Writes Erin O. White, in "Why I Had to Kill Family Dinner" (NYT).
"The messaging on family dinner is intense!... Family dinner will make your children smart! It will keep your children off drugs! Your children will learn languages, turn away from vaping and join model U.N. if you just sit together at the table for 15 minutes every evening, a plate of food in front of you.... 'I’m quiet quitting dinner,' I told people I barely knew. 'You’re on your own for dinner tonight,' I told my wife and kids. 'Great!' they said. We were all tired of family dinner.... Sometimes my wife and I eat cheese and crackers while we play mahjong on the porch and our daughter eats a burrito in her room after tennis practice. I love the ease and relaxation of those nights. I wish we’d done this sooner... Now our time together is about everyone’s pleasure, everyone’s sense of well-being and connection and relaxation, including mine...."
I don't understand why she "had to kill family dinner." Why couldn't the other wife cook half the time? Why couldn't the kids step up? But if the point is that free-form relationships are better than rituals... well, I still don't know if she's tested that theory. If one person does all the mental and physical labor of putting the dinner ritual in place, then perhaps only that person is truly committed to the ritual. The others might be showing up for the performance mostly to humor her or to express gratitude and not because they love ritual or prefer to block out the 6 o'clock hour every day.
Maybe after some time with everybody on their own for evening eating they can compare notes and decide how they'd like to reframe their togetherness. Me, I'm way past the time when I fed children, and now I'm so old that my dinner ritual is no dinner at all. But good luck to everyone who's still working with or around the classic concept of family dinner.
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54 comments:
Abort the bad attitude, keep the family dinner a viable choice. Make it a bonding experience, perhaps.
do you have to be a misanthrope to write for the Times,
its not a rhetorical question on either side of the atlantic
She overstates the case then proceeds to tell us that the case is overstated. That’s what passes for insight these days.
one can choose not to do something, but don't dress it up as a virtue,
Sequester the conception, but the process could be a shared responsibility, and evolution of a life. The hardest job you will ever love.
The phrase "Her wife" threw me. Then realized "Oh, she's a lesbian". But we're all supposed to be pretend like she's your typical Sally Housewife who wont cook for Hubby and the kids anymore.
Next NYT's article Pete Buttigig gives Child care tips to stay-at-home moms.
Would she feel better if her labor was taxed?
One difference between the sexes. Men wont take lifestyle and romantic advice from Gays, unless its how to dress better. Women, OTOH, seem to like being lead by Lesbians and look up to them to provide advice.
Pleasure seeking is the junk food of mental health. When you seek other things usually in service to others pleasure becomes and unforced by product or externality. Neuroscientists have shown that if you are a pleasure seeker the dopamine it's decline over time until they become meaningless. If you do it the other way around then the dopamine hits never lose their power.
I think this is the fundamental thing that Ayn Rand got completely wrong. Altruism is rational self-interest.
She's transgender. And the father is a sperm bank. Uninvited. So, that's why she was published.
I'm all for a ritual Italian style linger at the table once in a while but who eats squares during the week anymore? These gay ladies are behind the times...
Typical NYT reader.
...when their kids are effed up they can blame the lack of a dinner table...
I never thought about it before, but if given the chance to go back in time, near the top of my list would be to sit at dinner again with my family as we did every day until I left home.
Mom always made sure dinner was there, and it was always home made after she put 8 hours in welding outdoors winter and summer in the Pullman Standard Plant and doing laundry and cleaning somehow. The rest of the family (4 kids and Dad) rarely helped. I'm still amazed by the memory of her energy and endurance. I inherited her work ethic, and it saved me from a much harder and less rewarding life, and isn't that the whole goal of a mom?
Before our son grew up we managed pretty regular family dinners--except when I was teaching or speaking after my workday, or just working late.
Now my wife and I take dinner together, in the sense that our evening mealtimes overlap. I prefer an earlier time (done by 6 or 6:30) but she likes it later, and spends most of the time on her smartphone anyway.
“Why I had to stop working to support my family”
Seems pretty obvious that she DIDN'T want to. Why is she lying about that?
it all must serve the very damaging template, that elizabeth nickson surmised in that link, you must atomize families relationships, to serve careers,
I hated my mom's German inspired cuisine. I was often kept at the table forced to finish my dinner long after everyone else was watching TV. I could not stand most vegetables. I tried everything: hiding them under the plate, feeding the dog, dropping them on the floor or putting them in my pockets. I eventually learned the secret of holding my nose so I couldn't taste them. A miracle discovery.
My wife and I would alternate making supper. That took a lot of pressure off each of us. We enjoyed cooking for one another, but liked the break.
Pleasure seeking is the junk food of mental health.
And the rest of Howard's comment.
Meanwhile, on her own (is that the real pronoun or a fake one? I can't be bothered) side of the aisle, smiles, applause, "Yass queen, keep on doing what thou wilt!"
I risk turning into n.n (no offense intended, n.n, but we all know your verbal tics) on this subject.
Now our time together is about everyone’s pleasure, everyone’s sense of well-being and connection and relaxation
Also, I wonder how long it'll be before they realize their daughter never comes out of her room to share the pleasure, connection, and sense of well-being with them - she only emerges to say goodbye as she's leaving to go spend time with her friends, who give her pleasure, connection, and a sense of well-being.
'I don't understand why she "had to kill family dinner."'
Perhaps her kids didn't really enjoy having dinner with her girlfriend.
