Eat Dinner with Your Family Sept. 25—It’s the Union Way

by James Parks, Sep 23, 2006

Before families’ schedules became super-packed with soccer games, music lessons and two parents working overtime, family dinners were a traditional part of American life. Now a new study says we need to return to that tradition.

Teens who have infrequent family dinners (two or fewer per week) are twice as likely to smoke daily and get drunk monthly, compared with teens who have frequent family dinners (at least five per week), according to a survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. The survey was sponsored by TV Land and Nick at Nite’s “Family Table.” This is the first time a study has examined the relationship between a teen’s current tobacco and alcohol use and family dinners.

CASA, TV Land and Nick at Nite’s “Family Table” are encouraging Americans to commit to take a first step toward spending more time with their families by eating dinner together as a family on Family Day—A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™,  Monday, Sept. 25. For more information or to pledge to have dinner as a family on Family Day, click here.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement says Family Day “echoes the goals of the labor movement”:

…which bargains and advocates for work-family balance, respect for family needs and time for working families to spend with our children. Key to working families who struggle every day to do what’s best for our children are good jobs with pay and benefits sufficient to support a family—without requiring second and third jobs—and control over work hours.

The CASA report, The Importance of Family Dinners III, also reveals that compared with teenagers who have five or more family dinners per week, those who take part in two or fewer are:

• More than twice as likely to have tried cigarettes.
• One and a half times likelier to have tried alcohol.
• Twice as likely to have tried marijuana.
• More than twice as likely to say future drug use is very or somewhat likely.

Some 58 percent of teens and 59 percent of parents say they have frequent family dinners. More than one in five of teens and parents who have infrequent family dinners said the main reason is that they are too busy to have dinner together more often. Parents say conflicting schedules get in the way of family dinners, while teens say it’s because one or both parents work late.

Lack of time for dinner and other family activities are major concerns for today’s working families. Respondents to the 2006 AFL-CIO Ask a Working Woman survey say they are frustrated with employers who offer little flexibility and time to take care of their families. One-third of the respondents to the online survey work evenings, nights and weekends. Two in five women work different shifts than their partners or husbands and that percentage goes up among African American women: nearly half work different shifts than their significant other. Not only are they working erratic hours, working women also are holding more than one job. More than 20 percent of women surveyed work two or more jobs.

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