I gave a talk a few nights ago at Catlin Gabel School, a private school in Portland Oregon.  We spent a long time afterwards just talking with the school counselors and one coach about the effect of sports on family dinners.

Why, we wondered,  do sports so often now interfere with dinner when, as children, we all played outside more than kids do now and yet still managed to have dinner at home?  Baseball didn’t interfere (there was no soccer to speak of), football didn’t interfere and neither did the many school clubs.  Dinner at home was an expectation.  What happened? 

One of the mothers mentioned that when she was young, sports took place directly after school, from three to six. After that everyone went home to dinner.  Now, she said, her kids get home at three and she scrambles to do the chauffeuring necessary to make it possible for all their children to be at all their various sports events ….at dinnertime.  Dinner becomes “catch as catch can,” which often means eating in the car and/or fast food.

We are very hesitant to deprive our children of the experience of sports, but easily deprive them (and ourselves) of the experience of dinners at home, together.

Many claims have been made about the positive effects of sports participation on behavior.  Sports have often been held up as a way for kids to stay off the street, to stay off drugs and alcohol, to find a positive peer group and to build self-esteem.

Compared to what? 

On October 2nd the New York Times ran an article about the effects on children of eating a meal at night with family.  They quoted the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse  (CASA):

“Teenagers who eat with their families less than three times a week are more likely to turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs than those who dine with their families five times a week.”

They went on to say  “Since the first CASA study in 1996 saw an association between the frequency of family dinners and rates of adolescent substance abuse, numerous other studies have pointed to the importance of the family dinner. They suggest that family dinners have a positive impact on nutrition, verbal abilities, mental health and workers’ stress”.

Are family dinners the critical intervention themselves or are they a proxy for something else?  For the likelihood of two adults being present? A marker for adults who value structure?  For more inter-generation conversation? For adults who put their “family first”?

Does it matter what you eat—or that you do it together?  My own biases would make me think that it does matter what you eat, with a strong preference for cooking from scratch from real, preferably local and organic ingredients.  But logic tells me otherwise.  Just think about what we ate at the family dinner table in the 50’s:  jello salad, sloppy joes, Wonderbread, canned vegetables boiled into mush…

So let’s say family dinners are as important as I think they are.  How do we make them happen?  That will be the subject of the next blog, although if you have any ideas to share with readers, please send them to us.  You may be an expert.