“She overstates the case then proceeds to tell us that the case is overstated. That’s what passes for insight these days.”
Beautifully concise. The NYT could just sprinkle a handful of comments like this on otherwise-blank pages. They’d save a ton of dough and their readers would save a ton of time.
Sounds like she's lesbian, not transgender. But she wants us to know that she has precise feelings about the nightly dinner, and more importantly, that she's right ! And she didn't simply stop cooking, she had to kill it. That's what seems to be the main point of the article, right? Even though it sounds more like the routine was simply dropped, it still has to be done with an invocation of violence, I guess. Progressivism is a Death Cult.
I made dinner for my family because I wanted to and because the world told me I had to...
I am skeptical of any adult who can't take responsibility for their own decisions.
I’m here to tell you that you can stop, too.
If you are one of those adults who needs permission, the author absolves you from cooking dinner for the family.
Most people figure out their domestic duties, and don't write an essay for the NYT when there is a change in the negotiation because the children are adults now.
The author sounds a bit too dramatic. Cooking isn't that difficult if you aren't trussing chickens or baking custard. Is that food in the photo? What the hell is that? It looks like something Georgia O'Keeffe would cook. The other spouse cleans up. Not a big deal for normal people.
In that alternative household, I wonder...
Who got "The Big Piece of Chicken"?
Does everything have to be a production with these people? It's just dinner, for chrissakes.
A constant search for something to be free from. There just isn't enough liberation for the modern woman. Which, hello, this isn't the 50s, I perceive no serious societal demand for a family dinner. Seems like she voluntarily assumed this responsibility and now wants kudos for voluntarily abandoning it. Ok, well...you go girl!
Narcissistic bitch. Lots of that going around these days.
If the family is flexible it is a great way to get kids into cooking. Toasted cheese, PB&J and soup can all be dinner when they are young. My nephew and niece were in Scouts so campfire dinners also were shared as they got older.
I never thought about it before, but if given the chance to go back in time, near the top of my list would be to sit at dinner again with my family as we did every day until I left home.
Yes indeed, what I wouldn't give for one more dinner like that now....
My mom had a half-time job but always had a hot meal on the table in the evening. My dad said grace over the supper and then asked each kid to mention something they were thankful for that day. They have long since gone to their reward, but I live in the hope that there is a Heaven where we can do it again.
When we had our daughter, I'm the one who usually cooked dinnner on the weekdays since my wife had to work late. She took over on the weekends. I always had dinner ready on time and under budget.
The food may have been bad, but the portions were great!
BTW, my mother always cooked dinner, even after she got a full time job. She also took care of the cleaning and laundry. I don't know where she got the energy. A lot of women of her generation were like that.
Erin White was in the Catholic church for a minute and loved it except for its misogyny, child abuse, dogma and ritualism. Family dinner is also seen as an empty ritual. Maybe she's just a person who feels every kind of ritual as empty. That's a real kind of person but maybe best not to turn one's anti-ritual spirit into a typical New York Times sermon. I mean I didn't get a sense of the good times she was having as a non-ritualist as I do sometimes here among the commenters I most disagree with, e.g. RH Hardin and math.
The self-centering of “I made dinner for my family” is the tell. It’s not all about you, honey. If the dinner conversation is loving, kids are happy with the simplest food.
Just stop inviting the strawman to your ritual.
Howard writes, "Pleasure seeking is the junk food of mental health."
Howard was on the way to a cogent point, but his comment became less and less comprehensible.
Transmission garbled. Please repeat.
Gender refers to sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation). Trans indicates a state or process of divergence. Homosexuals are in the transgender spectrum, along with simulants.
the breaking of bread is one of the most basic rituals we have. When yo think that the word companion means someone you break bread (eat) with. Like many of the others I grew up eating with family and I have always thought many of my best times have been at table. The past twenty years I have been the one who does most of the cooking. I know that it matters that I enjoy it and embrace the role. But it's at times like this that I miss Florence King who embraced the role of the misanthrope and did an admirable job of skewering the pretensions that seem to be propagating in the midst of plenty. She could make a living replying to these inane pieces published on a regular basis by the NYT.
Hassayamper, your comment made me tear up.
Bless you and your family.
As for group dinner, she can share responsibility with her partner. Also, get the kids involved and make it an evolutionary experience. It doesn't have to be a "burden" that is aborted for personal convenience, pleasure, and other purposes.
Funny way to resign from playing a family role. Sounds like she hates them.
Actually preparing and eating food together is the basis of civilized life. But she rejects that.
narciso said...
do you have to be a misanthrope to write for the Times, [sic]
It obviously helps. Also being a sociopath helps.
Making food for people you love is a chore - worth it.
Sometimes you don't feel it - get a pizza.
I'm glad she feels so attached to her family.
"'You’re on your own for dinner tonight,' I told my wife and kids."
Don't have to read too far before it all makes sense.
"All the news that's fit to print."
From the people who brought you "quality time" but now they just don't care.
"All the news we see fit to print" is identical in meaning, BTW.
I cooked breakfast and dinner for my sons every day without fail because that is what decent parents do. For several years I was a meth addled alcoholic, but still I cooked every meal, because that is the right thing to do. These days, I have one 20 something son living with me and I still cook dinner every night. The laziest I get is to buy a rotisserie chicken and some tortillas. Dinner is important.
narciso said...
do you have to be a misanthrope to write for the Times,
Well, apparently she's a lesbian, so while it may not be strictly required, it's probably encouraged. (Or would that just be a misandrist?)
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