Your Dinner?s in the Oven

Once upon a time in a faraway land before television, mobile phones, the internet, two income families, dial-a-pizza, ?flexible? working hours, microwaves and dishwashers, families sat down to dinner together. They sat around the dinner table at one time, said grace, discussed social events of the day, community going?s on, family plans for holidays and get togethers and politics. They all stayed at the table until the end of dinner and all happily helped clear up in a friendly cooperative spirit. Well maybe like the opening lines of George Lucas?s first Start Wars in 1977, there is a bit of myth in this. But if we had access to diaries of a few parents of the baby boomers, it?s probably not too far off target.

Surveys done in the US by The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) found that the more often children and teenagers eat dinner with their family, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use illegal drugs. The actual statistics are:

* 32 percent likelier never to have tried cigarettes.

* 45 percent likelier never to have tried alcohol.

* 24 percent likelier never to have smoked pot.

* Twice as likely to get higher grades in school.

Or is this just correlation to higher socio-economic groups? We looked for similar references in Australia without success. Anyway if you want to take a lead from the US you can check out the CASA link at http://www.casafamilyday.org/ for the national Family Day for 25 September 2006 when everyone is meant to sit down at least once in the year for a family dinner. Oh and don?t forget to ask everyone to turn off their mobile phones before they sit down and contact all your regular meal time land line charity callers to tell them that on this particular day it is really important not to have your meal time interrupted!

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