drugs and alcohol and had lower depressive symptoms and odds of suicide involvement, while another found evidence of a longitudinal inverse association between FMF and substance use, independent of substance use at first report ( Eisenberg et al., 2008 ). Longitudinal findings from another study also indicated that girls who ate dinner at home every day had lower odds of initiating alcohol use at a follow-up survey ( Fisher, Miles, Austin, Camargo, & Colditz, 2007 ).

Limitations of Previous Work

Although previous work has consistently suggested a beneficial link between family meal frequency and child outcomes, there is some reason to approach these findings with caution. For one, previous studies have been inconsistent in their operationalization of family meal frequency. In their review of the literature on family meals, Fiese and Schwartz (2008) identify inconsistent measurement and operationalization of frequency of family mealtimes as one of the chief shortcomings of previous research and also suggest that there is little agreement regarding a ““critical” number of meals that seems to be essential for healthy outcomes” (p.5). This lack of consensus is most clear in the body of research from the Project Eat Surveys, the dataset from which the majority of previous work on family meal frequency and child outcomes has been published. In the Project Eat survey, adolescent respondents were asked, “During the past 7 days, how many times did all or most of your family eat a meal together?” with response choices of 0, 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7, or greater than 7. Based on this question, researchers have variously identified meal frequency using midpoints (e.g. 0, 1.5, 3.5, etc.) ( Neumark-Sztainer, Story, Ackard, Moe, & Perry, 2000 ), categories (e.g. 0, 1–2, >=3) ( Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, Hannan, & Story, 2008 ), or using cut-points to determine “regular” family meals such as 5 or more ( Burgess-Champoux et al., 2009 ; Eisenberg et al., 2008 ) or 3 or more ( Eisenberg, Neumark-Sztainer, & Feldman, 2009 ; Feldman, Eisenberg, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2007 ). Mostly as a consequence of the structure of survey instruments, studies have tended not to explicitly acknowledge the possible differences between the effects of the frequency of all meals and the frequency of just dinner or breakfast separately. The single previous study to use the ECLS-K to investigate the effect of family meals frequency ( Gable, Chang, & Krull, 2007 ) used a summary measure (range 0–14) of the number of breakfasts and dinners typically eaten together.

Although previous research with the ECLS-K dataset has investigated the associations between FMF and child obesity in children ( Gable et al., 2007 ), the majority of research on academic and behavioral outcomes has focused on adolescents. This is largely a limitation of existing information, as many datasets containing information on FMF (Project Eat, the NLSY, AddHealth) are focused on adolescents explicitly. However, family meals may differ in their importance as children develop. Data from previous research ( Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2006 ; Fulkerson, Story, Mellin, Leffert, Neumark-Sztainer, & French, 2006 ) suggest that family meals become less common as children age, and a recent meta-analysis indicates that age may have a moderating effect on the relation between family meals and child nutritional outcomes ( Hammons & Fiese, 2011 ). Variation in meal frequency may be more meaningful for younger children, as differences might be indicative of departures from more typical behavior. Alternatively, as children age and expand their range of potentially risky or otherwise detrimental activities, frequent family meals might be distinguished by their ability to protect children against risk and promote healthy development. To our knowledge, no study has systematically investigated the differential impacts of FMF by child age.

Previous research on FMF and adolescent outcomes has also relied primarily on cross-sectional data or has typically been limited to estimating the effect of family meal frequency by including a limited number of controls, which suggests that the findings of earlier studies may be biased as a consequence of endogeneity. The endogeneity problem ( Duncan, Magnuson, & Ludwig, 2004 ) has been extensively addressed in previous work in human development ( Berger, Bruch, Johnson, James, & Rubin, 2009 ; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network [NICHD ECCRN] & Duncan, 2003 ) and so will not be reviewed in full here. In short, endodeneity occurs most frequently when unobserved characteristics are correlated with both an independent and dependent variable of interest, a problem commonly referred to as omitted variables bias. In regression analyses of the type used in most previous research on family meals, endogeneity can bias coefficients leading to inaccurate estimates of the effect of family meals on children. Concerns about the endogeneity of FMF are expressed by Neumark-Sztainer (2008) , who noted “A question that often emerges is whether the family meal is truly contributing to these better outcomes or if the family meal is only a proxy measure for important confounders such as familial relationships” (p.11). Indeed, while previous work has demonstrated a significant relation between family meals and adolescent controls after controlling for measures of familial relationships like family connectedness ( Eisenberg et al., 2004 ), there may be many other factors not controlled for in previous work that could likewise confound estimates.

It is important to clarify that previous research has not typically claimed a direct link between FMF and child outcomes. Typically, studies have concluded by suggesting the need for additional research to identify the mechanisms by which family meals might affect outcomes ( Eisenberg et al., 2004 ; Eisenberg et al., 2008 ) or by indicating steps like public education campaigns to raise awareness about the value of family meals ( Eisenberg et al., 2004 ; Sen, 2010 ). Although an investigation of potential pathways by which shared mealtimes might affect family functioning or child well-being is a potentially important task for research, this study attempts to rigorously investigate the more primary question of whether FMF has a main “effect” on child outcomes.

Generally, the sort of endogeneity of greatest concern to the study of family meal frequency is selection bias, whereby children “select” into both family meal frequency and an outcome of interest as a consequence of unobserved characteristics of the children or their families. For example, parents who recognize the value of shared family mealtimes may also engage in other activities that they believe are good for children, such as promoting extracurricular activities, reading to children, or pursuing high-quality schooling, each of which might affect children’s school performance. In such a case, the frequency that a family eats meals together may act as a marker for other such activities, but may not actually be causally related to child outcomes.

Similarly, the tendency of a family to eat meals together may reflect congruence between parents’ work schedules and children’s routines, and thus may be emblematic of greater overall possibilities for communication and monitoring, which could account for the relation between family meal frequency and child behavioral and academic outcomes. Finally, greater closeness among family members and with parents in particular might increase the frequency of shared family meals, but could also foster an environment that promotes healthy outcomes for children ( Boyer, 2006 ).

Many studies reviewed for this paper relied upon cross-sectional survey data. The handful of studies using longitudinal data to examine the links between family meal frequency and the outcomes of interest to this paper have tended to employ more sophisticated methods, but have also been limited. For instance, while Eisenberg et al. (2008) included controls for a baseline measure of their dependent variable, they additionally controlled for only family connectedness, child race, and socioeconomic status. Using repeated observations on adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Sen (2010) included a large number of controls and a measure of the dependent variable measured at a future time to address concerns of reverse causality and selection bias, but did not employ other panel data methods that might have better addressed possible bias.

A reliance on cross-sectional data is additionally potentially troublesome because of concerns about reverse causality ( Larson, Branscomb, & Wiley, 2006 ). This is especially true for studies examining internalizing or externalizing behaviors. That is, although it is possible that increased FMF promotes positive child outcomes, it is equally plausible that children are less likely to engage in any sort of shared family activity (including family meals) because they are engaged in risky behavior or have psychological distress.

This study extended previous research of the effects of FMF in a number of ways. First, using a large panel sample of children we examined the relation between FMF and child outcomes for all sample children (ages five to 15) and then separately for younger and older children, whereas previous analyses have exclusively examined adolescents. Second, to address issues regarding the operationalization of family meals, we utilized the relatively comprehensive information on family meal frequency in the ELCS-K dataset to examine the separate effect of the number of shared breakfasts and shared dinners and to explore whether the operationalization of FMF affects its relation to child outcomes. In addition, we took advantage of the longitudinal nature of our data source to reduce concerns regarding endogeneity. We utilized lagged regression models, which examined the effect of family meal frequency on child outcomes at a later time point, thereby creating a temporal set up that precludes the possibility of reverse causality. In addition, to more clearly estimate the causal effect of FMF, in all models we included a large number of controls, which addressed the selection bias associated with observed characteristics of children, families, and schools that might be correlated with both FMF and child outcomes. Last, we utilized panel data methods ---lagged dependent variables (LDV) models and child fixed effects models --- each of which improves upon previous analyses by controlling for unobserved factors that might confound the effect of family meal frequency on child outcomes.

Sample and Missing Data

Data for this study came from the ECLS-K, a nationally representative survey begun with approximately 21,400 kindergarteners in the 1998–1999 school year. Data came from five waves of the ECLS-K data collection, the spring terms of 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2007, when the majority of sampled students were in kindergarten, first, third, fifth, and eighth grades, respectively. At the eighth grade wave of data collection, approximately 9,700 children completed the child assessment ( Tourangeau, Nord, Le, Sorongon, & Najarian, 2009 ).

