Family Dinners and Working Parents

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overhead shot of multiple appetizer foods on a dinner table

Today’s fun topic: how does your family navigate dinnertime with two parents working outside the home? Are you able to be together for family dinners on weeknights? Who cooks, who plans, who shops? (Or, who picks up takeout?) How early do you start dinner to negotiate bedtime rituals like a bath and storytime? More fun questions about family dinners and working parents:

  • does one parent always work late? both?
  • does one parent have an unpredictable schedule that leaves the other parent guessing?
  • do you have an agreement, like “if you’re not home by 6:30, the kids and I are going to start eating” or “I will call by 6:00 if I think I’m going to be working late tonight”?
  • does one parent come home to eat with the family and then return to the office to continue working?
  • are there certain days of the week when you make sure to have a family dinner?
  • do you have any mealtime “rituals,” like “what was the best/worst part of your day?”?
  • do you make and freeze food ahead of time to make dinnertime easier, or maybe a nanny helps get food ready?
  • how has dinnertime changed since your days pre-kids?

We actually have talked about this a lot, rounding up 5 family dinner strategies better than delivery, discussed eating dinner with your children, how to plan dinner every night, easy weeknight dinners, meal planning apps, repeating recipes vs trying new ones, meal prepping, and the best meal-kit services.

How My Husband and I Share Dinner Duties

I know this is probably a much easier question for me because I work from home, and I’m grateful for that. Still, for my $.02, I tend to plan and shop for dinner (usually via FreshDirect). If we’re thinking far enough ahead I will ask my husband to help with prep such as opening cans, chopping vegetables, etc.

Because I work from home (and especially because I’m on kinda-sorta maternity leave now) I tend to do about 80% of dinner prep — depending on the recipe I’ll move ingredients from the freezer to the refrigerator in the morning, throw food in the crockpot midday, or preheat the oven (and sometimes even toss whatever we’re having into the oven) before my husband comes home. (I also usually try to have all final ingredients either on the counter or at eye level in the freezer or refrigerator.)

My husband will often finish the last 20% of dinner — shredding crockpot chicken, tending pasta or rice while it cooks, sauteing or microwaving vegetables, rinsing salad. I’ve noted before that I’m a bit of a lazy cook; it’s even more rare for us to make a really involved dish now — when we do something like lasagna that requires a lot of assembly and prep it tends to be a joint weekend project.

My husband is usually home by 6 or 6:30; we find that if he comes home much later it’s difficult to have a family dinner with our toddler. (I know some families where the father purposely stays out of the home until the kiddo is down for an early bedtime, so as to avoid that “daddy’s home!” excitement.) If my husband is working late I know about it well in advance — we use a shared Google calendar to keep track of appointments and nights out with friends; I think both of us would consider it rude if we didn’t know about someone missing dinner by at least 10 AM the day of. In terms of rituals, when we’re being good we talk about the best thing that happened to us each day.

As for the kids — my newborn is often fussy during this time period, so we’re lucky if both of us get to sit at the table at the same time. My 3-year-old is served a smaller portion of the same thing we are — if he doesn’t like it (which is often) we always offer to make him scrambled eggs. (We like that he only has one option for what to eat if he rejects dinner.)

When I was in BigLaw pre-kids, I would often eat at the office and come home by 10 or 11 at night. When I was working at the nonprofit, 7 PM was still an early night for me — I would often meet my husband at a restaurant or at home for dinner. Until recently (last fall, I’d say) we often ate at local restaurants with Jack — then he hit a fussy period, and combined with it being so dark, so early, we found it much easier to eat at home.

(Picture credit: Pixabay. Original image: Weekend meals, originally uploaded to Flickr by eltpics.)

Readers, over to you — what does dinnertime look like at your house? How do you share responsibilities (or not) with your partner (or other folks around the house such as nannies) at dinnertime?

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We have two boys, 8 & 10, and between sports, scouts, and two working parents, family dinners are not as frequent as I’d like. We eat together on the weekends and whenever we can, but usually we tag team – one of us does school drop off at 8:15 (and thus is late to get into work at 9:45) and the other does pickup from homework club or relieving the housekeeper/nanny at 6 (and thus leaves work at 4:30). We both commute about an hour from our house, and when you add leaving the office, walking to the parking garage, getting in the car… it’s a little under 90 minutes door-to-door each way.

