Now home-cooked dinners are a “tyranny”
According to this article in Slate, some researchers have found that home-cooked meals aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
They’re not cheap, it’s hard to get the family together, and the wretched louts seem ungrateful for the effort:
Beyond just the time and money constraints, women find that their very own families present a major obstacle to their desire to provide diverse, home-cooked meals. The women interviewed faced not just children but grown adults who are whiny, picky, and ungrateful for their efforts. “We rarely observed a meal in which at least one family member didn’t complain about the food they were served,” the researchers write.
There used to be something called manners, a quaint little custom that forbid that sort of behavior, and was even practiced sometimes by people within the hearts of their own families. Not that complaints didn’t occur, of course; I certainly complained about particular meals served to me as a child, particularly the dread tongue.
I have written about my own experience of family meals in general and of tongue in particular, here:
But sharing that image [of a large cow tongue] can’t begin to convey what it was actually like to confront beef tongue as it was regularly served in my home: attached to part of the jawbone. I was not allowed to leave the table, so I erected a barrier to block the grisly sight. The tall water pitcher was pressed into service, as well as the bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans. According to Wikipedia, beef tongue is””or was””popular in families of German origin, and so it was my mother’s German side of the family that I blame.
Note that “I was not allowed to leave the table” part; you stayed there until you were dismissed, although you could ask for permission. Once a child has had a meal of tongue-attached-to-the-jawbone to complain about, everything else seemed like gravy (which I also didn’t much care for).
Fortunately, for the most part the meals in my family were plain but very tasty. But those were hardly the only benefits:
I’ll go on to say that it’s my impression that the family meal has far greater benefits then mere improved nutrition, tongue or no tongue (and, by the way, tongue probably wouldn’t come under the heading of healthful food nowadays, since according to Wiki it’s about 75% fat). Eating together doesn’t necessarily make a family happy together, but at least it forces them to interact and to know a bit about each other.
I’ve encountered many families who take their meals as separate individuals. Sometimes it’s a scheduling thing, but sometimes it’s just the path of least resistance in a family whose members are already so uncomfortable in each others’ presence that they’d rather avoid close encounters of any kind. But my totally unscientific observation is that the act of eating separately tends to cause even more estrangement.
My family had its share of problems, and our meals sometimes ended in yelling and/or tears. But mealtime was the time when we most felt like a family, and just as often there was a lot of laughter. Come to think of it, sometimes political discussions would happen at the dinner table as well, perhaps fostering the development of the future blogger in me””one had to learn to defend one’s position with a certain amount of logic and grace.
I remember those meals very fondly, and tried my best to recreate them for my own family. And I have to say, although I knew other families where everyone complained to the cook about the meals, my own husband and son were princes in that regard. They loved and appreciated everything that came to the table.
I don’t want to something-shame anyone, but my guess is that the moms and dads who cook regularly have gotten better at it, and know what the kids want to eat. And the kids have learned that what mom/dad made is the only thing you’re going to get tonight. Possibly the kids can tell that the parent worked on this meal for an hour, so they’d better show appreciation. And – just maybe – the kind of family that has regular, home-cooked meals also has a better upbringing in general.
I first saw tongue served at a party some 40 years ago, and did not eat it. The second time was a year or three ago at a large event. Ate it; liked it.
SLATE: So much is just too hard for them to comprehend or deal with.
You can team up the top chefs in the world and they won’t change that there is no substitute for mom’s cooking, especially mom’s dishes that defined your childhood.
If the family were served spaghetti with ketchup, I would consider that a type of tyranny–on the family. On the subject of tongue, I’ve been reading a British novel from the 1930s in which there’s a reference to a “glass of tongue”. Now, I was aware that the Brits at least used to eat tongue, but I’m not sure why it would be in glass. Was it stored in jars?
Language Bully:
I believe that would refer to under glass. I once had tongue served that way, although it was tiny calves’ tongues, and the membrane had been removed and it had been sliced, so it was harder to guess at the tongue origin. It was quite tasty.
The meal was served in 1969 at the home of a well-known economist in DC who was a friend of my parents. I remember it well. I was staying at their house because I was in DC to participate in the anti-Vietnam protest. Roughing it. I was aware of the irony at the time. And elegant tongue under glass was not something I was used to, believe me.
The times they have a-changed.
In my family nobody dallied to the table. Five of us and only four potatoes.
I sometimes worry that my kids won’t remember any particular dishes that defined their childhood, because I so often bring home takeout for dinner, or default to an easy pasta dish (usually Ragu with spaghetti…we’ll have to mix things up a bit and try ketchup).