The reduction in sample size in the ECLS-K from Kindergarten to the 8th grade wave of data collection was largely a consequence of planned sample attrition, as the ECLS-K did not follow approximately 8,500 children who moved schools between kindergarten and fifth grade ( Tourangeau, et al., 2009 ). On average, the children remaining in the sample were of higher socioeconomic status, were more likely to be White, non-Hispanic, and were less likely to live in a single parent home. To account for missing data, we used multiple imputation (MI). MI makes the assumption that data are missing at random (MAR), i.e., that the probability of missingness for a given variable depends only on other available information, which can be controlled for ( Gelman & Hill, 2007 ). Using the multiple imputation of chained equations command ( Royston, 2007 ) in Stata 11 MP, we created five complete datasets. Across the five datasets, missing values were imputed using slightly different multivariate prediction algorithms that incorporated sampling variability for each variable with missing data ( Gelman & Hill, 2007 ). We analyzed these complete datasets using the combining algorithm developed by Rubin (1987) . The results of these analyses did not differ meaningfully from results using complete case analysis (not shown but available upon request).

Using these multiply imputed data from the five waves of ECLS-K data, we pooled observations to create a data file, which we used in both pooled cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Our sample sizes differed according to the availability of our outcomes by grade; our analyses used between 42,820 and 85,640 child-grade observations, contributed by the full sample of children. Respondents were an average of 6.09 years old (SD = 0.37) in the spring of Kindergarten year. Fifty-one percent of the sample was male. Approximately 55% of respondents were White, not-Hispanic, 15% were Black, not-Hispanic, 18% were Hispanic of any race, nearly 2% were native American or native Alaskan, and nearly 10% were Asian, Pacific-Islander or of another race or ethnicity. Sample sizes are rounded to the nearest 10 as per data license restrictions.

Academic Outcomes

One particular advantage of the ECLS-K is its comprehensive direct assessments of children. At each survey wave, children’s academic performance was assessed. For academic outcomes in this study, we utilized children’s scores on assessments of reading and mathematics tests that were administered at all waves. We also used scores from the ECLS-K science assessment, which children took in the 3 rd , 5 th , and 8 th grades of data collection. Based on students’ performance on each of these assessments, the ECLS-K created three score variables: a number right score, an item response theory (IRT) score, and a standardized t-score. Standardized t-scores ( M = 50, SD = 10) were the most appropriate for this study, as they provide information on a child’s performance relative to his or her peers in contrast to IRT or number right scores, which are criterion-referenced and thus indicative of absolute performance. In order to appropriately assess changes in relative performance over time, we used re-weighted scores for all academic outcomes as recommended by the ECLS-K ( Tourangeau et al., 2009 ). Psychometric analysis of the cognitive scores in each domain indicated high reliability: at the eighth grade data collection, the theta reliability scores for the reading, math, and science assessments were .87, .92, and .84, respectively ( Najarian, Pollack, & Sorongon, 2009 ). Table 1 presents descriptive statistics by grade for each academic outcome as well as all other variables.

Descriptive Statistics for Variables

Behavior Problems

In addition to cognitive performance, this study examined the associations between FMF and child behavior problems. At each survey point, the ECLS-K collected data on behavior problems, but the source of reporting for these data changed over time with parents, children, and teachers reporting on children’s behavior. To minimize bias in these measures, we relied on teachers’ reports when possible. For kindergarten, 1 st , 3 rd , and 5 th grades, we used teachers’ responses on the internalizing and externalizing behavior subscales of the Social Rating Scale (SRS), an adaptation of Gresham and Elliot’s (1990) Social Skills Rating System ( Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Najarian, & Rock, 2005 ). Each of the subscales of the SRS was validated using both confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis ( Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Najarian, & Rock, 2005 ). In each of these survey waves, teachers were asked to evaluate the frequency of children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors according to the following scale: 1, never (a student never exhibits this behavior); 2, sometimes (a student exhibits this behavior occasionally or sometimes); 3, often (a student exhibits this behavior regularly but not all the time); 4, very often (a student exhibits this behavior most of the time; and, N/O no opportunity (no opportunity to observe this behavior).

For the externalizing behaviors subscale, teachers in kindergarten and first grade were asked to assess the frequency that a child argued, fought, got angry, acted impulsively, and disturbed ongoing activities ( Tourangeu et al., 2001 ). In the third and fifth grade data collections, one additional item was added to assess how often a child talked during quiet study time ( Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Najarian, & Rock, 2005 ). Information on externalizing behaviors was not collected at the eighth grade data collection, and so all analyses using externalizing behaviors as an outcome relied on the kindergarten through fifth grades only. The split-half reliabilities for the eternalizing behaviors subscale were very good, .89 in both 3 rd and 5 th grade, for example ( Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Rock, & Weiss, 2005 ; Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Najarian, & Rock, 2005 ). At each survey wave, teacher responses on each item were averaged to create a single score ranging from 1 to 4 representing overall externalizing behavior, which was provided by the ECLS-K.

Teachers completed the internalizing behaviors subscale of the SRS from kindergarten through 5 th grade. At each time point, teachers were asked to assess how frequently children appeared to be anxious, lonely, sad, and to have low self-esteem ( Tourangeau et al., 2001 ). Using these four items, the ECLS-K once again created an average measure ranging from 1 to 4 to represent a child’s level of internalizing behaviors. The measures comprising the internalizing behaviors subscale had lower, but still acceptable levels of split-half reliability, .77 in fifth grade, for example ( Pollack, Atkins-Burnett, Najarian, & Rock, 2005 ). Because neither parents nor teachers reported on children’s internalizing behaviors in the 8 th grade, we relied on children’s self-report at this single data point. Children responded to eight statements about sadness, loneliness, and anxiety to measure their level of internalizing behaviors, assessing how true each statement about them was: 1 not at all true; 2, a little bit true; 3, mostly true; or 4, very true ( Najarian et al., 2009 ). The alpha reliability coefficient for this scale was .75, indicating good reliability. Supplementary models, which excluded children’s self-report data from 8 th grade, arrived at the same conclusions as the fixed effects models displayed in Tables 2 and and3 3 .

The Effects of Family Meal Frequency on Child Academic and Behavior Outcomes

Table 3: p <.05;

Note: All models include standard errors clustered by school and control for all variables listed in Table 1 .

Alternative Specifications for Family Meal Frequency – Fixed Effects Models

Family Meal Frequency

At each survey point, parents answered the following questions regarding the frequency of family meals: “In a typical week, please tell me the number of days at least some of the family eats breakfast together”; and “In a typical week, please tell me the number of days your family eats the evening meal together.” For each question, respondents were able to choose a number from 0 to 7. We note that because data were collected when children were in school, these measures jointly capture almost the entire range of possible meals a family might eat together in a given week (21 total meals – 5 meals eaten at school = 16 meals), an improvement over much previous research.

Lacking consistent direction from previous research or a consensus about appropriate critical cut points, we created two separate continuous measures, ranging 0 to 7, which indexed the number of breakfasts and the number of dinners that families ate together in a typical week. Rather than creating a summary measure as in Gable et al. (2007) , in our main analyses we elected to maintain separate measures to investigate the possible independent effects of breakfast and dinner frequency, which we believe to be separate constructs, a fact confirmed by the relatively low correlation between the two measures ( r = .14, p < .001). These two variables are our preferred operationalization of family meal frequency, which we believe represent the most parsimonious approach to modeling the potential impact of FMF.

To explore the sensitivity of the relation between FMF and child outcomes to various specifications of FMF, we conducted additional analyses utilizing alternative measures of FMF. We based our choice of operationalization in part on previous research. As noted above, previous studies have found a relation between “regular” family meals and child outcomes, although regularity has been defined in different ways across studies. In addition, previous work has examined the relation between the total number of family meals and child outcomes. Thus, we defined FMF in a number of additional ways: as a continuous variable measuring the total number (0–14) of family meals eaten in a typical week as in Gable et al. (2007) ; as a dichotomous variable indicating that a family typically ate 3 or more meals a week as in Eisenberg et al. (2009) and Feldman et al. (2007) ; and as a dichotomous variable indicating that a family typically ate 5 or more meals a week as in Eisenberg et al. (2008) . Also, because the relative frequency of meals differs in the ECLS-K as compared with other data sources (see results section below), we created a variable indicating that a family typically ate 9 or more meals together, which represents the median value for total meal frequency. Last, to test for the possibility of non-linear relations between FMF and child outcomes, we included squared terms for both breakfast and dinner frequency.

