The Magic of the Family Meal, Time Magazine Article
Check out these words from an article in TIME magazine called, “The Magic of the Family Meal” (www.time.org, 6/4/06): “…There is something about a shared meal--not some holiday blowout, not once in a while but regularly, reliably--that anchors a family even on nights when the food is fast and the talk cheap and everyone has someplace else they’d rather be. And on those evenings when the mood is right and the family lingers, caught up in an idea or an argument explored in a shared safe place where no one is stupid or shy or ashamed, you get a glimpse of the power of this habit and why social scientists say such communion acts as a kind of vaccine, protecting kids from all manner of harm…“If it were just about food, we would squirt it into their mouths with a tube,” says Robin Fox, an anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, about the mysterious way that family dinner engraves our souls. “A meal is about civilizing children. It’s about teaching them to be a member of their culture.”
Unfortunately, about 25% of families that do sit down to eat together have the TV on, about half say they are pestered by phone calls and 15% say texting or emailing on a cell phone can mess up the meal time.
From a sermon by Brian Bill, Parenting Priorities, 11/15/2009