As often as possible, we sit down together for Sunday dinner, but during the rest of the week dinner is a more slapdash affair, with family members either eating on their own, or with one or two others, during staggered intervals. Sports practices and other evening obligations make it difficult.
I have a few dishes in my repertoire…homemade meatballs, meatloaf, vegetable beef soup, chili and Brazilian rabanadas (similar to cinnamon French Toast) that resulted from an international food assignment that my son had in grade school. They were easy to prepare so I kept making them.
Maybe that’s the food they’ll fondly remember! I hope there’s at least one. My mother and grandmother gave me many happy food memories.
As a child I can remember complaining about a particular item I didn’t care for but never from about the age of 9-10 on, manners as neo points out and, a father who deplored ingratitude.
Almost all of our meals were homemade and eaten together, take out was an infrequent occurrence.
That today “it’s hard to get the family together, and the wretched louts seem ungrateful for the effort” is a direct result of the left’s cultural influence upon liberalism.
My maternal Grandmother was a professional cook: she earned the family keep by way of her craft.
She ran what amounted to a student’s kitchen — out of her house. You would NOT believe the amount of chow she could crank out of a dinky {140s.f.} kitchen; enough for 30ish college boys!
So, her killer recipes have made for many a tasty, cheap, meal. No-one dallies.
This is topped off by her script being beautiful, arresting, really. She won the state-wide award as a child for her penmanship.
Not one of her recipes used costly ingredients.
So, we’ve been thoroughly spoilt.
It’s the Costo pre-preped meals that are ruining the craft skills of all my sisters. They only cook to show off.
Beef tongue is delicious in sandwiches.
In some of the meal columns I’ve read recently (the Megan McCardle linked by Instapundit), the women seem to talks of kids as if they were all over six. But I think the mother/child bonding over food probably starts much earlier, like when a toddler is given the first spoonful of applesauce by mom. McCardle talks about kids nagging for mac and cheese, as if a parent didn’t have time to develop a taste for other things before they saw their first Kraft package.
Providing food for children is one of the bases for a trust relationship, and allowing them to help with the preparation (even if it’s only stirring something in a bowl) is a great way to give them recognition for a job well done. My fondest memories of my mom are about helping her peel potatoes for supper while she explained what she was doing in the more complicated tasks. She always told me why she did something a specific way, and I think that encouraged me to think about things more deeply as I got older. I didn’t usually get orders from my parents; I got explanations. And I never got nutrition lessons; I learned to eat what was on my plate.
There is a lot you can teach kids about life as you prepare meals for and with them and as you teach them how to do other household chores. Feminists are idiots.
Growing up on a farm, meals were the product of our labor, and substantial. The caution was do not put on your plate what you are not prepared to eat. We raised our kids the same way. Dinner was family time, a time to talk about the events of the day and discuss whatever was on our minds. Dinner usually lasted an hour and was a time of bonding.
“We rarely observed a meal in which at least one family member didn’t complain about the food they were served,” the researchers write.
A cousin of mine solved that rather quickly. She stopped cooking, and pointed her children to the assorted boxes of cold cereal. Her children wised up and stopped complaining.
My siblings and I did some complaining- I can still hear my father telling us “this is not a short order restaurant,” but as my mother was a pretty good cook, the complaints didn’t last.
expat
Exactly. If an adult sits a 1 year old on his or her lap while the adult eats a meal, seven will get you eleven that the child will want to sample everything on the adult’s plate.
I have eaten very little tongue in the US, but in South America, a very tasty tongue in tomato sauce is easy to find.
Gringo, in Japan people generally rotate if they are at the same age or social class. Things get complicated between family or lovers though.
They treat it more like Italians treat their food. If you don’t eat it, and all of it, that proves there’s not enough “love” in it.
CV’s point here highlights how changes in our society make having family meals together, which I think is so very important not only for family cohesion but better physical and emotional health for all family members, a much more difficult proposition.
When more of the country lived in small towns, where everything was just a few minutes away, extracurricular activities in the afternoons or evenings did not prevent us from getting home to dinner on time. Now that more of us live in exurbs and suburbs, where everything is spaced farther apart and traffic is often a problem, it seems as if a choice has to be made between outside activities and eating together at home.
And because extracurricular achievements seem to be given disproportionate weight these days in college admissions, most families I know go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that Jr. can list a full slate of activities through all their school years. Against that need, family dinner sinks very low on the list of priorities.