Additional controls

In an attempt to minimize bias from confounding, the analyses described below also included controls for a wide variety of factors. Table 1 describes time-specific means and standard deviations for all variables and identifies those categories that are omitted in analyses (and therefore treated as reference groups). The first group of controls adjusted for “basic” factors including child race and ethnicity, child gender, and family socioeconomic status, a time-varying variable created by the ECLS-K that divided families into quintiles based on parental education, family income, and parental job prestige. A second group of controls accounted for sociodemographic factors including whether a child’s mother worked before kindergarten, whether English was spoken in the child’s household, the number of children in the household, the urbanicity of a child’s residence, a child’s region of residence, whether the child was living with a single mother or single father, mothers’ and fathers’ typical hours of weekly employment (coded as 0 if no such parent exists in the household), indicator variables for a child’s birth weight, a variable indicating whether a child participated in a Head Start program and a variable indicating the average hours of television a child watched on weekdays.

Because the ECLS-K collected data on children within schools, it presents a valuable source of controls for characteristics of children’s schools and teachers. Such information could be particularly important if families who are committed to their children’s well-being eat meals together frequently but also purposefully choose good schools or are able to select good teachers, both of which are responsible for high academic performance and good behavior. Thus, the last set of controls indexed measures of teacher quality, including years of experience and level of education, two factors related to overall teacher effectiveness ( Rice, 2003 ). This set of controls also included a number of school-level variables linked to student outcomes in previous research including the percent of a student body identified as a minority ( O’Connor, Hill, & Robinson, 2009 ), a measure of school climate (an index averaging administrators’ reports about schools, including reports on parental involvement, over-crowding, and teacher turn over; Bear, Gaskins, Blank & Chen, 2011 ), school enrollment ( Leithwood & Jantzi, 2009 ), the type of school (private, public, Catholic, or other religious; Morgan, 2001 ), and the number of days students are required to attend school ( Patall, Cooper, & Allen, 2010 ). This set also included a measure of school facility quality (a summative index at each time point of administrator reports on the presence and adequacy of cafeterias, computer labs, libraries, art facilities, gymnasiums, music facilities, playgrounds, classrooms, auditoriums and multi-purpose rooms), which might otherwise index school quality. Last, this set of controls for a child’s family’s school involvement (an index averaging parent reports at each time point of family involvement since the beginning of the school year in the parent teacher association, attendance at a parent-teacher conference, volunteerism at school, attendance at school events, and participation in a school fundraiser), which might be an important marker of family investment in a child also related to FMF.

For each dependent variable, we specified a series of multiple regression models, which in sequence provided successively stronger tests of the causal relation between family meal frequency and child outcomes. Using pooled data, we first estimated models of the type described in Equation (1) :

where Y it is an academic or behavioral outcome for a child at time t, FMF represents variables for breakfast and dinner frequency (each scaled 0–7) measured at the previous time, and X it-1 is a vector of variables also measured at the previous time and representing the set of control variables described above, AGE is a set of indicator variables representing a child’s age in years, and ε it is a child- and time-specific error term.

Despite the large number of controls contained in X , we used two additional longitudinal analytic approaches to deal with the potential endogeneity of the FMF variables. The first of these approaches was a lagged dependent variable (LDV) model of the type described in Equation (2) :

In LDV models, the value of the dependent variable from the previous time period ( Y i t-1 ) is included in the analyses. This approach helps to control for any unobserved factors that might have contributed to children’s earlier outcomes and which could bias the coefficient for FMF. For example, if as noted, FMF is a marker for other behaviors of parents that are related to both FMF and child outcomes, as might be the case if well-intentioned parents have made early investments in their children’s learning, then we would expect these efforts to be “captured” by the lagged dependent term in Equation (2) . Thus, the estimate of the effect of FMF on child outcomes (β 1 ) in the LDV model represented in Equation (2) is less likely to be biased than the comparable term in Equation (1) ( NICHD ECCRN & Duncan, 2003 ). Although the LDV approach is an improvement over the basic pooled model, it is not a panacea for possible endogeneity, and can pose additional problems if there is correlation between the lagged term and an outcome ( Foster, 2010 ), as might well be the case for academic and behavioral outcomes.

Thus, the second approach was to specify child fixed-effects models of the type found in Equation (3) :

where u i is a child-specific term (the so-called fixed effect), that represents both observed and unobserved unchanging characteristics of children and their families. Such an analysis relies exclusively on within-child variation to estimate the effect of FMF on child outcomes, providing less-biased estimates by discarding between-individual variation that is likely to be the source of confounding influences ( Allison, 2009 ).

While fixed effects models control for unchanging characteristics of children and their families, it is important to note that they do not address bias related to time-varying factors, and so analyses of equation (3) included all time-varying controls from the previous models. However, if time-varying variables related to both FMF and child outcomes are not controlled for, estimates from analyses of fixed effects can still be biased. Nonetheless, because the fixed effects model provided the strongest test of the causal relation between FMF and child outcomes, Equation (3) represents our preferred modeling strategy.

We utilized each of the three modeling approaches outlined in Equations (1) – (3) for our main analyses, which use continuous measures of the frequency of family breakfasts and family dinners. For our additional analyses, which explored various alternative specifications for FMF, we focused our analyses on fixed effects models ( Equation (3) ) exclusively.

Finally, previous research has indicated that the frequency of family meals declines as children age, and thus it may be that FMF has a different impact on the functioning of younger and older children. To test for this possibility, when possible, we separated children into younger and older age groups and replicated our fixed effects analyses for each outcome. Because our fixed effects models require a minimum of two waves of data plus an additional wave to include lagged measures of breakfast and dinner frequency and control variables, we separated analyses for reading scores, math scores, and internalizing behaviors into two age groups. The first examined younger children for whom outcomes were measured in 1 st , and 3 rd grades, and the second examined older children for whom outcomes were measured in 5 th and 8 th grades. Data were not available on externalizing behaviors in 8 th grade, and so our age groups for this outcome were 1 st and 3 rd grade for younger children and 3 rd and 5 th grade for older children. Because science scores were not collected until 3 rd grade, separate analyses by age group were not possible for this outcome.

Family Meal Frequency in the ECLS-K

Table 1 presents the proportion of parents by grade who reported eating breakfast or dinner together at particular frequencies. In addition, the Table shows the average number of family breakfasts and dinners reported by parents at each wave. On average, respondents reported eating more dinners together in a typical week than breakfasts although the number of both breakfasts and dinners declined as children aged. Most notable were the decreases in the proportion of parents who reported eating 7 dinners together (.57 in kindergarten to .37 in 8 th grade), 7 breakfasts together (.40 in kindergarten to .16 in 8 th grade) and the increases in the proportion reporting eating no breakfasts together (.06 in Kindergarten to .12 in 8 th grade). Despite declines over time, frequent family meals (and frequent family dinners in particular) were common among respondents, with 70 percent reporting eating 5 to 7 dinners together in 8 th grade and 34 percent reporting eating 5 to 7 breakfasts together at the same time.

These findings are a notable contrast to previous research. For example, research with the Project EAT dataset found that approximately a third of adolescents reported eating 2 or fewer meals together in the previous week ( Eisenberg et al., 2004 ; Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2006 ). When we pooled our data and examined children in 8 th grade (those closest in age to Project Eat respondents) we found that fewer than 2 percent of parents in the ECLS-K reported eating meals together so infrequently. Looking only at dinner frequency, data from the NLSY ( Sen, 2010 ) found that approximately 20 percent of youth respondents reported eating 2 or fewer dinners together in a typical week, compared to only approximately 7 percent of parents in our 8 th grade sample. We consider potential causes of these discrepancies in our discussion section below.

