The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on September 04, 2014, 01:22:12 pm
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/09/03/home_cooked_family_dinners_a_major_burden_for_working_mothers.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/09/03/home_cooked_family_dinners_a_major_burden_for_working_mothers.html)
Sept. 3 2014 12:17 PM
Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner
By Amanda Marcotte
The home-cooked meal has long been romanticized, from ’50s-era sitcoms to the work of star food writer Michael Pollan, who once wrote, “far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman’s attention.” In recent years, the home-cooked meal has increasingly been offered up as the solution to our country's burgeoning nutrition-related health problems of heart disease and diabetes. But while home-cooked meals are typically healthier than restaurant food, sociologists Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott, and Joslyn Brenton from North Carolina State University argue that the stress that cooking puts on people, particularly women, may not be worth the trade-off.
The researchers interviewed 150 mothers from all walks of life and spent 250 hours observing 12 families in-depth, and they found “that time pressures, tradeoffs to save money, and the burden of pleasing others make it difficult for mothers to enact the idealized vision of home-cooked meals advocated by foodies and public health officials.” The mothers they interviewed had largely internalized the social message that “home-cooked meals have become the hallmark of good mothering, stable families, and the ideal of the healthy, productive citizen,” but found that as much as they wanted to achieve that ideal, they didn't have the time or money to get there. Low-income mothers often have erratic work schedules, making it impossible to have set meal times. Even for middle-class working mothers who are able to be home by 6 p.m., trying to cook a meal while children are demanding attention and other chores need doing becomes overwhelming.
Money is also a problem. Low-income women often don't have the money for fresh produce and, in many cases, can't afford to pay for even a basic kitchen setup. One low-income mother interviewed “was living with her daughter and two grandchildren in a cockroach- and flea-infested hotel room with two double beds,” and was left to prepare “all of their food in a small microwave, rinsing their utensils in the bathroom sink.” Even when people have their own homes, lack of money means their kitchens are small, pests are hard to keep at bay, and they can't afford “basic kitchen tools like sharp knives, cutting boards, pots and pans.”
Beyond just the time and money constraints, women find that their very own families present a major obstacle to their desire to provide diverse, home-cooked meals. The women interviewed faced not just children but grown adults who are whiny, picky, and ungrateful for their efforts. “We rarely observed a meal in which at least one family member didn’t complain about the food they were served,” the researchers write. Mothers who could afford to do so often wanted to try new recipes and diverse ingredients, but they knew that it would cause their families to reject the meals. “Instead, they continued to make what was tried and true, even if they didn’t like the food themselves.” The saddest part is that picky husbands and boyfriends were just as much, if not more, of a problem than fussy children.
The researchers quote food writer Mark Bittman, who says that the goal should be “to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden.” But while cooking “is at times joyful,” they argue, the main reason that people see cooking mostly as a burden is because it is a burden. It's expensive and time-consuming and often done for a bunch of ingrates who would rather just be eating fast food anyway. If we want women—or gosh, men, too—to see cooking as fun, then these obstacles need to be fixed first. And whatever burden is left needs to be shared.
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Best thing we've found? Rotisserie chickens from the local Stop & Shop. Absolutely delicious, hot, and the price cannot be beat - $5.99.
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Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's still not the ideal. Eating together as a family helps seal the family unit, and should be the goal, if not always workable. (Raised four kids in more than four sports with music lessons, groups, church activities, etc...... it's NOT always workable).
And glad they stuck in the "or gosh, men" line at the end, because the entire article puts all the pressure on women to do all the cooking to reach the end goal.
Doesn't necessarily have to work that way.
Unless all men are stupid. :whistle:
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Same here..raised two boys with all their activities and manage to have a meal on the table almost every night...I even ironed all our clothes[still do]...but I was evil personified..a stay at home mother...
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The common denominator frustrating the ideal? Two working parents.
The 50s saw households running on one salary. Mom could stay home and see to dinner and the hundreds of other details that make home life so nurturing for raising a family.
Thank feminism and politically correct government for the breakdown.
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Same here..raised two boys with all their activities and manage to have a meal on the table almost every night...I even ironed all our clothes[still do]...but I was evil personified..a stay at home mother...
I hear you!
Remember all that talk about "choice" they screamed at us?
But staying at home with kids was clearly not a 'choice' they accepted.
It never has been about freedom for the left.
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How about we do a study. Let's take a look at today's adults and measure everything about them. How much have they achieved? How happy are they in their lives? How many spouses have they had? Etc. Then let's ask them if they were raised in a household in which there was a home cooked family meal served at a community table at a set time every night. I have no doubt what the results would show.
