When family’s ate together.

I recently saw a TV programme which showed many families don’t even own a table these days, preferring to eat off their laps with the kids eating off plates on the floor, just another nail in the coffin of family life.....
 

When I was young we always ate supper and Sunday dinner together, the television was off!

Then along came those metal TV trays my mother bought at the green stamp store and it's been downhill ever since!!!



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At home we always ate every meal together at the table...no TV. That's the way I also raised my family, up to a certain point.

I think we started straying from dinner at the table when my kids had different after school activities and my husband traveled or came home at different times.

Both my kids still have dinner at the table with their families for the most part, not always easy and the TV is on usually but at least they try.
 
Yes same here, hard to get family together on weekdays coming in all times. Then there were the picky eaters (husband a main offender :() and 'special' meals and the vegetarian daughter. Fussy son was always difficult to feed, yes mealtimes could be quite a battleground!
 
There were two courses on my mother's dinner menu: "Eat It" or "Go Hungry". And, barring special circumstances, the "Eat It" had better be at the table with the rest of the family. There was no wandering in and eating whenever you got hungry. You got hungry when she SAID you got hungry.

I remember Sunday dinners. We got home from church about 12:15 and dinner was on the table by 12:30. My mother left stuff simmering on the stove or in the oven when she left for church, so it was hot and ready when we came home. She'd race in the door, take off her dress to keep from being spattered and finish the cooking in her slip (except when we had company, natch). There'd she be standing at the stove, in her slip but still in her high heels and usually she'd still had her hat on (of course, slips were quite modest back then.) We'd tease her about it unmercifully. She'd always say, "Do you want to eat or do you want me to put on a fashion show???" She'd put her dress back on by the time we sat down at the table.
 
cobham said:
Yes same here, hard to get family together on weekdays coming in all times. Then there were the picky eaters (husband a main offender :() and 'special' meals and the vegetarian daughter. Fussy son was always difficult to feed, yes mealtimes could be quite a battleground!
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Yep, that took the enjoyment out of cooking for me...loved it when it was just one meal for everyone, then somewhere along the way everybody wanted something different.
 
jujube said:
There were two courses on my mother's dinner menu: "Eat It" or "Go Hungry". And, barring special circumstances, the "Eat It" had better be at the table with the rest of the family. There was no wandering in and eating whenever you got hungry. You got hungry when she SAID you got hungry.

I remember Sunday dinners. We got home from church about 12:15 and dinner was on the table by 12:30. My mother left stuff simmering on the stove or in the oven when she left for church, so it was hot and ready when we came home. She'd race in the door, take off her dress to keep from being spattered and finish the cooking in her slip (except when we had company, natch). There'd she be standing at the stove, in her slip but still in her high heels and usually she'd still had her hat on (of course, slips were quite modest back then.) We'd tease her about it unmercifully. She'd always say, "Do you want to eat or do you want me to put on a fashion show???" She'd put her dress back on by the time we sat down at the table.
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I miss those Sunday dinners and the seemingly endless boring Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.

I grew up in an area that observed the Blue Laws so not much was open on Sunday, we either stayed home or visited relatives that lived in the area.
 
Aunt Bea said:
I miss those Sunday dinners and the seemingly endless boring Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.

I grew up in an area that observed the Blue Laws so not much was open on Sunday, we either stayed home or visited relatives that lived in the area.
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My "family" was pretty dysfunctional for most of my childhood. So my memories of meal times consist of things like making a couple of bologna sandwiches by myself.
 
Aunt Bea said:
I miss those Sunday dinners and the seemingly endless boring Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.

I grew up in an area that observed the Blue Laws so not much was open on Sunday, we either stayed home or visited relatives that lived in the area.
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Adults talking and I just sat there watching my two aunts drinking Utica Club beer and adding salt to the beers. Ugh....like beer, but no salt.
 
Aunt Bea said:
I miss those Sunday dinners and the seemingly endless boring Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.

I grew up in an area that observed the Blue Laws so not much was open on Sunday, we either stayed home or visited relatives that lived in the area.
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Unless there was some sort of activity at church in the afternoon, we often went for a drive in the country (remember just "driving"?) so my mom could buy some produce from a stand or we'd find a creek to wade in. Then there was a stop at the A&W Rootbeer drive-in for rootbeers all around. Then back home in time for supper (leftovers from Sunday dinner) and back to church for CYF and evening service. After evening services, some of the teens would go go-karting or bowling or skating. So, Sundays weren't too boring.
 
When I was a child we always ate together. Once in awhile as a treat I was allowed to eat my dinner on a TV tray and watch Howdy Doody. I usually missed him because he was on during our dinnertime. My Mom would be at the kitchen table with my Dad having their dinner. I was a poor eater back then and every few minutes my mom would yell, "are you eating in there?" It went on through the entire program. We also ate as a family after I was married and my daughter does the same with her family. The only difference is when they eat. We had a very set time for our meals. My daughter eats when they all get hungry. I mentioned that to her once and she says that I live by the clock and I'm not spontaneous. I suppose that is true. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
 
My father worked the 6 'til midnight shift 6 days/week at a factory, all the time I was growing up. When school was in session, I rarely saw him except at dinner and on Sundays. We always had a sit down meal, around 4:30. My mother was a stay at home mom.

In the summers they were usually busy working on some project, either together or separately, and for years my dad had another part time job installing storm doors in the day, so it wasn't a whole lot different.

