We're all 'too busy' to eat dinner as a family — but we should do it anyway

What does it mean to eat dinner together as a family?

Why do we do it? Or rather, why did we do it? It seems the number of families who eat dinner together every night is shrinking.

I remember that if the phone rang during that time, my parents would look at one another shocked. 'Who would be calling during dinner?'

It feels like every year it becomes more rare. The image of a mother, father, and a couple kids sitting around a table, full plates in front of them and a few serving dishes in the middle, is becoming an old-fashioned image in our day and age.

Today, families are too busy to have dinner together. Too much work, too many obligations, too many schedules.

Dad has meetings, mom has to go to the gym, the kids have practice, dinner will have to wait.

Grab and go

A house today is more a place for atomized individuals to rest their heads at night before heading out and on their way every morning. It’s more a hostel and less a home. Breakfast out the door, lunch on the go, dinner on your own.

What kind of family life is this?

In the preindustrial world, families saw a lot of one another. Life wasn’t a fairy tale back then, times were tough, I am not sure people were always so chipper or joyful, but families did spend a lot of time together. That’s just how it was.

Life in the modern world, on the other hand, is hectic. Today, families are pulled apart by the chaos of modern life: the activities that never stop, the nagging sense that we might be able to “have it all.”

An antidote to atomization

For a while in the 20th century, families coped with the fracturing chaos of modern life by eating dinner together every night. It was a standard thing. All across American society, families ate dinner together.

Not just on Sunday or Saturday. Every night. Practices, classes, and rehearsals were scheduled around dinner. People weren’t forced to choose between dinner and some prescheduled activity or obligation.

Even deep into the '90s, there was a sense that you shouldn’t call anyone between 6:30 and 8:30 in the evening. That was when people ate dinner. There was an assumption everyone was eating with their families. I remember that if the phone rang during that time, my parents would look at one another shocked.

“Who would be calling during dinner?”

Dinner was the final sacred realm. The last untouched territory. Everyone might be out on their own all day, but at 6:00, everyone came back together as a family again.

Kids would tell one another, “I’ve got to go, I have to be back for dinner.” The street was quieter at those times. The world slowed for a couple hours. For the sanctity of dinner, the sanctity of family.

This is gone today. That societal detente has been eroded. Dinner is no longer respected.

Making dinner matter again

Now, parents eat separately because it’s easier. Kids eat on the bus on the way back from the volleyball tournament. Families go out to eat, and they all sit around the table scrolling their iPhones not saying a single word to one another. Today, for most, dinner doesn’t matter.

But it can. Even though society tries to fracture the family in 100 ways, we don’t have to go along with it. We still have free will. We can choose a different way. We can still come together as a family for dinner every single night.

That’s what we do in our family. We don’t watch TV during dinner, we don’t look at our phones during dinner, we don’t have separate dinners for mom and dad. We all sit down together every night.

The freedom of obligation

It’s not always easy. It’s hard with little kids. Every parent knows that. The messes, the cajoling, trying to teach manners while eating at the same time. Often, it’s not exactly a relaxing vibe.

It would be so much easier to throw something together for the kids, sit them at the table, then go in the other room and scroll the timeline on my phone. It would be so much easier to not block off that time every night. I would have more freedom if we didn’t eat dinner together. But I would be missing something important. I would be missing dinner together.

Our culture is what we do. Eating dinner together is a part of our culture. Eating dinner every night with no other distractions is good. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.

It’s not about grand meals or perfectly prepared dishes. It’s about something deeper. Eating dinner together is about coming back together at the end of the day, sitting around the table, and looking at each other in the eye — remembering that we are a family, thanking God for the food in front of us and also for those around us.

That’s what eating dinner as a family is about.