American. Everyone I knew had dinners with the whole family most of the time. The Thanksgiving issue is when your bigoted aunt / uncle / cousin / grandparent shows up. Or your dad and uncle fight over something that happened fifty years ago, or your grandma acts like an ass to your lesbian aunt, or something. Just to pick examples from personal experience.

American. 28. Grew up going to an inner city school with a bit of a class divide. Thinking about it now, the upper class families were more likely to eat dinner together; but I knew very many classmates that did not.

American, I have a decade on you. Grew up in the rural south east, 50+ minute school bus ride every day being bussed into the inner city to maintain the 40% white ratio. (Without bussing and zoning, the school would have been more like 5% white, or less.)

Families eating dinner together was the norm, and this was not a rich area.

Today this is probably less the case, the past 25 years have not been kind to the area. Loss of opportunity and rampant meth abuse has caused a lot of issues.

Drug abuse should not be treated as the cause of such a problem in our society.

My point was perhaps too subtle.

I don't view meth as the source, but a symptom of the economic situation(hopelessness), which then causes further socioeconomic decline in the pursuit of more drugs.

Drug addiction, for many, is trying to fill a hole. That hole could be poor choices leading to a bad situation, absent or abusive childhood relationships, a self esteem model that has been largely destroyed by the culture that person lives in, a lack of role models, many things. They can be internal issues that the individual is primarily responsible for, or external issues that are the result of being dealt a bad hand in life. Most likely a mix.

My family growing up and my family now; we make it an absolute must to eat every dinner together. We also tend to invite people over.

It’s honestly the most important thing you can do as a parent. Let’s you know about your kids lives, share in the ritual, and generally bond.

Do you, or will you, allow your children to participate in extracurricular activities? Or is eating every dinner together less of an absolute priority as you claim? Your comment makes it sound like you may have some.

I ask because most of the dinners I missed growing up were due to sports.

You figure it out, my siblings and I were always in multiple extracurricular activities. We’d typically eat at like 6-7pm. If something came up we’d move dinner to 5pm or later to 8pm. There’s always someway to make it work. We also tended to have breakfast together so even if we have to miss 1-2 days a week for dinner, we still eat together at least one meal.

In the US extracurricular sports and music tend to be after school 3-7pm range.

I had dinner together with my family very, very regularly growing up. I also did a ton of extracurriculars, including sports. I think when I was younger, it was every night as a family. In high school, I’d miss dinner on competition nights or when that particular sport’s practice schedule was incompatible with dinner time for whatever reason.

I plan on having dinner together as many nights as possible when I start a family, but not to the extent of disallowing extracurriculars. But I also think that I would discourage my kids from being so involved elsewhere that we can’t have dinner together as a family a couple times a week.

How late are the extracurricular activities? I'm not American, but at home we would just eat all together after, e.g. around 9 p.m. and if they were later in the evening, we would just eat a bit earlier, like 7.

I think many Americans would look at you like you were nuts if you suggested regularly eating dinner around 9pm. I'd say 5-7pm is the most common here. Often when trips to Europe come up, the discussion is about how you can't get dinner at 5pm because the restaurants aren't open. Although my last few trips to Europe I noticed there are more restaurant choices in touristy areas that open early just to get the American's business. I've also noticed it's better to wait and eat when the locals do. Some of the worst Italian food I've ever had was in Milan at a touristy restaurant, and some of the best was in the same town at a place that a local recommended outside of the tourist areas.

I think you have found the heart of this issue. As a French I wasn’t understanding the points being made about extracurricular activities but here a 7pm dinner is considered early and most people will eat around 8 up to 9. To be fair few people leave work before 6:30pm and being home before 7:30pm would be exceptional.

My beef with US supermarkets the only time I went there is how poor is the quality to price ratio is particularly for vegetables. Generally speaking you could shift every thing one price band compared to France.

My young kids are in bed by 8pm, if we don't eat at 6:30 or earlier they get indigestion from trying to sleep right after eating.

When I was in school, we ate as a family when schedule allowed. For most of primary school, sports were done in time for dinner. Music lessons were usually 1-2/week and often after dinner (instructor had a day job too). In high school, dinners as a while family were less frequent, but whoever was home would eat together. Same for the short time I lived at home after college - dinner was around 6pm and Mom expected me to let her know if I wouldn’t be home (default assumption was I’d eat with Mom & Dad since I was living there).

> I wonder if Thanksgiving dinners are equally so contentious as they are cherished because of how rare family dinners have become. People aren’t just used to being stuck together with family at home at one table like that anymore.

I think it has more to do with extended family whom you don’t ordinarily see; from the stories I’ve heard, there’s usually one obnoxious uncle who picks stupid arguments or someone like that.