Family dinners help teens? Not so much, says new study

The perceived benefits of family dinners on teens may not be either as strong or as lasting after controlling for other factors, according to a new study.

"There seems to be something unique about the family dinner, but it’s just less of an effect than prior studies have found," Ann Meier, one of the new study’s co-authors and an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, told the MinnPost Wednesday.

"No one had really tested this very rigorously before," she added.

Despite the findings of this study, Meier said that families should still try to have sit-down meals together. But, she added, parents who can’t pull off the family meal on a regular basis shouldn’t feel guilty.

Family meals "may be a nice kind of ritual context for good parenting to happen," she said, but such parenting "can happen in other ways, in other venues."

'Family meals do matter," she added, "but just a lot less than previously reported."

The large new study, published this week in the Journal of Marriage and Family, used data from a sample of 18,000 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, a national school-based survey of adolescent behavior that was launched in 1994.

Read more details about the study here: http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/05/family-dinner-not-important-once-thought