Right now, we have a housekeeper/nanny to help with the kids after school, cooking & cleaning, but she’s leaving at the end of the summer, and the boys are switching to a school 3 towns over this fall. I work off-campus 2 days a week, and I’m hoping to hire a new housekeeper to help the remaining 3 days, with homework club filling in when we have inevitable schedule conflicts.

We tried to have one of us do the crockpot in the morning, but that only seems to work on the days I work from home. It’s too insane getting out of the house with backpacks, lunch boxes, briefcases, permission slips, homework and getting everyone fed.

Two things that work well for me – 3 Google Calendars (my personal, his work, and the kids) on iCal with my work Outlook calendar so I can see everything, and pre-making breakfasts for me to eat in the car. I either make chia pudding with almond milk and berries, or plain nonfat greek yogurt with stevia, vanilla, and fruit. Then I grab a wasa cracker with almond butter or toss a few flax seeds or nuts on top of the pudding or yogurt. Easy and healthy breakfast for me in the car as I enjoy the rare silence of my commute!

We subscribe to a weekly meal planning feed (there are a lot of options out there). It prepares the weekly grocery list and recipes. You can select your preference- we do low fat, and most of the dinners are supposed to take less than 30 minutes. You can also personalize most things- i.e. how many people, how many dinners, etc. It is a nominal amount for a monthly subscription, but it saves you from having to plan much.

Sometimes we just give up and go out, but now that our LO is a toddler, she is a bit difficult to keep in a high chair for long periods of time.

It was so difficult until I found the weekly meal planning sites. I love that I can go to the store once and each meal is healthy and quick.

I get my hair cut about every 4-6 weeks, and go around 8 pm, after the kids have gone to sleep. Otherwise, I don’t really have the time for any salon services. I do an at-home pedicure about once a month, and if I take the time to soak my feet, buff out the ridges, and remove callouses, it usually lasts me about 3 weeks.

As far as a daily routine, I like to work out and shower at night, so unless I have a big hearing or meeting, I let my hair air dry, and just flatiron in the morning before work … some days look better than others :) I spend about 5 minutes on makeup every morning, and that’s certainly sped up from the pre-kid days! I’m a big fan of these for making it easy to do my eye makeup, along with liner and mascara:

https://www.toofaced.com/c/eye-shadow-palettes/

(The “naked eye” and “boudoir eye” are wonderful, and have lasted forever even with daily use!)

I don’t really do a skincare routine, beyond applying face cream (with spf) and eye cream, body lotion, and using a Clairsonic every few days.

Aaah, remember those fabulous pre-baby days, with bath scrubs and masks and exfoliators?? :) Someday!

No manicures for me, but I try to do an at-home pedicure once a month or so, and that lasts for about 3 weeks.

This post makes me realize that my husband and I need to step it up. We both get home from work around 6-6:30 most days, and whoever’s earlier picks our 2 year old up from my parents’ place, so we’re home with our kiddo any time from 6:30 to 7:30. He usually eats dinner at my parents house, where thankfully my dad is always cooking, so there’s never a shortage of good food for him to eat. We really just read some stories and get him ready for bed once we’re all home. Occasionally my husband can get home early enough that he’ll pick up our son and bring him home to give him dinner, but dinner (for the toddler) at our house is like.. Macaroni with oil and adobo (kiddo demands the adobo!)? Or even, don’t judge, a plate of cut up tomatoes and olives and cheese (we call that one his Mediterranean dinner). Either way, my husband and I are having our grown-up dinner (in front of the tv) (shame) at like 8:30-9:00, once our son is asleep and we’ve figured out what we can throw together quickly, or have delivered (takeout probably twice a week). On weekends we do eat all together, but it’s sort of a random assortment of well thought out dinners, thrown together dinners, and restaurant dinners.

Like I said, I need to step it up. My family always had dinner together every night when I was growing up, and it’s important to me that we do that with my son. It’s just, he was just a little baby, and family dinners were impossible, but now all of a sudden he just turned 2 and we’re still in that sort of crazy, random, survival mode that comes with having a baby. But I don’t think we have to be anymore. I just have to figure out how I’m going to change things up. I’m thinking, prep dinners over the weekends, less chit chat with my parents when I pick up my son (although my mom feels neglected by me enough already!), and.. I feel like I need more to this plan.