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The common denominator frustrating the ideal? Two working parents.
The 50s saw households running on one salary. Mom could stay home and see to dinner and the hundreds of other details that make home life so nurturing for raising a family.
Thank feminism and politically correct government for the breakdown.
I'm going to mildly disagree with you here, aligncare. I understand that "feminism" is a catch-all phrase for a very complex issue, but I would narrow the term down to leftist-politically motivated feminism.
There were a lot of issues that needed to be changed in the world of the 1950's regarding women. Women got paid less than men because men were the 'bread-winners' even though many of the men being paid more were single men and the women being paid less were single women, both of whom were their family's 'bread-winner.'
There were careers/professions that women could not get into without extreme bias against them, and again, whether or not they were married with kids didn't affect it.
There were no sports for girls. There were lots of stereotypes in which many of us didn't fit.
Men could not be charged with raping their wives, even if they did.....
Lots of things weren't equal that should have been equal.
(I realize I might take some flak from this post, btw, especially from a couple of guys on this forum who kinda despise me, and have made me hold back/ shut up of late to avoid their responses).
Anyway, I just think it's not a good idea to put people in boxes. I consider myself a feminist from birth, but I am also a conservative, a Christian, and I chose to put my career on hold to raise my kids. And we definitely did everything we could to eat meals together.
It's not a biggie and I agree on the whole with your post, but I thought I'd bring it up as part of the discussion.
(Holding my hands over my head and ducking in the event of incoming flak. :patriot: )
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(I realize I might take some flak from this post, btw, especially from a couple of guys on this forum who kinda despise me, and have made me hold back/ shut up of late to avoid their responses).
You take flak for that - you tell me. We don't always agree - sure, bound to happen - but its just a no. My shit list has a fair bit of space.
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How about we do a study. Let's take a look at today's adults and measure everything about them. How much have they achieved? How happy are they in their lives? How many spouses have they had? Etc. Then let's ask them if they were raised in a household in which there was a home cooked family meal served at a community table at a set time every night. I have no doubt what the results would show.
That might explain the disconnect I have seen between myself and the rest of my generation. So many of my peers have come from broken households and divorced parents that moved hundreds or thousands of miles away. No wonder the idea of finding a mate and sticking with them has fallen so far by the wayside.
Now, I lived in a family where a whole dinner around the table every night was hit or miss, depending on what went on on any given night in our lives. But we tried to have it at least once every week. That should be achievable in all except the most trying of circumstances.
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(Holding my hands over my head and ducking in the event of incoming flak. :patriot: )
Not from me, musiclady! I love you long time! :laugh:
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Let me think - we had a sit down meal, nightly, at 18:00 or so, depending on Mom's shifts. I'd turn things on when I got home from school, she'd leave me the list of timings. Dad would make breakfast every morning, and again, it was the whole family at the table, even if it was just porridge and toast (that happened a lot).
Been married 40 years now. Meal time has shifted to 20:00, but at least once a week the local kids (got one in New Zealand, one in Israel and one in Kenya) and grand kids arrive for that. Some of the grand kids are usually here for breakfast every day.
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Not from me, musiclady! I love you long time! :laugh:
I know, DC.........and the feeling is mutual! :beer:
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You take flak for that - you tell me. We don't always agree - sure, bound to happen - but its just a no. My shit list has a fair bit of space.
Thanks, but I should be OK, because I think the two fellers have me on "Ignore" because I'm such a nasty, devious soul, and who knows what eeevil things I might say........ :smokin:
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Thanks, but I should be OK, because I think the two fellers have me on "Ignore" because I'm such a nasty, devious soul, and who knows what eeevil things I might say........ :smokin:
You need it, it's there. I am a rather nasty person. Rather good at the nasty, too.
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I just don't get why this article keeps pushing that fresh produce is SO expensive! It gets expensive if you don't plan to use fresh food before it spoils, but a bag of onions or potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers and whatever is in season will do me a week in varieties of dishes. It takes a little planning, but it doesn't take long to get it going.
My mother was a stay at home mother and she cooked almost every meal we ate - and the foods she cooked for us are the foods I cook when I want to feel a sense of being in my cozy home and feeling the love of my mother. To me, food is love and it is central to any family gathering. It is sustenance and love.
If a person is stressed out by cooking, like Oceander said - those rotisserie chickens are great. Get one of those, a bag of pre-washed salad mix and a bag of frozen vegetable mix. For $12, you have a dinner for 2 adults and 2 or 3 children - that you can throw on the table in ten minutes!
But for me, I love to cook. One of the nicest days I can ever have is to be home cooking a big pot of soup or a roast, with rain spattering on my windows and wind whipping at the leaves outside. HEAVEN!
