The Times and Families Are A ‘Changin’ with Implications for Meals Together at Home

The American family is changing, but the enduring value of meals together remains strong, with new research showing how family meals are adapting to reflect the diverse ways families are built and experienced today.

By: David Fikes, Executive Director, FMI Foundation

“The demographic changes of the past century make it difficult to speak of an average American family.”   This observation was made in June of 2000, by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her plurality opinion written for the Supreme Court decision Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57.  The 26 years plus since have only added layers of complexity to her assessment of family life in the U.S.

In 1970, 67% of Americans between the ages of 25 to 49 lived with a spouse and at least one child under 18, which made it easy for the typical American family to be characterized in magazines and on TV. Fast forward fifty years and that number has dropped to 37%. There is no one picture of the family meal that speaks for most of the American family’s experience.

Demographic statistics can tell us that family life in America is changing but the numbers do not always reveal what those changes look and feel like.  So, this year, the FMI Foundation and our partners at the Ginger Network commissioned food ethnographer June Jo Lee to write a white paper exploring the nuances of how U.S. family life is shifting and the impact those changes are having on family mealtime.  Based on extensive interviews with Gen Z adults in diverse circumstances, Lee adds color and cultural clarity to the ways family is now being built, experienced, nourished, and named in today’s world.  Through her ethnographic lens, Lee offers a full-bodied narrative capturing what the transforming family dynamics look like in lived reality.

In her paper, Building Family: How American Family Life is Changing and Why Family Meals Matter, Lee addresses the following important topic areas:

1. Family is what people do for one another. While kinship is still valued, it is not always the determining factor in who people consider to be family.
2. Building family does not follow a fixed sequence.   The old nursery rhyme and playground taunt “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage,” simply does not hold sway any longer.
3. How people eat together matters as much as what they eat. Meals together have long-substantiated positive nutritional benefits but also have proven bond-strengthening social value.
4. Family meals flex to fit real life. For many the idea of a family meal felt formal and aspirational given time constraints, but the notion of home eating – even if standing at the counter in the kitchen - still preserved many of the positive attributes of a meal together.  
5. Food carries memory and identity. Food possesses such a strong capacity to trigger recollections and emotions, just one bite from a familiar dish can evoke feelings of “this tastes like home.” 
6. Family-meal practices can be learned later in life. Not everyone is raised in a household where eating together was valued, but that does not prevent people from experiencing and seeking the benefits of family meals.  In fact, those who did not grow up dining together often become the biggest advocates for the family meal.

FMI research substantiates that while the American family is changing, the need, desire, and yearning for the benefits of meals together remains strong if not stronger than ever.  Or as June Jo Lee says, “the table is not disappearing. It is being reset by whoever makes room and says: Sit down, Stay awhile. Let me make you something. Let’s eat together.”

Interested in learning more? Head to the FMI National Family Meals Movement page for a copy.

A webinar featuring an interview with author June Jo Lee will be held on October 29 for FMI members. 

Download the Research