Slate: Why family dinner makes working parents (especially moms) feel better.

An article in Slate magazine talks about the results of a recent study that shows that eating as a family makes parents happier. My working mom was always good about making a family dinner. I was always starving because she wouldn't let us snack before dinner. My childhood experience and my experience living in Belgium and France sealed the deal for my family eating two meals a day together.

When I was 18 years old, my Belgium host family ate breakfast together. When I lived in France in my twenties, my French friends didn't throw keggers, they had dinner parties!

It is noteworthy that although longer work hours predicted significantly greater perception of success in work life, work interference with dinnertime predicted lower perception of success in work life," Jacob and her co-author write.

Eating together in the morning takes about 10 minutes. It's nice to have that moment of calm before the day begins. And in the evening, Mikey loves the direct attention that he gets from the both of us.

My sister told me once that she couldn't figure out why her girls weren't eating, and then she started eating with them and their eating improved. "Now that we're eating together, I can't believe we weren't doing it before," she explained.

Feeding Routines

I was in a steady routine of feeding Mikey a smoothie at around 4pm. Then, he started eating a very, very light lunch and was too full from his smoothie for a decent dinner. I realized that he wasn't just in love with my smoothies, he was really hungry at that time of day. Now, I feed him his big meal at 4pm and he is devouring his plate again. I like the new routine because we have more time at the park (or wherever) in the mornings. I also have his nap time to prepare his early dinner. The bummer part is that I don't eat with him. I just watch, which is a little painful. But, I am sure that he will change again and we'll be back to our family dinners. Like my mother-in-law says, "There is only one thing that you can count on with kids, they will change."

(Revisited this post and we're back to a six o'clock dinner.)