Kat, I love this topic! As a new mom, I am really interested in hearing about how people handle these small but important and tough tasks in families with two working parents. Sometime I would love to see a post on people’s post-baby grooming routines. I know I spend much, much, much less time on make-up, hair, nails, skincare, etc, since I had my daughter, and I’d love to hear about how other people prioritize and find time for the things they still do.

We cook on weekends so we can just reheat during the week. We all get home at 7 and try to eat by 7:30. My husband usually does meal prep since my toddler always wants me to play. If I get home before my husband and kid, which is rare, I’ll start cooking.

My husband is going on a several month business trip in a few months. Doing food prep on the weekends requires about a 3 hour block of time, which I won’t have when he is away because my 2 year-old won’t nap on weekends any more. Any suggestions? Meal delivery services are super-expensive ($60-$80 a day in my city), and I really don’t want to eat out or eat frozen food for months. I don’t have the freezer space to precook before he leaves.

We also use the general rule of “if you’re not home by 6:30, dinner is happening without you”. Most of the time I do daycare pick up (~5:30) and my husband is home by 6pm, but often he (or occasionally me) won’t be home until later.

We meal plan and shop on the weekends. That alone has saved us money and a great deal of sanity.

We prep meals in advance when possible, which ranges from chopping to ready to bake to fully cooked for reheating. Weekends are opportunities for lengthy recipes, made in double batches to stock the freezer. We’ve definitely gotten cleverer at getting a nutritious, interesting meal done in 30 minutes over the years.

With kids, we eat earlier and different foods. More bland and routine. We’re foodies at heart, so a couple of times a week we make something for us and another meal (often related ingredients or prep) for the kids – but still eat together. It’s more enjoyable for us and I feel like the kids are at least exposed to wider foods. Sometimes they surprise us and ask for a bite. We do miss the days of fixing ourselves an antipasto plate and pouring a glass of wine to enjoy while making a meal together. Meal time just isn’t as leisurely as it used to be.

We have a few “anytime” foods – milk, frozen peas, baby carrots and 100% whole wheat bread. My kids are allowed to eat any of those at any time (unless a meal is being served shortly, like the next 30-60 minutes). This way we don’t worry about what they eat/won’t eat/going to bed hungry etc. If they are hungry, they can eat, but they can’t have whatever they want.

Out of interest, how do people handle meal choices for toddlers? Our 2-year-old isn’t much of an eater on the best of days (but he’s a great sleeper! I heard somebody say once that every kid is good at one of them) :)

I serve our 2-year-old smaller portions of whatever we’re eating, but some nights he’ll eat absolutely nothing. He can be pretty wiped out at the end of a long day at daycare, and I think it has less to do with what’s being served, and more to do with just being “done.” I don’t want to start a pattern of being a short order cook (especially if he’s likely to reject the second thing I serve him!) but I also want him to, you know, EAT SOMETHING.

What do other people do?

DH and I are lucky to both have pretty predictable schedules that get us home by 5-5:30. One of us cooks while the other hangs out with the little guy, depending on who has more energy that day. During the ~50% of weeks that I’m on top of things (this week! yay!), I make a meal plan of dinners with <30 min active prep time and go/send DH shopping with a grocery list. We always try to make enough for leftovers, which live in little individual-serving pyrex containers in my fridge so they can be takenfor lunch or rescue dinner another night.

If I don't have a plan, we end up "foraging." I always have frozen vegetables, sandwich fixings and Bisquick for pancakes/waffles if all else fails. Other go-to meals with things I always have on hand: black bean & cheese quesadillas (or fajitas if we also have peppers and onions). Pasta+Prego sauce. Canned/pouched tuna + noodles + frozen peas + cream of whatever soup = casserole. Or we order pizza or run for take-out, but I try to limit that to a few times a month.

We have dinner much earlier than pre-kid, cook much less involved/exciting recipes, and drink much less wine. Bedtime is 8, and bath+story is at least a half hour, so now we usually eat around 6 – 6:30 instead of 9. We still go out to eat a few times a month, and we go early for that too. The service is faster, fellow diners are mostly families and are less likely to get angry about a few flung napkins or shrieks, and it just works out much better in every possible way.

When I was little, we had a calendar of dinner conversation topics… I just unsuccessfully tried to search for something similar, but it was a tear-off calendar that had random factoids, questions, "this day in history," etc. Not something I do wih my unintelligible toddler, but I'll make a more concerted effort to find one in a few years. It was fun, and it kept things from stagnating after "how was your day?".

