Is Your Family Eating Together?

Last Thanksgiving, our adult children all came to our house with our grandchildren to share the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Because our family has grown over the years, we had to get creative with moving furniture around in order to make one large table that would accommodate seventeen people. But it was all worth it as we were able to share a meal and conversation around the table. As I was looking around the table, I got to thinking about how eating together as a family is a disappearing reality for so many. A recent survey from the American Enterprise Institute found that seventy-six percent of the members of my baby-boomer generation say that having regular family meals was a part of their childhood experience. It was consistently a part of my own family experience. Now, only thirty-eight percent of the members of Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, report having regular family meals. Parents, make meal-time a valuable family time, and hold it sacred.