Main Results

Table 2 presents the results of the regression models examining the association between the frequency of family breakfasts and family dinners and child academic and behavioral outcomes. For each of the outcomes, the results of the three modeling approaches are presented: a pooled model with the set of controls described in Table 1 ( Equation 1 ); a LDV model that includes all controls from Table 1 as well as earlier version of the dependent variable at an earlier time point ( Equation 2 ); and, a fixed effects model that includes the full set of controls and also controls for the unchanging characteristics of children ( Equation 3 ). All models included standard errors clustered by school and indicator variables that controlled for child age in years. Alternative analyses that clustered standard errors at the child level arrived at almost identical findings. Because we specify lagged regression models, analyses for reading standardized scores, math standardized scores, and internalizing behaviors included observations on the dependent variable from 1 st , 3 rd , 5 th , and 8 th grades, while models for science standardized scores included observations on 3 rd , 5 th , and 8 th grades only, and those for externalizing behaviors included 1 st , 3 rd , and 5 th grades.

For each outcome, column 1 presents the results for the pooled regression models with controls. Consistent with previous research on FMF, each additional breakfast was associated with increased reading, math, and science scores and decreased internalizing and externalizing behaviors. In all cases, the predicted change associated with an increase in breakfast frequency was relatively small, approximately 2/100 th of a SD in academic scores and less than 1/100 th of a point for problem behaviors. Unexpectedly, dinner frequency was significantly associated with poorer reading and math scores and increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviors, although the magnitudes of these associations were smaller than the comparable ones for breakfast frequency.

Column 2 for each outcome presents the results from LDV models. In general, the pattern of results was similar between the pooled and LDV results. However, the magnitude of the associations was smaller in most cases than in the pooled models, and reading scores, math scores, and externalizing behaviors were no longer significantly associated with dinner frequency.

There were notable differences in the results for the child fixed effects models (column 3 for each outcome). Unlike in the previous two sets of models, there were no significant relations between FMF and any of the child outcomes. Although it was not possible to combine estimates across multiple imputed datasets, we computed a Sargen-Hansen statistic for each fixed effects regression from each of the five multiply imputed datasets used to arrive at the estimates in Table 2 . The Sargen-Hansen statistic can be calculated in place of the Hausman test when using clustered data (using the xtoverid command in Stata; Schaffer & Stillman, 2010 ). Each version of this test indicated the superiority of these models over comparable random effects models.

Table 3 presents results from child fixed effects models that varied the manner by which FMF was operationalized. All models in Table 3 included the full set of controls used in the fixed effects analyses from Table 2 . The results from these analyses supported those from Table 2 . In short, the relation between FMF and child academic and behavioral outcomes was not sensitive to the manner by which FMF was operationalized. Neither the continuous variables representing total meal frequency, the separate continuous and squared terms assessing nonlinear relations, nor the various indicator variables for regular family meals were significantly related to any of the other child outcomes in the main analyses.

Last, Table 4 presents the findings from models that replicated the fixed effects models from Table 2 by age group. As noted above, because science scores were only collected beginning in the 3 rd grade wave of data collection, separate age group analyses were not available for this outcome. As indicated in the Table, child age group did not appear to affect the general findings from Table 2 . That is, FMF was not significantly related to reading or math scores or problem behaviors among either younger or older children in the sample.

Family Meal Frequency and Child Outcomes by Age Group – Fixed Effects Models

Note: All models include standard errors clustered by school and control for all variables listed in Table 1 . Because science scores were available only in 3 rd , 5 th , and 8 th grade, sub-analyses by age group were not possible.

As discussed at the outset, previous research on FMF and child outcomes has been limited in a number of different ways. Using extremely rich data on a nationally representative sample of children who entered kindergarten in fall 1998 and were followed through eighth grade and applying more rigorous methods than have typically been used in previous studies on this topic, we found little evidence for beneficial effects of frequent family meals. In our preferred models, effects of family meals on child academic and behavioral outcomes were either small or effectively zero. Our results did not vary when we employed different operationalizations of our main independent nor did they vary by child age.

Of course, our study is not without limitations. As with all non-experimental research, we are not able to be certain that we have eliminated all possible confounders and estimated true causal effects. We have included an extensive set of confounding variables to ensure that we have controlled, to the extent possible, for factors associated with the selection into family meals. However, doing so raises the potential concern that we are also controlling for factors that are causal antecedents to family meals – factors such as family status, parental employment, and so on. As such, our analyses cannot address the question of whether family meals might influence child outcomes as part of a more complex set of processes, whereby they act as mediators between such causal antecedents and child outcomes. Although this seems unlikely, given that we fail to find significant effects of family meals on child outcomes, a firmer answer would require a fuller set of analyses that begin with family predictors and then explore the role of family meals as a mediating variable. Such analyses were beyond the scope of this paper but would be worth exploring in future research.

Although this study contributed to the existing literature by investigating whether the impacts of FMF differed by child age, an important caveat to our results is that we examined children through eighth grade only (when children were on average 13.6 years old). Many of the prior studies finding strong positive associations between frequent family meals and child outcomes focused on older adolescents, for whom family meals may be more protective. Relatedly, because our sample is relatively young, we were not able to examine all the outcomes that have been studied in prior research. Most notable is the lack of information on substance use, which other studies have found to be related to family meal frequency. By analyzing the effects of FMF on a younger sample of children, this paper can be understood as an extension rather than a repudiation of previous work.

Nevertheless, our results are generally at odds with prior studies of adolescents. We note that in our pooled models with controls and to a lesser extent in our LDV models (both in Table 2 ), there were numerous significant associations between FMF and child outcomes. Thus, when we implemented modeling strategies most similar to those of previous work, we found that FMF was indeed associated with child academic and behavioral outcomes, if not always in the way predicted by previous work. This indicates that an important reason for the discrepancy between our results and other studies’ findings was not the age of the children studied, but rather the methods we applied.

Our study found differences between the measures of FMF in the ECLS-K and those found in other studies. There are a couple of likely causes that underscored these differences. For one, both our own data and data from previous studies ( Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2006 , Fulkerson, Story, Mellin, Leffert, Neumark-Sztainer, & French, 2006 ) confirmed that that the frequency of family meals is lower among older children. As a result, it is not surprising that the parents of children in the ECLS-K dataset (the majority of whom are 14 or younger) reported eating meals together as a family more frequently. In addition, differences between the ECLS-K and other datasets were not so pronounced when comparing response categories indicating more frequent meals. For instance, when the data from 8 th grade respondents in ECLS-K were compared to adolescent respondents from the NLSY ( Sen, 2010 ) and CASA (2010) , results were similar, where approximately 60% of respondents reported eating dinner 5 or more times per week, compared to 70% in the ECLS-K ( Table 1 ).

Second, there appear to be differences between youth and parental report about family frequency and about the family meal environment in general ( van Assema, Glanz, Martens, & Brug, 2007 ). Since the ECLS-K used only data from parental reports, we would expect to find higher reported rates of family meals than in prior studies that relied on child reports. One study published on a subset of Project EAT data ( Fulkerson, Neumark-Szatiner, & Story, 2006 ) found that parents were only half as likely (6.8% vs. 13.7%) as adolescents to report never eating together but more than twice as likely (22% vs. 9.9%) to report eating seven meals together as a family in the previous week; parents were only slightly less likely to select any of the other responses, including the choice of more than seven meals. The authors of this study suggested that parents may report more frequent family meals because they may count meals that do not include children; this is a valid concern for the questions in the ECLS-K, which did not specifically ask parents to report on meals involving the study child.

Similarly, the frequency with which parental respondents to the ECLS-K chose “7” breakfasts or dinners might reflect the social desirability of these choices, which may be a stronger source of bias for parents than for adolescent respondents in other surveys and thus may represent error in these variables. If the higher reporting by parents is indeed indicative of over-reporting either as a consequence of the social desirability of reporting more meals together, or because parents in the ECLS-K reported having meals together but when a child was not present, then the coefficients for FMF reported in Tables 2 and and3 3 would be biased towards zero and would thus underestimate the true effect of FMF on child academic and behavioral outcomes. This type of bias may be unique to the ECLS-K dataset among other large, nationally-representative studies as it is the only such study to use parents’ reports. However, we note that this sort of bias would be present across all our models, and was not strong enough to eliminate the significant associations between FMF and child outcomes in our pooled models and LDV models. Once again, this bolsters our confidence that discrepancies between our findings and those of previous analyses were not a consequence of differences in the manner by which data on family meal frequency were collected. Moreover, because children in the ECLS-K were younger on average than those in previous analyses, it is less likely that parents would report having family meals that did not include them. Future research using datasets with adolescent or child report of FMF could provide useful evidence in this regard.

