want kids to eat their broccoli, but
nobody serves it in the mornings.”
Kids like the pancakes or French
toast, and parents are delighted to
smuggle in some fruit. Breakfasts
are also easier to prepare. This ob-
viates a problem raised by a 2014
study from North Carolina, which
suggested that the benefits of the
home-cooked family meal might
be outweighed by the pressure
providing such a meal puts on par-
ents, usually women. Breakfast of-
fers the option of a more equitable
sharing of the load, since techni-
cally children can also be more in-
volved in the preparation, which
usually means they’re also more
likely to eat.
Delicious food is one of life’s
great pleasures, but—don’t read
this part, Gordon
Ramsay—it is not the
point of the family
meal. That ritual is
much more about the
conversation. And on
this front, breakfast
often wins. As all
parents know, the
only answer to the
dinnertime question,
What did you do
today? that a child
ever gives is, Nothing. Breakfast
conversations, on the other hand,
are much harder to wriggle out of.
“You can ask things at breakfast
that you can’t ask at dinner, like,
What are you looking forward to
today?” says Fishel. “Is there a
part of the day that you’re worried
about? Can we help you feel more
confident? What’s the first thing
you thought about when you woke
up this morning? Did you have
any dreams last night?” (Note to
readers: probably best not to ask
them all at once.)
Some scholarship suggests
that people are often better to
be around in the morning, right
after they’ve gotten some rest
and before the day has ground
them down—and not just the so-
called morning people. Human
willpower gets a little top-up
while we sleep; we’re a little moreTheView Foodsunny-side up. This is the Mac-
Kinnon family experience. “I
think my kids are fresher in the
morning,” Meghan MacKinnon
says. “Our breakfasts are more
calm and more fun because the
kids aren’t tired and they’re not
thinking about the homework
they have to do. The grumpiness
hasn’t kicked in.” They also find
that as they look ahead to the day,
they remember events—that it is
school picture day and maybe a
different T-shirt would be better,
for example— that they would not
have thought of the night before.all of thiS is fine in theory,
except for those creatures known
as teenagers. The notoriously
nocturnal adolescent of our
species would gladly
skip a gourmet breakfast
in bed if it meant an
extra five minutes with
their eyes shut. A 2013
study of middle and high
school students from
Minneapolis found that
on average, adolescents
reported having family
breakfasts 1.5 times and
family dinners 4.1 times
in the past week. But
other studies have found that,
despite their unwillingness to
get out of bed on time, and their
perception that they were too
busy for an early meal with their
family, most teenagers said they
enjoyed the family breakfast—
even if they didn’t want to talk to
their parents during it. In March,
a University of Missouri study of
more than 12,000 students across
300 schools in the U.S. found that
adolescents who consistently ate
breakfasts with their families had
a better body image.
Dinner is not in any danger
of being replaced in the family-
ritual pantheon. Nor should it
be. But many families are finding
that breakfast is a bit like an egg-
white omelet; it’s not as good as
the original, heartier dish, but it’s
better than nothing and probably
won’t kill them. ‘The culinary
choices for
breakfast
tend to
inspire less
grumbling.’
LAURA VANDERKAM,
time-management
expert and mother
of fourAfter eating a bowl with 2% milk,
at least half of adults had a lower desire
to eat than before breakfast for 3 1/2 hours.