But there is a reason many people like to use dinner as a mandatory point of family social contact: it keeps you on a daily schedule. You can multitask: listening to stories while you chew. And it provides some resilience to changes.
Like marriage, there is some value to committing to something like this "in sickness and in health". It's nice that you all want to play Catan now, but what happens when your teenager decides they don't like games anymore? Or what happens if your spouse isn't loving your approach to competition these days? Or if someone just doesn't feel like socializing? Everyone needs to eat, so in that way it's resilient to these shifting winds. If nothing else, you can sit and chew and listen to your family's voices.
So I'm not disagreeing with you: there are other ways to achieve the same ends that might be more efficient or more comfortable for your family. But there are also good reasons to sacrifice a little of that in order to fix a ritual that can pay off in unpredictable ways.
This is a good point. I remember my mom getting mad when I'd bring a book to the table (c. 1995). If it's not a phone, it's something else.
Of course, the image of the paterfamilias at the breakfast table with his nose in the newspaper, ignoring his family, was a constant in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sure, fine. I was mostly critiquing the notion that a "distraction" free dinner was an event that needed to be planned, as opposed to something approaching a default.
A distraction is not the same as a device. A screen's distraction area is just the one person using it. A general distraction can be shared by everyone at the table, making it a social thing again.
That would explain why people who value the social aspect of dinners hate screens.
I strongly agree. I'm always surprised how much resistance to this idea I encounter, though.
Whether they'll make your family happier or "more perfect " according to someone elses yardstick is irrelevant. You set the boundaries, and live with the environment that they create. So set the ones that make you happier and stick with them. They may be just what your parents did, or they may be the opposite.
Well, one reason is mindfulness: being present to really just eating.
Why mischaracterise as an arbitrary moral thing to latch on to the current zeitgeist and make it seem somehow worse? It's a bit like saying getting kids to eat less junk food is an arbitrary moral imposition. Adds nothing.
Why should all dinners be distraction[1] free? I understand dinner is a social event for many cultures/families, but not every person wants this nor am I convinced it must be this way. I'm efficient with my eating and when the family wants to socialize we play Catan or sit around the couch and talk. Besides that, when the dinner conversation reaches an impasse, Alexa has occasionally been helpful in resolving it.
It's fine if people enjoy socializing over dinner, but let's not arbitrarily assume it's morally superior. Nor should we mistakenly compare it to our own childhoods, when devices weren't as ubiquitous. We should question old habits/traditions especially when the environment has changed.
[1] I'm subbing in "distraction" for "device", my kids have brought non-powered distractions to the table before.