Family Dinners Are Bullshit

I am long overdue for a non-political rant.  I don't post a hell of a lot of original material over here these days because I have a lot going on, and it is even less so with it being summer break.  However, there was something on Facebook that just set me off and caused me to write a screed on Word for any future memoirs I may end up publishing.

Note who is doing the "serving" of the dinner.  Heaven forbid the man ever does a goddamned thing.

The post on Facebook had something to do with how wonderful family dinners together supposedly are. As I look back on my life, there are many things I don’t have much in the way of fond memories. One thing has to do with having the family at the dinner table eating. Oh, for fuck’s sakes, talk about nostalgia going apeshit. People have been so brainwashed by watching 1950s sitcoms like Father Knows Best when the families invariably ate together after saying grace and all that bullshit, and people got the idea families in the real world were supposed to emulate it.   The reality of the situation is the family dinners together on these shows were a means to further the plot; in other words, it was a plot device.  It wasn't truly designed to be emulated. All in the Family almost always employed the family dinner as a way to further the plot, as did Dallas.  It was a cheap and easy way for producers to further plot lines. However, Americans way overthought this "family dinners together" nonsense as meaning something far more profound than it was and is.  As I was doing a web search, I saw there were absurd claims about how “wonderful” family dinners together are, that it helps children learn and they commit fewer crimes and all kinds of bullshit.

It is pretty obvious what is motivating this bullshit, and that is to guilt women into going back into the home and cook and clean for their families instead of being people with their own interests, hopes, and dreams.  It is to try and shove a servant-type mentality on women, who have very little time for themselves anymore if they are foolish enough to try and "balance" family and "career" and the rest of the bullshit.  As a kid, I fucking hated eating with the family because of the constant bitching and moaning over politics, over the business, or over the food. It sure as fuck wasn’t any motivator for anything positive. When I got old enough, I started bringing my dinner into my room and later just fixed my own meals and didn’t bother with it anymore. I just got fed up. I was tired of being body shamed by Ma, I was tired of the constant bitchery that went on in that house.

The low point of my youth was in 1975, when my brother and my dad got into an argument over pork chops.  My dad lost his temper, went to his bedroom, got a loaded rifle out from under the bed, and went after my brother, who fled the house, never to return.  It was a miracle a homicide didn't occur that night.

About the only time dinners were tolerable is when the adult “children” came over for holidays. Then it was fine. Outside of that, it was pure misery.

Only after I moved away to Reno and came up occasionally did I do much eating with the family. Mostly I ate out when I visited.

Today, the dinners out are fine, and the occasional get-togethers with the relatives are fun. They were never that when Ma and Pa were alive  and when they demonstrated their pathological relationship in front of the kids.

People can keep that type of nostalgia; I can live without it.