We started out taking turns making dinner, but just as my wife and I have very different preferences about what constitutes dinner, it turns out that our daughters also developed strong and different preferences. Phase one of the collapse of our family dinners was the kids doing gymnastics and ballet, and not getting home until 7:30, tired, hungry, and wound up. Phase two was everyone but whoever cooked's habit of waiting for dinner to be over so they could go into the kitchen and make something to eat, after having picked over whatever was served. Phase three was that the kids got tired of waiting, so they basically turned "dinner" into a combat zone. Phase four was everyone went into the kitchen when they got hungry and made something to eat.

Some might call that dysfunctional, but in fact, it worked very well for us for a number of years (the kids are now well into their 20's).

One confound is that I always worked at home, my wife works at home about 50% of the time, and we home-schooled our kids maybe about 1/3 of the way off and on through elementary and high school. Also, we both got involved in ballet, so we had classes and rehearsals with our kids too. So, we usually had beaucoup contact with the kids throughout the day. Insisting on a family dinner in the face of massive resistance by all us primadonnas would have been rather silly, I think.

Greg Shenaut

I don't think the key is necessarily having dinner together so much as spending time together. For a lot of families, in which the parents both work and the kids go to school all day - and in which the family doesn't regularly partake in other activities together - dinner may be the only time they spend as a family. In your case, you and your wife spent a lot of time with your kids in other venues (home schooling, taking classes with the kids, etc.) so you didn't need a family dinner to make up for a lack of contact.

The author's children must not be involved in many extracurriculars yet--our hours from 4 pm to 8-9 pm tended to be filled with ball games/practice/piano lessons for years (3 kids within 3.5 years of age). It's difficult to find time for dinner---weekends work better for long family meals.