It's hard to do it every day, but there should be an effort to do it because it means a lot, especially to children. It's important, in my opinion.
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I just smiled so hard I probably broke something.
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I just smiled so hard I probably broke something.
:laugh: 888catlicking
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My Mom was a dressmaker [piece work]. But she had a home cooked dinner on the table every night at 5:30 when Pop got home from work [bus mechanic]. And she made pasta and gravy [red sauce to you northern Europeans] Wed. and Sunday [with homemade pasta on Sunday]. They were happy times. and I doubt Ms. Marcotte would have approved of her. I KNOW she wouldn't have approved of Ms. Marcotte.
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I do all the cooking in my house. My wife's kitchen talents end with the Whirlybird popcorn maker. She's been know to burn popcorn too.
I love the fact that for most of their lives my kids got at least five home-cooked meals every week. There's pizza night and family out to dinner night.
We all sat at the table with not TV or electronics of any kind.
The last few years all I heard was complaints from my oldest son...
"Chicken fricassee again?"
"We had lasagna last week!"
"I am SO TIRED of teriyaki."
We dropped him off at his dorm four weeks ago. He was very excited to go away to college.
He's been texting us almost every night for the last two weeks asking what we're having for dinner.
It's the same fricassee, the same lasagna, the same teriyaki, and he's probably still not crazy about those things, but he misses being at the table.
I grew up in one of those families were life was centered around the kitchen, with comfort foods cooking in the stove and where most every important (and trivial) conversations took place at the dinning room table.
I think that the cultural and emotional aspect of sitting at the table together to eat a home-cooked meal is essential to the well-being of a family.
You guys should try my pot roast BTW.
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I do all the cooking in my house. My wife's kitchen talents end with the Whirlybird popcorn maker. She's been know to burn popcorn too.
I love the fact that for most of their lives my kids got at least five home-cooked meals every week. There's pizza night and family out to dinner night.
We all sat at the table with not TV or electronics of any kind.
The last few years all I heard was complaints from my oldest son...
"Chicken fricassee again?"
"We had lasagna last week!"
"I am SO TIRED of teriyaki."
We dropped him off at his dorm four weeks ago. He was very excited to go away to college.
He's been texting us almost every night for the last two weeks asking what we're having for dinner.
It's the same fricassee, the same lasagna, the same teriyaki, and he's probably still not crazy about those things, but he misses being at the table.
I grew up in one of those families were life was centered around the kitchen, with comfort foods cooking in the stove and where most every important (and trivial) conversations took place at the dinning room table.
I think that the cultural and emotional aspect of sitting at the table together to eat a home-cooked meal is essential to the well-being of a family.
You guys should try my pot roast BTW.
That's such a good posting Luis and I couldn't agree more! :beer:
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My Mom was a dressmaker [piece work]. But she had a home cooked dinner on the table every night at 5:30 when Pop got home from work [bus mechanic]. And she made pasta and gravy [red sauce to you northern Europeans] Wed. and Sunday [with homemade pasta on Sunday]. They were happy times. and I doubt Ms. Marcotte would have approved of her. I KNOW she wouldn't have approved of Ms. Marcotte.
Randazzo's Little Italy in Coral Gables.
Spaghetti with Sunday Gravy.
Rigatoni with neck bones and spare ribs (they only make three servings a day of those, so you better be early and hungry)
Oh, and those meatballs!
There's nothing quite like Sunday gravy.
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That's such a good posting Luis and I couldn't agree more! :beer:
I miss my kid.
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I miss my kid.
I'm sorry.
Life moves fast.
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"I didn't have time to stay home and bake cookies."
Hillary Rodham Clinton
This kind of person represents the beginning of the end.
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I just don't get why this article keeps pushing that fresh produce is SO expensive! It gets expensive if you don't plan to use fresh food before it spoils, but a bag of onions or potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers and whatever is in season will do me a week in varieties of dishes. It takes a little planning, but it doesn't take long to get it going.
My mother was a stay at home mother and she cooked almost every meal we ate - and the foods she cooked for us are the foods I cook when I want to feel a sense of being in my cozy home and feeling the love of my mother. To me, food is love and it is central to any family gathering. It is sustenance and love.
If a person is stressed out by cooking, like Oceander said - those rotisserie chickens are great. Get one of those, a bag of pre-washed salad mix and a bag of frozen vegetable mix. For $12, you have a dinner for 2 adults and 2 or 3 children - that you can throw on the table in ten minutes!
But for me, I love to cook. One of the nicest days I can ever have is to be home cooking a big pot of soup or a roast, with rain spattering on my windows and wind whipping at the leaves outside. HEAVEN!