A strength of the current study was our examination of several possible operationalizations of family meal frequency. Overall, our results were robust to different specifications of family meals, increasing our confidence that the lack of beneficial effects of family meals is not due to our choice of specification of the family meals variables.

In sum, despite differences between our study and previous analyses, our results suggest that the findings of previous work regarding FMF and adolescent outcomes should be viewed with some caution. When compared to those from the pooled and LDV models, the coefficients for breakfast and dinner frequency in our FE models were substantially attenuated and close to zero in many cases. These differences suggest that invariant and unmeasured characteristics of children or their families related both to FMF and child outcomes may bias estimates from pooled or LDV models. For instance, frequent family meals may be an investment by families who consistently engage in other activities and provide other supports that promote positive outcomes for children. Fixed effects analyses are not without their weaknesses, however. It may be the case that unobserved, time-varying characteristics may account for both changes in FMF and child outcomes, in which case fixed effects model results would be biased, although these factors would have to account for both increased family meal frequency and poorer outcomes for children. With longitudinal data at their disposal, researchers should continue to take advantage of more robust tests of the causal relation between FMF and both child and adolescent outcomes, and future analyses might attempt to replicate the results of previous studies using the sort of methods included in this paper.

Because this study was the first to find no association between FMF and child outcomes and differs from previous investigations, it may be premature to make conclusions about the value of family meal frequency. Previous research and theory have both suggested that shared family meals are a valuable and important developmental context for children, and their worth may go beyond the ability of surveys to detect or measure or may affect different outcomes than those assessed here. Indeed, even if family meals act as a proxy for other behaviors that are related to positive outcomes for children and adolescents, future research that investigates the processes underlying such behaviors could prove informative for policymakers, practitioners, and the public.

Further, quantity of shared meals may not be the most relevant measure of the worth of family meals. Indeed, some contemporary research focuses on the quality of interactions that occur at the family dinner or breakfast table ( Fiese & Schwartz, 2008 ). Our data do not afford us the ability to distinguish the quality of the mealtime environment, and so we cannot draw conclusions about the value of family meals in this regard.

Last, research on the quality of the home environment ( Bradley, Corwyn, McAdoo, & Garcia Coll, 2001 ) indicates that there is significant variation in mealtime frequency between racial and ethnic groups and within groups by family socioeconomic status. While our analyses controlled for race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status, our findings do not rule out the possibility that the importance of the mealtime environment varies across different groups, which might be the case if different processes were at work during mealtimes Thus, there are several ways in which future research might more comprehensively investigate the effects of both quality and quantity of family meals on child and adolescent outcomes, by for example, examining the moderating role of factors such as race or ethnicity, single parent household-status, and family socioeconomic status and utilizing data sources that contain richer detail on the routine and ritual aspects of shared mealtimes.

Ultimately, we cannot conclude that shared family times over breakfast or dinner should be ignored or that families should not attempt to cultivate these types of collective experiences. Rather, we suggest that the magnitude of the effect of FMF may be less than suggested by previous work. Future analyses should be undertaken in such a way as to acknowledge and address possible sources of endogeneity that can bias the results of regression analyses.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge support from award number R01HD047215-05 and R24HD058486 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NICHD or the National Institutes of Health.

Contributor Information

Daniel P. Miller, Boston University School of Social Work.

Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University School of Social Work.

Wen-Jui Han, Silver School of Social Work, New York University.

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Family Meal Time

Updated 13 September 2023

Subject Love , Myself

Downloads 48

Category Life , Family , Sociology

Topic Relationship

Taking meals with family

Taking meals with family provides the opportunity to engage in conversations with family members. Spending time with family is fundamental and taking meals together helps give a chance to bond with each other. Listening to my family over meals when I was a child often made me forget the time pass. Family meal time is captivating as it helps people share their experiences, exchange ideas and even get advice from family members. Moreover, it also provides an opportunity to have fun after a long day.

Growing up family meal times

Growing up family meal times were always the perfect way to unwind and have conversations with the family members. I loved listening to the stories, political matters as well as encouragement shared over meals. My father had his seat at the head of the table and was a stern man, but he was also very good at telling stories. He would tell different stories from his experience at work or his younger years, and each story would end with a punchline that would leave us all laughing regardless of what the story was. Sometimes my mother would give my father a look that would somewhat suggest that he was exaggerating his narrative to make it funny.

My mother's updates

My mother would keep everyone updated on the happenings of family and friends like the daily news bulleting. She also had a segment on entertainment news where she would give us a taste of the exciting parts of information she had heard through the grapevine. She was always aware of the new marriages or babies, upcoming events and latest accomplishments at her place work. Sometimes, I would get scared of doing something wrong because of the stories she shared since she had a way of learning about things like a detective. I would take the opportunity to report myself when I had done something wrong when she was in a good mood rather than letting her find out from other sources.

Talks among siblings

My siblings barely paid attention to what my parents would talk about during meal times and had conversations of their own. My siblings would tease each other and discuss the trending topics in school which were quite interesting especially when I learned something that I did not know. They would also talk about the latest boy band crash, computers, political issues or school drama. I would shift my attention from my parents’ conversation and that of my siblings since I did not want to miss out on the good parts. Talks during meal time were not only fun but gave us an opportunity to bond and become friends as a family.

Progress in family mealtime

Initially, meal time was not always fun, and we would spend about ten minutes at the table. The conversations during meal time would change instantaneously, and there was little interest displayed. My parents would initiate conversations by asking us about our day. We were not as close with my siblings, and we could hardly keep a discussion going. At times all we did was complain about passing the salt at the table. Over time the talks during meal times turned intense and led to discussions and agreements across the table. Sometimes there were heated debates that got personal, and our parents had to exercise their control through grounding.

Building relationships and communication skills

Family mealtime helped build the relationship between my family as well as boost my communication skills. Having a stern father made my siblings, and I make sure that we did not use disrespectful language when talking to our parents or each other. It also provided us with skills on starting conversations and reading body language through our interactions. My family offers a great support system due to the time we shared having long conversations during meal time. Whenever I need to learn more on particular discussion topics, I turn to them for advice as well as do some research on my own. Engaging my family in conversations is always exciting, fun and helpful.

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It's what Ree Drummond does best!

Every item on this page was chosen by a The Pioneer Woman editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Here, you'll find tons of quick 30-minute meals and sheet pan suppers that make cleanup easy. Looking for something big enough to feed your hungry crowd of kids? Look no further than The Pioneer Woman's best casserole dishes —like her green chile enchilada casserole or the cheesy lasagna. You'll also find some new twists on childhood classics, like a sloppy joe casserole that's both fun and messy to eat! Along with these comfort food recipes , we've made sure to include some ways to make weeknight dinner fun—like Tex-Mex recipes for taco Tuesdays, cheesy baked pasta recipes , homemade pizzas , and a Sunday dinner that's fit for a crowd. So, what are you waiting for? Let's get cooking!

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This hearty meat sauce makes a big batch so you can prep it on a Sunday and enjoy throughout the week. Ree even suggests stashing containers of it in the freezer for those nights when you simply don't want to cook!

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Honey Mustard Chicken

This recipe for honey mustard chicken might just be the most versatile one yet! You can use the marinade for breasts or thighs depending on your family's preferences and make it on the grill or stovetop.

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Stuffed Bell Peppers

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Sweet Potato Chili

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Spinach Artichoke Pasta

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Shrimp and Grits

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Beef Burgundy

If you want to make your house smell incredible, just start cooking this hearty beef stew. It gets all its flavor from bacon, garlic, thyme, and a whole bottle of red wine!

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Creamy One-Pot Sausage Gnocchi

One pot is all you need to make this creamy gnocchi recipe that's loaded with sausage and garlic breadcrumbs. That means less cleanup at the end of the night!

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Homemade Hamburger Helper

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Pasta Alla Vodka

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Sheet Pan Pizza

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Butternut Squash Risotto

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Chicken Nachos

Hungry cowboys or teenagers will love to have a plate of nachos for dinner! It's saucy, spicy, and just darn fun!

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Slow Cooker Chili

We love when you can throw everything into a slow cooker and go on with the rest of your day. That's exactly what you can do with this hearty beef chili. When you're ready to serve, set up a DIY chili bar with toppings like chips, cheese, and sour cream!

