A rare Sunday post for me. Today in the semi-annual LDS General Conference, Elder Oaks quoted research from a recent study at Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse about the relationship between teens’ academic achievement and how frequently they eat dinner with their family. BusinessWeek summarized the findings as follows:
Their research has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, and get into fights. Further, these children are at lower risk for suicidal thoughts and are more likely to do better in school. Teens that have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, to work harder, to have positive peer relationships, and to have healthier eating habits. Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size.
I just want to highlight the last sentence there – Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size. The study compares teens who eat dinner with their family five or more times per week with those who eat dinner with their families two times or fewer per week. You can complain about traditional family values all you want, but there’s something here.
Maybe we need a web app? Dinner 2.0, virtual edition? The app could simulate dinner, allow people to twitter what they are eating, swap recipes, give each other virtual pats on the back or hugs.
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Call me old-fashion, but I think this is so true and I am glad to see the research to back it up. We have to use all these new wonderful and cool technologies so that we can actually spend more time at home with our kids.
I don’t have a problem with the rhetoric of “family values” except that it is often used to imply…well, a specific kind of family. I want more details about this family meal-time. Is it the specific practice of having a meal together or is that the types of families that sit down and have a meal together have different characteristics from those that don’t (besides the controlled-for factors). Also, I find it intriguing that the previous two comments imply that “dinner time” can be simulated as mediated communication (besides the traditional mediating factors of tables, chairs, etc.). I wonder if the “family dinner” effect is important precisely because it is face-to-face. Just thoughts…
UNICEF did a report last February that does a comparision of children’s well-being, part of which including eating a meal with family. Here is a summary http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6359849.stm but if you want the juicy stuff, download the pdf and use it as a reading at your next dinner theatre. http://www.unicef.org.uk/press/news_detail.asp?news_id=890
This sounds interesting. But in China, we always have regular family mealtime. I didn’t realize there are much influence before i read this post. This might be true no matter in which country.