It might be taboo in today’s society, but I have absolutely no remorse in telling my friends I have “dinner for one”. It inevitably comes up in conversation with friends, when everyone’s sitting at a coffee shop laughing and sharing family anecdotes from around the dinner table like we’re the cast of Friends. Then, the conversation will fall to me, and I have to tell them my family doesn’t do family dinner.
I’ve found this non-traditional attitude shocks people; everything from history to science to the Disney Channel reinforces that the family meal is a necessity, and a practice that equates to a happy family. But as unexpected as it may be, my family is happy. We share lots of laughs, catch-up regularly and neither my brother nor I have called the CYFS helpline once. Yet to my friends, something still seems amiss. It’s hard for them to comprehend our lack of communal eating. We didn’t choose it actively but it is now something we’ve embraced.
Photo: Illustration: Patrick McDonald
The catalyst was time-management. My brother and I are super busy people. At night, we’re either engaged in an extra-curricular activity, commuting there or doing homework. It’s just the way we’ve been brought up – to go, go, go. And my parents, they’re either running their own businesses or shepherding my unlicensed brother to a sport. So it turns out, we can’t physically eat together. Not because, as a study by Michigan State University suggests, our time is dominated by smoking, drugs and alcohol consumption, but because, to make this dinner happen we’d all have to be gulping protein shakes in the car. Another issue is serving everyone in our family what they want, in the same sitting - we all have different palates so prefer to be able to accommodate them accordingly, by choosing our own food.
My friends think this is a very Lord of the Flies existence, but I prefer to think my family is just very progressive."
On the weekend, mum will help my brother and I prepare large portions of the dinner we want to eat for the week, so we can help ourselves as we please. My friends think this is a very Lord of the Flies existence, but I prefer to think my family is just very progressive. We’ve practically developed a diet that runs concurrent to the Paleo diet - just like cavemen, my brother and I must forage for our food, even if it is found in Tupperware containers.
As dysfunctional as this seems my parents actually epitomise new-age health. They’ve done the 5:2 diet, we have an expensive juicer from Moore Wilson’s and our My Sky is dominated by health documentaries. A manifestation of this is that they eat very little for dinner; most often a small bowl of muesli, or a piece of toast. Thus, a family meal would simply not be viable for us. It would have to consist of my brother and I watching our parents (in agony) make one piece of Vogels toast last for 30 minutes.
When my brother and I were younger my parents did make an effort to create a semblance of conventional eating for us. The meal was served at 5pm and consisted of my brother and I eating while my dad stood near us to monitor our meal consumption, and our fights. This routine lasted for around three years or so, and I would say that from this short-lived experience, I did reap the benefits of deeper communication, which scholars Lyttle and Baugh suggest is as necessary. Out of this my brother and I learnt the meaning of teamwork; as I would signal my brother to distract my dad while I subtly went to the bathroom with cut up cucumber in my pockets. The vegetable never touched our mouths throughout those years, and consequently, I would say my brother and I are closer. He is almost consistently in my Snapchat top three.
While this short-lived dining experience was enjoyable, going without the family dinner has been a much better fit for me and my family. And that’s not to say I don’t see the viability in having scheduled in “family time” over a pot of casserole, but for my family, food is just not a good meeting point. Luckily, catching up with one another is a very high priority, so although we don’t all physically pow-wow together at night, we each actively make the effort to catch up with one another throughout the day.Perhaps if it had been any different growing up in my household I wouldn’t take the same pleasure I currently do in finding a time to chat with my parents. Whether that’s by finding each other in the house or ringing in-between activities – we make time.
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