Family Dinners Cook Up Responsible Teens Podcast

Miriam G., a water quality and pollution consultant in San Francisco, works 30 hours a week and is the parent of two sons, ages 12 and 16. “Family dinners are the glue that keeps our family close when the rest of our lives are so crazy,” she says. “My boys are very active, with sports, music, and religious school. However, dinnertime is sacred,” Miriam adds, “so between me and my husband, we manage to get the kids home and to prepare a decent meal.”

Miriam remembers similar evenings from her own childhood. “I believe that most of the best learning about life and how to navigate through it has been imparted at our family table; at the dinner table parents have time to talk, to teach, and more importantly, to listen.”

Research Shows Dinner Offers More Than Nutrition

More than just helping families communicate more, it turns out that one of the best ways to help teenagers avoid risky behaviors is as simple as sitting down to dinner together. For more than a decade, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University has been conducting research on the importance of family dinners.

CASA’s most recent report — The Importance of Family Dinners III — found that teens who have two or fewer family dinners per week are more than twice as likely to have tried cigarettes, one-and-a-half times likelier to have tried alcohol, and twice as likely to have sampled marijuana.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page

Issue: September 2007