We managed family dinners most nights, though not all, when our kids were growing up — sometimes squeezed into a pretty narrow window, what with farm chores and club meetings, rehearsals, sports practices and homework. It took a lot of driving and a willingness to call some pretty sketchy meals “dinner,” so long as we all sat down at the same time around the same table for long enough to check in with one another as a family. It definitely got a lot harder as the kids reached high school and had more and more going on, but by then the tradition was well-enough embedded in everyone’s expectations to relax a bit. Nobody can do it all the time, or turn out a perfect square meal every night, but a lot of the value is in the trying.
Notice how the study’s solutions to the “tyranny” of family togetherness are all about moving responsibility for meals out of the home to institution. Communities should hold pot-lucks (who takes the time to organize them? who does the cooking?) or schools and workplaces should supply tasty take-out meals. What that’s all about is weakening the family. If you can get people turning to the government, their bosses, the authorities, instead of their families and themselves for their daily sustenance, look how you weaken them. Take away from parents the responsibility — and opportunity and right — to sustain and nourish their own children, and what a shift of strength and power to Authority has been accomplished!
What a sterile way to grow up, on food that somebody cooked because they were paid to do so and not because they loved you, not because they want to sit down with you in the evening and hear how your day went, not because they care about what you like to eat, or about teaching you table manners or respect and appreciation for what others do for you, or how to cook for yourself. No wonder kids turn out to be whining ingrates, if they live in families where there’s no assumption that being part of a family involves shared obligations and respect.
And then there’s the loss of the opportunity to express love through work. Not long ago I ran across this poem on that subject, which seems like a typical feminist complaint — one I might have made myself, when I was younger and dumber — until you reach the heart of it.
I Stop Writing the Poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.
–Tess Gallagher
Wow – that article is a piece of junk. “Researchers” found? Just what was their method for research? Why call themselves “researchers”?
It sounds more like they hand picked idiots to conduct the research on; rather than doing any sort of real research or statistical sampling.
“The saddest part is that picky husbands and boyfriends were just as much, if not more, of a problem than fussy children”
That really has little to do with “home cooking” and more to do with poor choice in picking a life partner.
And “they can’t afford “basic kitchen tools like sharp knives, cutting boards, pots and pans.””
really? cannot afford pots and pans? But, I’ll bet they have a big screen TV!
A home cooked meal isn’t really about the food in my opinion. It is more about family spending time together. At least those are the memories that I have. In a house full of boys we were often going our separate ways, especially by high school. But, we always had Sunday dinner at our Grandparent’s house a couple of times a month.
Oh, and by the way – I didn’t have my first “fast food burger” until I was in high school. The closest we came to fast food as kids was when our dad would take us out to Stewart’s for a root beer float! Burgers and other stuff were made at home – it was much cheaper that way.
Thanks, Neo, that sounds plausible! I like that phrase: “glass of tongue”.
One of the things my now-grown daughter has mentioned as a highlight of her childhood is our family dinners. Among her friends, she was the only one whose mom routinely made dinner every night, usually from scratch.
Personally, I’ve always found preparing and serving a meal to be a tangible act of love for my family. And yes, I worked full time during much of my childraising years. Somehow that (the lack of time together) made the family dinner experience even more precious.
It’s all about priorities I suppose…
Charles,
Yes, the extended family time is very important. You get to know people over time and gradually see that they all have strengths and faults. You see them with new babies who grow up to be people with very different personalities. You learn that the rather standoffish uncle is the one who stands by you and your parents in time of need. You see people coping with sickness, and you see people die. I was amazed at college to find that some of my classmates had never been to a funeral. I just don’t believe that more family-disruptive soccer practices can substitute for what is lost when kids don’t learn what it means to be a responsible family member. I had more extracurricular activities when I entered high school, but they were fitted into family life. What is more important, learning how to kick a ball around a goalkeeper or learning how to comfort a friend who has just lost her mother? All these admission officers and helicopter moms are creating a generation of spiritually weakened kids.
RandomThoughts: “Personally, I’ve always found preparing and serving a meal to be a tangible act of love for my family.”
Feminist influence promotes several perversions, but I think one of the biggest is the devaluing of wives and moms cooking.
Several of my favorite TV shows feature subsistence living (eg, NatGeo’s Life Below Zero) and, related, hunter-gatherer cultures (eg, Ray Mears’s various BBC series). They provide insight through the veil of modernity on human social-cultural roots. A main theme is that whole cultures, traditions, and social/family structures are built around food.
Food is life. Mom’s cooking is life. Wife and mom feeding her family with the most nutritious attainable foods, especially her children with her blood in her womb, then milk from her breasts, then meals from her kitchen, is as basic in human relationships as it gets. Mom’s cooking is powerful verging on godliness.
The kitchen traditionally has been a source of essential life power for women. Yet feminism claims taking women, wives and moms, out of the kitchen is empowering.