I am sure this has been discussed a number of times on the main site, but does anyone have favorite slow cooker recipes they can share? I just got one in anticipation of wanting/needing to eat at home more once the babies arrive (any day now). I had good results with pulled pork, but am overwhelmed with the sheer volume of recipes out there, especially as most seem more suited to cold-weather

This is the one thing we don’t outsource-yet. I’m thinking about one of these food services that prepares meals weekly that we just pop in the oven. DH gets home at 4, but he does all of the baby care (feeding, entertaining, bathing, prepping bottles and food for the next day, washing bottles, etc.) He still manages to have dinner waiting on me sometimes, which always surprises and impresses me. But I usually end up eating alone when I get home at 7, which depresses me.

For the first two years as parents, we didn’t really stress weeknight family dinners. It’s survival mode during that time and we really just focused on getting through it. Our child now is 4 and can handle waiting a bit longer to eat. Ideally, our weeks look something like this. I meal plan and grocery shop on the weekend. If I am feeling ambitious, I will cook something like spaghetti sauce or a stew that I can portion out and freeze for those really busy weeks. Sunday dinner is reserved for time-consuming recipes and many times, we also take time to grill/cook extra protein for the week. Weeknights, DH generally does school pickup (5:30+), I get home 6-6:30 and star immediately on dinner (sometimes DH has already started what he knows). We eat around 6:30 -7 and then move to the bedtime routine with a goal of 8 pm lights-out. Dinners during the week are pretty simple. We are flexible about grabbing dinner out/ takeout one weeknight a week. Also, we still do the occasional adult dinner after the kid is in bed. Having at least three meals planned out and shopped for makes the weeks much easier.

If everyone is eating together, we try to all eat the same thing. We are more inclined to offer another food (fruit, cheese, yogurt) if he is still hungry after eating his food and doesn’t want a second helping than we are when he is just being picky. There is at least one kid-approved component to the meal so we know he isn’t going to starve. Also, he eats well the rest of the day so I don’t stress if there if dinner is really light.

We make an effort to be home for dinner and give each other as much notice as possible for meetings. Even if we miss dinner, we sometimes can still catch bedtime. As he has gotten older, our child doesn’t get quite as over-stimulated when he sees us so we don’t have to delay coming home until after bedtime (those days are rough).

I am happy to see this post and hope to hear more feedback – this is the type of post that makes me a little sad to have separate from the regular Corpor*tte site however, since it will get fewer responses here. I am 6 months pregnant with our first child, and right now I am primarily in charge of meals, as my husband fails to see the necessity in meal planning, resulting in a lot of take-out/restaurants if I don’t. That will need to even out once the baby is here though – maybe I can still do the planning but he can do more of the grocery shopping or actual cooking (for meals we use recipes for)? We are planning on buying a small standalone freezer, which hopefully will help facilitate more freeze-ahead cooking, but I know it will be a big challenge and require us to change our habits once baby comes.

This is a great article (as always) Kat. My husband and I (both attorneys) work full time and who would have thought preparing dinner would be one of the most stressful things on my agenda? I hate shopping, especially food shopping, and order everything possible online. Add to that the complication that I leave my house at about 5:30am (yes) and sometimes don’t get home until 9:00pm (but usually around 6:00pm). I also have a house full of picky eaters (especially my husband), an au pair, and usually some random friends who often drop in for dinner. I actually love to cook, so I don’t mind the headache of making things myself, and it is a top priority for me to have dinner with my family most nights of the week. Here’s how I do it. I plan all of the menus for the week on my iphone (and have over time created a massive spreadsheet with all of my menus from prior weeks in case i get stuck for inspiration). I then order groceries online (from either peapod.com or amazon.com’s subscribe and save store, it’s amazing if you’ve never tried it).

My girls are 8 and 11 and so for the last 11 years I have been doing what I call “psycho sundays” where I cook or assemble all dinners for the week on Sunday afternoon. I put everything into labeled containers so that all my girls, husband or babysitter need to do is stick it in the microwave. Depending on what I’m making that week, I almost always make double batches for the freezer to save time down the road on really hectic weekends. It is a ton of work, but I find cooking relaxing, my girls help me, and I’m able to go about my week in peace knowing that dinner is taken care of.