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<p>This ground beef casserole is loaded with delicious Mexican food flavors, topped with tater tots, and finished with a layer of cheese. It's a real family favorite.</p><p><strong>Get the Recipe: <a href="https://cheerfulcook.com/taco-tater-tot-casserole/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Taco Tater Tot Casserole</a></strong></p>

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Get the Recipe: Taco Casserole

Chicken And Rice Casserole

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Chicken Pot Pie Casserole

This Chicken Pot Pie Casserole is a surefire hit, turning your casserole dish into a treasure trove of comforting flavors. With tender chicken, a creamy sauce, and a golden crust, it's comfort food at its finest.

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<p>Are you ready to wow your family and friends with some amazing casseroles? We found some of the most delicious casserole recipes for both breakfast and dinner. You can't go wrong with Chicken and Rice Casserole for a classic comfort. If you're in the mood for something different, our Pumpkin French Toast Casserole brings a seasonal twist that's sure to delight. And don't forget about number 7—it's so special, it's too good to keep a secret! </p>

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<p>Want something different for dinner? A real stick-to-your-ribs meal that’s flavorful, cheesy, and a bit indulgent? This southwest casserole is a homestyle bake with country sausage, ground beef, and noodles with canned white beans. The savory Southwestern spice blend and roasted hatch chiles add a pleasant tingle to this cowboy casserole.</p><p><strong>Get the Recipe: </strong><a href="https://www.garlicandzest.com/southwest-style-cowboy-casserole/" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Cowboy Casserole</strong></a></p>

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<p>Are you ready to dig into a superbly cheesy 3 cheese pasta bake? With a creamy, tasty, and seriously cheesy pasta sauce accompanied by a perfectly crispy topping made of mozzarella, Parmesan, and breadcrumbs.</p><p><strong>Get the Recipe: </strong><a href="https://knifeandsoul.com/cheesy-pasta-bake/" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>3 Cheese Pasta Bake</strong></a></p>

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Vegetarian Breakfast Casserole

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Get the Recipe: Vegetarian Breakfast Casserole

Overnight French Toast Casserole

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Get the Recipe: Overnight French Toast Casserole

Smoked Salmon Breakfast Casserole

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Get the Recipe: Smoked Salmon Breakfast Casserole

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Get the Recipe: Salsa Verde Chicken Tortilla Casserole

Tomato and White Bean Casserole

When warmer weather is on the horizon, I love introducing lighter dishes into the rotation, like this Tomato and White Bean Casserole. Think of it as a Panzanella salad but in casserole form (Panzanella is an Italian tomato and bread salad).

Get the Recipe: Tomato and White Bean Casserole

Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole

This Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole is a great weeknight recipe that is sure to become a family favorite. A perfect use for leftover chicken, this is a delicious and simple dinner that will delight your taste buds.

Get the Recipe: Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Southwest Breakfast Casserole

Looking for an easy, filling, and flavorful breakfast to start your day with? Look no further than this Southwest Breakfast Casserole. Make it ahead of time or whip it together first thing in the morning- either way, it’s going to be delicious!

Get the Recipe: Southwest Breakfast Casserole

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Miss Manners: Dinner guest stays on phone all evening

Dear Miss Manners: I had a formal sit-down dinner for eight guests at my home. One guest was on her phone nearly the whole time — texting and even watching live videos that her friends posted while others were trying to have a conversation.

She was away from the group, but the sounds were still audible. She arrived late and stayed by herself, on her phone, during the cocktail and hors d'oeuvres time. When it was time for dinner, once everyone was seated and the food was being passed, she got up to get the hors d'oeuvres and bring them to the table. Then she got up again to go to her car to bring pictures of her boyfriend to the table for us to see. Never excused herself.

When asked at the end of the party if she had been bored, she said she had had a great time but was trying to include her long-distance boyfriend whom she misses so much and can’t go any length of time without contacting.

I didn’t want to call her out on her behavior at the party and am hesitant to do so now. She has very low self-esteem, but she also wonders why she loses friends. What can one do sensitively in a situation like this?

Sensitive to whom, exactly? It can’t be to yourself or your guests, as your friend strikes Miss Manners as remarkably insensitive to them. But she agrees with you that allowing your friend to be so rude is also insensitive to her needs — a phrase she shudders to use — as it will only further isolate her.

As it would be impolite to correct your friend's manners, the least unkind thing to do is to find a new eighth for your next party. And let's stop asking the guests if they are bored.

Dear Miss Manners: I traveled by bus to attend a funeral for a family member in my hometown (where I no longer live). I don’t mind riding the bus, and in fact, I relish the chance to listen to a podcast or audiobook and unwind.

The bus ride was about two hours, and I was seated next to a woman whom I could not, despite my best and most mannerly efforts, disengage from conversation. Should something like this happen in the future, what is a polite but FIRM way to disengage a chatty stranger, short of simply putting in my ear buds and ignoring him or her?

The rude person on the bus — or the train, or the airplane — has convinced you that ignoring her would be rude. It feels rude. If we ignore her own rudeness in forcing you into a conversation, it would be.

Miss Manners often says that one rudeness does not justify another, so how can this woman’s rudeness cancel the rudeness of ignoring her? Because it does. Etiquette is not stupid. It may, occasionally, allow one to use politeness as a bludgeon — but it does not allow rudeness to be so used. You may listen to your audiobook with a clear conscience, but you must steel yourself to do so.

New Miss Manners columns are posted Monday through Saturday on washingtonpost.com/advice . You can send questions to Miss Manners at her website, missmanners.com . You can also follow her @RealMissManners.

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Woman goes viral with $12 McDonald's dinner box that feeds family of 5. Can you get one?

Fast food - it's quick, filling and, most importantly, cheap; or at least, it's supposed to be.

Chains such as McDonald's have faced criticism as prices soared in recent years, resulting in less revenue from lower-income consumers. McDonald's has since promised a reduction in prices after repeated price hikes were thought to be resulting in lackluster sales.

Some people, however, have taken matters into their own hands, finding deals, discounts and hacks to share far and wide online. One TikToker has gained some virality by bringing attention to a lesser-known McDonald's meal deal - one so affordable, some netizens couldn't believe it.

Blasting off: McDonald's spinoff CosMc's opens first Texas location

$12 McDonald's meal box

TikToker Leiela Kapewa-Latu, who goes by account name @xolovelei , shared a post about a "$12 dinner box" that has since wracked up more than 12 million views. In the video, Kapewa-Latu, who ordered her meal in the drive-thru of her local Texas McDonald's, shares the surprising amount of food inside the box.

In an interview with "Good Morning America," Kapewa-Latu said the bundle fed her family of five.

"There's two cheeseburgers in here, but there are four small fries, ten-piece chicken nuggets and there's two Big Macs. $12 y’all," she said. In another clip, she showed her receipt , which read "MickeyD's Dinner Box" at the price of $12.19. After tax, the total came to $13.20,

While prices vary between locations and methods of ordering, a similar haul generally costs anywhere from $26 to $30+ if each item in the bundle were ordered individually.

According to one commenter, a similar order could cost them $40 at their local store in Canada.

In a follow-up clip, Kapewa-Latu advises a commenter who said they were unable to find the box on their app (the user said it didn't appear when she simply scrolled through the menu but did when she searched it specifically). In a later video, Kapewa-Latu also specified that looking under "shareables" on the app or when ordering at an in-store kiosk will allow you to see what your location offers.

Food deals for March Madness: Get freebies, discounts at Buffalo Wild Wings, Wendy's, more

Different locations, different deals

It appears the deal is highly variable by state and location.

Commenters beneath Kapewa-Latu's videos shared what box or bundle deals were and were not available near them.

"No Dinner box in Vegas, but we have 40 nugs, 4 med fries for $18.99! or 2 big Mac's, 20pc and 2 med fry $18.99," said one. "I need to move to your state 'cause my state it's $35.99 (in mine)," said another.

"The CA variation is called the Classic Big Mac Pack and it’s $28," another added. Others shared the price for the same box in their state, with one saying it was $27 in Pennsylvania, $18 in Mississippi, and $25 in New Jersey.

McDonald's told USA TODAY that franchisee store owners set their own prices and have the flexibility to create promotions that will drive demand in their restaurants. These promotions may vary by restaurant. Generally, shareable, bundled deals vary by location and fans can access them through the app.

Even if your local McDonald's doesn't have this exact bundle, there are still others to look for, some comments advised. The "shareables" or "deals" menus can be viewed on the app, at kiosks or on some board menus. You can also simply ask an employee what they have available.

