Beyond Nutrition: The Benefits of Family Dinners

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

Family dinners have been credited in various studies with more magic than they probably deserve, from preventing teen alcoholism to raising kids’ grades. In fact, the origins of kids’ problems are far more complex than whether a few minutes a day are spent eating with family. Rather, dinners are largely a proxy for family guidance and bonding of a kind that helps anchor kids in healthy habits.

Now comes study that credits family dinners with great benefits for working mothers, too, by reducing conflict and strain from working long hours. “Parents, not just kids, benefit from time spent eating together,” says Jenet Jacob, an assistant professor of family science at Brigham Young University and lead author of the study.

The look at 1,580 working parents at IBM found mothers who put in long hours on the job reported less stress and strain if they were able to make it home in time for dinner; the results were published this month in the Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal. Family dinners didn’t have the same moderating effect on working fathers’ stress. In analyzing the gender divide, the authors hypothesized that “women feel a greater responsibility for dinnertime and thus experience greater benefits.” Also, they added, “women in general may be more sensitive to the nuances of family interactions.”