It's hard to do it every day, but there should be an effort to do it because it means a lot, especially to children. It's important, in my opinion.
I can't say that I "love" to cook, but I love making the kids favorite meals when they come home for a visit. They all live a long, long way from home (and at many times have lived overseas), and they love having their favorite homemade soup the day they get home.
I have also sent cookies all over the world, and actually had a reputation for my cookies in Iraq and Afghanistan. (If anyone ever needs to know how to pack them right so they don't break while being shipped into a war zone, just ask. ^-^ )
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I can't say that I "love" to cook, but I love making the kids favorite meals when they come home for a visit. They all live a long, long way from home (and at many times have lived overseas), and they love having their favorite homemade soup the day they get home.
I have also sent cookies all over the world, and actually had a reputation for my cookies in Iraq and Afghanistan. (If anyone ever needs to know how to pack them right so they don't break while being shipped into a war zone, just ask. ^-^ )
More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered. It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.
:amen:
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More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered. It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.
:amen:
Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove. The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs. It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.
It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered. LOL!
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I just don't get why this article keeps pushing that fresh produce is SO expensive! It gets expensive if you don't plan to use fresh food before it spoils, but a bag of onions or potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers and whatever is in season will do me a week in varieties of dishes. It takes a little planning, but it doesn't take long to get it going.
It's just so *hard* for these poor, single mothers. You can't expect them to manage affordable fresh produce too.
You just don't care about people.
I'll be you're one of those mean, old conservatives I've heard about...
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Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove. The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs. It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.
It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered. LOL!
I too, eventually got to graduate to the adult table! Your memory took me back to staying with my grandparents "up home" as my parents called it, in the summer. Pappaw was a farmer and got up before daylight, I would lay in that warm bed piled high with handmade quilts and listen to him and my grandmother talk while she fixed breakfast. I can still smell the slab bacon and eggs straight out of the coop, and my Mammaw's biscuits which I've never been able to duplicate - of course, it being eastern Kentucky - there was gravy to go on those biscuits.
Pappaw would have the radio on - farm and weather reports with bluegrass music in between. Once Mammaw would coax us out of our cocoon-like beds and into the kitchen, we could usually talk Pappaw into doing a little jig to the music (he was pretty good) before we would devour that wonderful breakfast.
Really wonderful memories.
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More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered. It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.
:amen:
After I had surgery a few years ago, I craved a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, and ordered it for lunch. The nurse who came in afterwards said it's one of the most commonly ordered menu items in the hospital because it reminds patients of their childhoods (in my case, it went back a full 50 years!).
I'm sure that comfort is one of the reasons all four of our kids want to come home to the smell (and taste) of soup. It's the only real "aroma therapy!" ^-^
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Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove. The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs. It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.
It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered. LOL!
There are frequent jokes in our family about the kid's table, and getting to move to the adult table.
Sometimes our youngest daughter and her cousin (same age) kid about wanting to set up the card table and sit at it during Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Eve.
Must have been a tradition in a lot of families!
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Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's still not the ideal. Eating together as a family helps seal the family unit, and should be the goal, if not always workable. (Raised four kids in more than four sports with music lessons, groups, church activities, etc...... it's NOT always workable).
And glad they stuck in the "or gosh, men" line at the end, because the entire article puts all the pressure on women to do all the cooking to reach the end goal.
Doesn't necessarily have to work that way.
Unless all men are stupid. :whistle:
Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me. I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.
That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out! :smokin:
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Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me. I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.
That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out! :smokin:
Stupid men, and the stupid women that love them. :beer:
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I am a better cook than my wife ever was. She used recipes and did okay with that. But she never innovated or fussed with the food while it simmered. I feel you have to attend to food while it cooks; watch and taste, make sure all is going well.
I generally don't use recipes -- I learned basic techniques of cooking from Joy and Julia and dozens of other cooking shows and books, and can whip up a dish from ingredients on hand.
My specialties are Chinese and Italian.
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Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me. I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.
That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out! :smokin:
I kinda have figured that out!
I always said that all it takes to be able to cook well is to be able to read, and to have taste buds.
I believe those qualities are gender neutral. ^-^
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I am a better cook than my wife ever was. She used recipes and did okay with that. But she never innovated or fussed with the food while it simmered. I feel you have to attend to food while it cooks; watch and taste, make sure all is going well.
I generally don't use recipes -- I learned basic techniques of cooking from Joy and Julia and dozens of other cooking shows and books, and can whip up a dish from ingredients on hand.
My specialties are Chinese and Italian.
So when are we all invited over for dinner?