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Health Concerns Mount for Migrant Children at Outdoor Waiting Sites

A federal judge is expected to rule soon on whether the government must provide shelter, food and medical care to minors while they await processing.

By Emily Baumgaertner

Emily Baumgaertner reported from five migrant camps along the U.S.-Mexico border wall in California.

To Dr. Theresa Cheng, the scene was “apocalyptic.”

She had come to Valley of the Moon, an open-air waiting site in San Diego’s rural Mountain Empire, to provide volunteer medical care to asylum seekers who had breached the United States-Mexico border wall and were waiting to be apprehended by American authorities.

Among the throngs at this and other sites, she found children with deep lacerations, broken bones, fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, even seizures. Some were hiding in dumpsters and overflowing porta-potties. An asthmatic boy without an inhaler was wheezing in the acrid smoke from brush and trash fires, which had been lit for warmth.

With the capacity at immigration processing centers strained, migrants, including unaccompanied children, are waiting for hours — sometimes days — in outdoor holding areas, where a lack of shelter, food, and sanitation infrastructure has triggered an array of public health concerns for the most vulnerable.

“From a public health standpoint, there are communicable diseases and outdoor exposures that would strike anyone down, much less this medically vulnerable population,” said Dr. Cheng, an emergency room physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

A Federal District Court judge in California could rule as early as Friday on whether the government is legally required to shelter and feed the children as they wait.

In a court filing, lawyers for the Department of Justice argue that because the children have not yet been formally taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, they are not obligated to provide such service.

“Minors in these areas — close to the California-Mexico border — have not been arrested or apprehended by C.B.P. and are not in the legal custody of C.B.P.,” the lawyers wrote.

“C.B.P. has been apprehending and transporting minors to safe and sanitary U.S. Border Patrol facilities in a prompt manner. But until that occurs, plaintiffs are not in D.H.S. custody,” they wrote, referring to the Department of Homeland Security.

When asylum seekers enter the United States between official ports of entry, they often present themselves to Border Patrol agents near the wall with the intention of being apprehended. They are taken to a processing facility, where they receive a medical screening, a background check and basic provisions as they begin the legal claims process.

But unlike at those immigration processing facilities, the open-air sites have no shelters, meals or government-affiliated medical staff. Some sites have no restrooms, causing people to defecate outdoors in the open, according to Erika Pinheiro, the executive director of the legal and humanitarian nonprofit Al Otro Lado, who has provided aid at the camps. With limited diapers, wipes and creams from volunteers, babies have been kept in dirty diapers for extended periods of time, according to court exhibits , causing severe diaper rash.

A senior official at Customs and Border Protection acknowledged in an interview that people had at times waited days to enter processing but said that vulnerable groups like children were always prioritized, and that wait times had decreased significantly in recent months. He said the agency had more than tripled the capacity at processing centers in San Diego and that it had increased the number of transport buses and personnel in order to expedite apprehensions.

Still, he said, the system was not built for migrant encounters at the current scale, and the shift of crossings to more remote regions has made the process all the more resource-intensive, since vehicles and personnel must travel further between encampments and Border Patrol stations. He said a major increase in federal funding would be necessary to address the problem fully.

At least seven migrant holding areas have arisen at various points along the California border. One is a large patch of dirt in the desert beside a highway; another is a plateau in mountainous wilderness; another is the narrow gap between two parallel border walls that have been erected just feet from the Mexican city of Tijuana.

None of the holding areas were formally established by immigration officials, but they have become a pillar of their operations — makeshift camps where they instruct asylum seekers to line up for count, remove their shoelaces, strip down to one layer of clothing and wait.

Adriana Jasso, who runs a volunteer aid station against the steel slats of the border wall in San Ysidro, Calif., on behalf of the nonprofit American Friends Service Committee, said the lack of food, water, and baby formula provided by the government has been particularly concerning. “There is no logic if the most powerful country in the history of humanity, the country with the highest concentration of wealth, is not able to provide for basic needs of children,” she said.

Migrant advocacy groups have filed multiple complaints with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, and a group of lawyers who represent children in immigration custody as part of a 1997 federal court agreement known as the Flores settlement have taken to the courts over the conditions.

The Flores settlement agreement established the standards of treatment for immigrant children who are detained by the government. Among other things, it requires that children in immigration custody be given access to toilets, food, drinking water and emergency medical care, and that they are released from detention to an appropriate sponsor, such as a parent or relative, “without unnecessary delay.”

Plaintiff lawyers in the settlement, including the Oakland-based nonprofit National Center for Youth Law, have filed a new motion to enforce the terms of Flores for young migrants who are still awaiting processing in the open air. They argue that the children waiting against the border wall deserve the same safe and sanitary housing as those already in official custody, since they are forbidden from moving from the camps and have no way of going back.

The burden of medical issues among children in the holding areas is difficult to measure, since volunteers are only permitted at the sites at the discretion of border agents, and a hodgepodge of aid groups does not keep a collective record of wounds treated or electrolytes dispensed.

In a December 2023 email to federal officials, a lawyer wrote that infants in the holding areas had begun vomiting because of severe dehydration, and that some children had been given one granola bar for sustenance per day. Pedro Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border program, said he had encountered migrants who had been eating leaves because they had been there for five days without food, as well as mothers who had stopped producing breast milk because of traumatic stress and infants with no formula to replace it.

Hundreds of children have been gathered at the sites each month since last summer, and Dr. Cheng, who is also a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, estimated that she had evaluated or treated 100 children in one week alone. She encountered a 5-year-old and 12-year-old who had spent three nights outdoors; an 8- or 9-year-old to whom she gave facial stitches out in the open air; a 13-year-old boy with a traumatic injury, blood pouring from his ears and nose.

Children are not the only migrants with serious health issues. In remote swaths of eastern San Diego County, those who turn themselves in to border authorities have often endured arduous journeys through steep mountainous terrain and desert land, arriving at the holding areas in deteriorated health. Doctors said they encountered a man with a kidney transplant who was running out of immunosuppressants, a woman with a traumatic stroke who could not reach her own shoelaces, and a migrant who had traveled with an oxygen concentrator and had become hypoxic. He eventually died.

Doctors are particularly concerned about cases of hypothermia among children, since many have lower body fat than adults and may be malnourished from their journeys. Migrants have been soaked by heavy rainfall in the waiting areas overnight, which can cause the body temperature to plummet. Two minors were hospitalized for hypothermia last month.

Karen Parker, a retired social worker in Boulevard, Calif., who does volunteer medical triaging at the eastern camps, said that, in addition to broken feet and twisted ankles, she routinely encounters unaccompanied minors having panic attacks. “The stress, the exhaustion, the trauma is making them physically sick,” she said. “I’m looking at them, thinking they are finally here, but their eyes are so vacant.”

The number of people and duration of wait times has fluctuated since last summer. In recent weeks, Mexican military activity has pushed migrants toward the west, a more urban region between Tijuana and California’s San Ysidro where asylum seekers who breach the primary border wall must wait for federal agents in the 280-foot space behind a second one. Fewer gaps in the primary border wall there mean more children are hauled over it or smuggled under it, despite concertina wire. Aid workers have documented an increase in deep head gashes, and local neurosurgeons have reported a rise in traumatic injuries.

In recent weeks, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old have both fallen from the border wall in their parents’ arms.

“When you hear the babies just crying and crying, right on that other side of this wall, that’s the worst part,” said Clint Carney, the government affairs manager for the nonprofit Survivors of Torture, International, who provides aid through the slats in the border wall.

Local E.M.S. teams have been inundated with calls from the sites, and aid workers said that federal agents had often denied their requests to dial 911, suggesting migrants were faking injuries. Those who encountered serious injuries often called volunteer medical staff to advise them by phone.

When Dr. Cheng got one such call on a recent morning and arrived at the scene to find a 13-year-old boy with a weak pulse and blood pouring from his ears and nose, two border agents were standing nearby but had not taken any steps to assist, she said in court documents .

Dr. Cheng performed CPR, but it took an hour for emergency services to arrive, she said. The boy died.

