THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411240622
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
If you're sitting down at a dinner table today, with actual family members, to eat food cooked in a stove rather than nuked in a microwave, it's a very unusual day.
By Friday you'll be back to your old dining habits. Eating in America today is hardly a scene lifted from a Norman Rockwell painting.
Consider these eating trends:
The family dinner, once the mainstay of the day, is hardly a sure bet anymore. While most families still eat dinner together most nights of the week, only 43 percent eat together every night. Eleven percent make it there twice a week or less.
We're microwaving maniacs. Thirty-six percent of food prepared at home falls in the ``convenience'' category. Eighty percent of households have a microwave, up from 10 percent 15 years ago.
We're dining out more. One in every five meals is eaten in a restaurant. One out of 10 of those meals is eaten - cover your ears, Emily Post - in a car.
What does all this say about the fine art of family dining? We're in trouble. Dining together as a family not only teaches children socialization skills and good manners, but it also promotes family togetherness. And while learning to make a left-hand turn without spilling the guts of your Big Mac may have merits, it won't tell you about how your kid did in school today.
``If you're eating at a fast-food restaurant, it's usually because you're in a hurry, so there goes any conversation,'' said Johnny Sue Reynolds, who studies family eating habits at the University of North Texas. ``Parents are also more likely to correct their children at a family dinner table than they are in a restaurant.''
What's behind these eating trends? The usual culprits. More two-earner families with less time to cook. More single parents who are trying to juggle child-rearing with demanding jobs. Busy families with schedules so crowded that supper gets a 15-minute time slot. If they're lucky.
Ask Shirley Perry. The Virginia Beach woman's dining room table has the usual trappings of the traditional gathering place - place mats and an artificial flower centerpiece. But she can't remember the last time hot food crossed the surface.
``Most of the dishes are in the kids' rooms,'' said Perry, who has a 19-year-old son, a 17-year-old daughter and a 9-month-old son. ``It's a habit now for them to grab their plates and go. When I cook, it's like a free-for-all.''
Perry, who works two jobs, says she and her fiance usually eat in front of the TV set with her 9-month-old baby eating at her side in his walker.
``Things have changed so much. My mother used to fry fish and we'd all sit around the table and my father would pray. He didn't just say grace, he prayed. It's not that way anymore. It's totally different.''
While she loves being a career woman, she misses the togetherness of the family dinners she grew up enjoying. ``I'd like to be one of those - what do you call them? - Joan Cleaver families.''
Uhhh, that would be June, Shirley.
Susan Broomer of Norfolk describes her childhood dinners as something out of the Waltons. Fresh vegetables. Dinner that took at least an hour to prepare. The smell of food wafting from the oven as the family gathered around the table.
The dinners she prepares today, however, are more akin to the Jetsons'. Microwave beeps. Dinner in minutes. And bopping up every two seconds to answer the demands of a 1-, 2- and 4-year-old.
``I find myself fixing so many packaged foods, frozen vegetables, since my time is so limited,'' Broomer said. But her family does sit down together every night. ``Even if it's hot dogs, we sit down together to eat. That's important.''
But in today's fast-paced, high-pressure world, dinner often gets lost in the shuffle.
Maury Duncan, a counselor at Chittum Elementary School in Chesapeake, knows students who not only don't eat dinner with their parents, but whose nightly duties include zapping their microwave dinners themselves. They eat in the company of TV instead of Mom and Dad.
``A lot of children's self-esteem and sense of belonging would improve if they sat together with their family every night,'' Duncan said.
Duncan practices what he preaches. Each night Duncan sits down with his wife and three teenage daughters for dinner. ``We've done it so long it's habit. We find out what's happened to one another during the day. It gives us a feeling of togetherness.''
While not all families are as dedicated as the Duncans, studies show the majority of people still eat dinner together most nights of the week, if not every night. They may be preparing food faster, and eating out more, but they're still breaking bread together.
``The family meal, if not the last thing to go, is one of the last,'' said Steve Nock, a University of Virginia sociologist. ``People will sacrifice sleep before meals together.'' ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/Staff illustration
by CNB