Anne Fishel posted an article on preliminary research conducted by “The Family Dinner Project” in collaboration with “Making Caring Common” on “How Covid changed dinner”.
Their research included 696 American adults including 444 parents with children living at home, and suggests that family dinners increased for more than 50% of American families during the pandemic, regardless of race, class, educational attainment and political affiliation.
Prior to the Covid pandemic, families reported that their family dinner was the best time of the day to connect, although only 30-45% of families actually ate together.
Many parents report that they had busy schedules, budget constraints, distractions at the table or selective eaters that made mealtimes difficult to implement.
During Covid lockdown, many families increased the amount of time spent together, and more meals were eaten together. With more mealtimes came:
- More connection
- More gratitude
- More conversation in general and morevabout politics and news
- More help with meal preparation and cooking by kids
- More laughter
The parents stated that they want to hold on to a few of the changes going forward:
- Continue with the increased number of shared family meals.
- Keep cooking more and eating out less.
- Maintain the feeling of greater connection during mealtimes.
More than 25 years of research indicates that eating together as a family has plenty of benefits.
Therefore, aim to eat together as a family for at least six meals per week.