Emily Baumgaertner is a national health reporter for The Times, focusing on public health issues that primarily affect vulnerable communities. More about Emily Baumgaertner

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002 My Favorite Food Essay Example Favourite Meal ~ Thatsnotus
002 My Favorite Food Essay Example Favourite Meal ~ Thatsnotus
IELTS Essay: Family Meals
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Week of family meals 8/1-14/1
Family Meals Part 1

COMMENTS

Why Eating Family Meals Together is Still Important Today
The fabric of family is woven by shared experiences and time spent together. Here are some things we gain when we share meals as a family: Eating together is more efficient, less expensive and healthier. My mother planned well-balanced meals using few convenience foods because cooking from scratch was always more economical, healthful, and tasty.
IELTS Essay: Family Meals
Develop the example fully. State the results as well. 1. In conclusion, family meals are less common because of developments in society generally and it is positive on the whole given the freedom the average person now possesses. 2. Nonetheless, it is still important to balance time with family and friends.
Importance of Eating Dinner as a Family, Essay Example
These issues are relevant because eating meals as a family provides a greater opportunity to share nutritional knowledge and insight in the development of new perspectives to expand nutrition an d positive health for children and adults (Fulkerson et.al 189). However, one of the critical issues is the limited amount of time that is available to ...
The Power of Family Meals: Strengthening Bonds and Building Healthy
Creating a sense of belonging is one of the most significant benefits of family meals. When families gather around the table to share a meal, it fosters a strong sense of connection and togetherness. This shared experience allows family members to engage in meaningful conversations, share stories, and truly connect with one another.
Why the Family Meal Is Important
Why the Family Meal Is Important. For many parents, it would be much easier and simpler to forget about family dinners. Jobs, children, after-school activities all contribute to families being constantly on the go, thus feeling the need to eat on the run. But more and more parents are realizing the importance of shared family time at the dinner ...
Essay On Family Dinners
Essay On Family Dinners. 958 Words4 Pages. Family dinners have been an important factor in people's lives for along time now. But, over time how people has changed drastically. Just comparing how I ate ate as a family, to when my grandpa ate as a family as a child had changed a lot. Family dinner has been where people come together as a family ...
The Benefit of Family Dinner
Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse, and eating disorders, and tobacco use, and early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience and higher self esteem. Jill Anderson: The Family Dinner Project has worked with, I think I read 1 million families on this issue.
Tradition of Families Getting Together to Eat Meals
IELTS Task 2 Band 9 Sample Essay (2) In the past, family members tended to dine together on several occasions. While these events are disappearing due to the extended working schedules and family structures, this development would lead to the lack of communication and unstable relationship. The reduction of family reunions results from the ...
The Magic of the Family Meal
In her article The Magic of the Family Meal, Nancy Gibbs discusses the importance of family meals. In particular, the author argues that they can improve the relations between parents and their children. Overall, it is possible to agree with this argument; however, one should bear in mind that family meals bring benefits only in those cases ...
Family Dinner Memories Before College
Although the weekend of a 12-14 year old is nothing incredibly enticing, the reactions of a Saturday night quarantine rivaled those of capital punishment. However, by the end of dinner, tensions would usually fall and most problems could be soothed with some ice cream and words of wisdom. Now with three kids in high school a 7 o'clock dinner ...
Six Brilliant Student Essays on the Power of Food to Spark Social
From the hundreds of essays written, these six—on anti-Semitism, cultural identity, death row prisoners, coming out as transgender, climate change, and addiction—were chosen as essay winners. ... In quiet moments, I like to imagine a meal with my family-including Dad. He'd have a spot at the table in my little fantasy. No alcohol would ...
The Significance of Family Meals: A Comprehensive Exploration
Download. Essay, Pages 3 (730 words) Views. 1808. In her thought-provoking essay, "The Magic of the Family Meal," Nancy Gibbs sheds light on the pivotal role that family meals play in shaping the lives of children. Gibbs passionately emphasizes the profound impact of regular, uninterrupted family meals on communication skills within a family.
The Secret Power of Sharing Meals Together
The Secret Power of Sharing Meals Together. Engaging in regular family dinners protected against the harmful effects of the pandemic by increasing emotional closeness and providing dependability. When people throughout the world experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated shutdowns, the well-known expression "a family that eats ...
Eating together as a family
Featured Essays Essays on the Radio; Special Features; ... In conclusion, making time to spend eating meals with your family creates a well rounded household. Families are supposed to be there for each other through the good and the bad occasions that occur in a lifetime. Instead of spending money to go eat at a restaurant and receive unhealthy ...
The Importance of Family Meals
The Benefits of Eating as a Family. The advantages of eating meals as a family are as follows: Communication and Well-Being. Dialogue during mealtimes provides an opportunity for the family to plan, learn, and bond with one another. It is a chance to chat about events of the day as parents give additional attention to their children.
Eating Home-Cooked Meals Is Better for Family Life, Essay Example
This shows that as a result of eating more home-cooked meals, people can change their behaviour so that it benefits the world. Eating home-cooked meals clearly has great benefits for society. Research has shown that it can help change people's behaviour for the better, as well as improving health and well-being of families.
Family Meals and Child Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
Abstract. This study investigates the link between the frequency of family breakfasts and dinners and child academic and behavioral outcomes in a panel sample of 21,400 children aged 5-15. It complements previous work by examining younger and older children separately and by using information on a large number of controls and rigorous ...
Essay on Family Dinner
Family dinners are a special time for everyone in the family. They are a chance to eat good food, talk about the day, and learn important manners. Even when life is busy, finding time to eat together can make a family stronger and happier. It is a simple thing that can make a big difference in everyone's life. That's it!
Importance of Family Meals: Positive Health Outcomes
Importance of Family Meals: Positive Health Outcomes. Categories: Family. Download. Essay, Pages 2 (482 words) Views. 1337. The post present the issue of meals from an excellent viewpoint: it determines that some households consume together and others do not. It states from looks into that research studies performed on households that eat ...
Free Essay: A Family Dinner
Lasagna, Briciole, Eggplant Parmesan these are just some of the items that I will be making for our family dinner. I will be making my own sauce first with three kinds of meat which I will cook slowly for four hours. My family loves when I make all our favorites for our Italian dinners.…. 794 Words. 4 Pages.
Family Meal Time
Family meal time is captivating as it helps people share their experiences, exchange ideas and even get advice from family members. Moreover, it also provides an opportunity to have fun after a long day. ... students and learners can find detailed writing guides, free essay samples, fresh topic ideas, formatting rules, citation tips, and ...
75 Best Family Dinner Ideas
This recipe for honey mustard chicken might just be the most versatile one yet! You can use the marinade for breasts or thighs depending on your family's preferences and make it on the grill or stovetop. Get the Honey Mustard Chicken recipe. Will Dickey. 3.
Family Meal Essay Questions
The family bakery is a gathering place and a source of sustenance for the characters. When Cam returns to Houston, he becomes involved in the bakery's operations, which brings him closer to TJ's family. This connection is reinforced through the act of cooking and sharing meals. Food also induces nostalgia and cultural significance.
Dal Is the Ultimate Comfort Food
Dal Is the Ultimate Comfort Food. Cheap, unfussy and adaptable, these lentils call up warming memories of home and family for many South Asians. 43. The recipe for dal is endlessly flexible and ...
33 Casseroles for Easy Family Meals
Our easy 1-hour Shepherd's Pie is comfort food at its finest, perfect for feeding the whole family. Its hearty layers of ground beef, peas and carrots, and fluffy mashed potatoes make it a crowd ...
Miss Manners: Dinner guest stays on phone all evening
March 28, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT. 3 min. Dear Miss Manners: I had a formal sit-down dinner for eight guests at my home. One guest was on her phone nearly the whole time — texting and even ...
Woman goes viral with $12 McDonald's dinner box that feeds family of 5
TikToker Leiela Kapewa-Latu, who goes by account name @xolovelei, shared a post about a "$12 dinner box" that has since wracked up more than 12 million views. In the video, Kapewa-Latu, who ...
The Daily Hunt for Food in Gaza
The family used to draw on its savings to buy ingredients from street vendors, and Nizar's mother would then prepare one meal to split among 12 people. One pot to fill 12 bowls But Nizar said ...
Opinion
Here are some tips. And here's our email: [email protected]. Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads. A version of this article ...
Health Concerns Mount for Migrant Children at Outdoor Waiting Sites
By Emily Baumgaertner. Emily Baumgaertner reported from five migrant camps along the U.S.-Mexico border wall in California. March 28, 2024. To Dr. Theresa Cheng, the scene was "apocalyptic ...