I've been sitting here trying to remember a single thing that was ever said at dinner, and I can't. We just got it over with ASAP. Meals were just not that important an event in our house.

:shrug:

I've continued that tradition. I eat whenever I get hungry (or bored :rolleyes:).
 
Loved the family dinners. I do miss them. If you watch the show Blue Bloods, the multi-generational Regan family has family dinner every Sunday. I miss that. Sundays were the special dinners in our house, but we all ate in the kitchen every day. Holidays were in the dining room, of course. No television, and the phone went unanswered.
 
As a kid we always ate at the dining room table, or occasionally at the kitchen counter. Not good memories, really, more sad. If Dad came home from work in a bad mood, that is when he would start yelling at us or Mom for whatever irritated him at the moment. It was quite a stressful way to eat (and live).
 
We ate most weekday meals at the kitchen table, because the dining room table was usually loaded with school projects like someone's half-finished Eskimo village diorama or a smeary chart of the relationships between the characters in some English novel. If we were really lucky, it was a science fair project and was in danger of exploding at any minute.

But Sundays......Sundays, all that had to be stowed somewhere else and we ate in the dining room. Grandma and Grandpa were always there and quite often visitors. If it got too crowded, the kids were shunted to the kitchen table where we could chew with our mouths open and throw food at each other without getting smacked (my mom had a six-foot "boarding house reach" and nobody was safe from the long arm of the law.....)
 
jujube said:
There were two courses on my mother's dinner menu: "Eat It" or "Go Hungry". And, barring special circumstances, the "Eat It" had better be at the table with the rest of the family. There was no wandering in and eating whenever you got hungry. You got hungry when she SAID you got hungry.

I remember Sunday dinners. We got home from church about 12:15 and dinner was on the table by 12:30. My mother left stuff simmering on the stove or in the oven when she left for church, so it was hot and ready when we came home. She'd race in the door, take off her dress to keep from being spattered and finish the cooking in her slip (except when we had company, natch). There'd she be standing at the stove, in her slip but still in her high heels and usually she'd still had her hat on (of course, slips were quite modest back then.) We'd tease her about it unmercifully. She'd always say, "Do you want to eat or do you want me to put on a fashion show???" She'd put her dress back on by the time we sat down at the table.
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Same way at my house. No excuses for not showing up at the dinner table except, well, possibly, barring your own death. You ate what was put before you or did not eat. Part of that was because sometimes, particularly when we were little, my family didn't have much money and what we had was what we could afford. Another part of that was that, as my father pointed out once when we were teenagers, "your mother is not a short order cook and this is family dinnertime." By that time, money was not really a problem, but we were still expected to respect the fact that our mother had gone to all the trouble of preparing the meal and we were to appreciate both that fact and the fact that there was food in the house to prepare.

Everyone was seated at the same time and left the table at the same time, unless you were excused early for some reason, but that was rare. We couldn't eat and run. We had to have decent table manners, as in "please pass the potatoes" instead of reaching for them, no elbows on the table, etc. If the phone range during dinner, we were not allowed to answer it, much to my chagrin when I was a teenager hoping my boyfriend would call.

All this sounds a bit grim as I write it down, but it wasn't at all. It was just the way we were expected to behave as members of a family, and I think we have lost a lot in the near disappearance of the family dinner and its reminders that we were part of a family unit, with all the rewards and responsibilities that that entailed.
 
My poor mom was a hoarder (it wasn't called that back in the 50s) so our tables were usually piled high with stuff for years on end. We sat on the couch or a chair that didn't have something on it and ate on our laps. But from what I've heard from friends some family dinners were just time for one or both of the parents to rant and yell at the kids. So I never felt I missed out on a lot anyway. Until I was 13 and we got TV and I watched Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best. That type of life would have been great.
 
Iodine said:
My poor mom was a hoarder (it wasn't called that back in the 50s) so our tables were usually piled high with stuff for years on end. We sat on the couch or a chair that didn't have something on it and ate on our laps. But from what I've heard from friends some family dinners were just time for one or both of the parents to rant and yell at the kids. So I never felt I missed out on a lot anyway. Until I was 13 and we got TV and I watched Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best. That type of life would have been great.
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Never any ranting or yelling at our family dinnertable. Just stuff about how was your day or what we were going to do on Sunday, etc.
 
Butterfly said:
Never any ranting or yelling at our family dinnertable. Just stuff about how was your day or what we were going to do on Sunday, etc.
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Of course Butterfly, a lot of families had a nice meal time like you did. I know of one lady who would cut an article out of the newspaper every day and read it to the family at dinner time and then they would all discuss it. She did that even when one of her kids had a guest over. I thought that was a nice idea.
 
Iodine said:
Of course Butterfly, a lot of families had a nice meal time like you did. I know of one lady who would cut an article out of the newspaper every day and read it to the family at dinner time and then they would all discuss it. She did that even when one of her kids had a guest over. I thought that was a nice idea.
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I recently read a book written by Jean Kennedy Smith- JFK's sister- and she said their mother did that: pinned "interesting" newspaper articles to her dress so everybody would have something to discuss at mealtimes.
 
We always had dinner at the kitchen table. Ours was a family of readers, so each of us brought a book to the table and read. :D Not much different than staring at cellphones, I suppose.
 
Have always ate at the table, no tv and no phones, except for pizza, etc.discussions were whatever. After all these years, just my husband and I still carry on that tradition.
 

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