Is this an English thing?

[HereForTheLineEyes]

The only people I have ever come across who make 2 different dinners a night (one at 5ish for DC and one at 8/9pm for the parents) are English.

Do you do this or know anyone who does? Each to their own, but shopping for, prepping, cooking, serving up and cleaning away 2 dinners a night seems like madness to me.

I'm objecting to the relating of poor eating habits to kids eating at separate times to their parents. It is not ideal and most families would I'm sure prefer to eat together but surely you just realise that most people aren't lucky enough to work from home every day?!

The last thread similar to this I saw though had people screaming racism and the thread got pulled. So be careful!

*mad dinner related racism.

The friend I'm closest to who does 2 separate meals IRL does think it's ideal chilli. Her kids are 7, so not toddlers or anything, but she likes having the time with her DH every evening and views it as a little "date". I didn't say it was an inferior way of eating, just more labour intensive to do everything twice. I'm sure some people are doing it out of necessity and some out of choice.

I don't think anyone has mentioned poor eating habits. I haven't.

I don't understand why people wait for their spouses to come home to 'eat together'. I just eat it when it's ready and leave his there. He gets it when he comes in.

Yep, we do- every day!

Children eat about 5.30pm along with their dads penultimate meal, then we eat about 7.30/8pm- his last meal!

Except a Sunday when we usuall all have a big meal together early afternoon.

No, never, we always have eaten together at 6.30/7 even when they were toddlers. Never have understood why anyone would make two meals (of dh is running late I put his on a plate in the microwave!)

Yeah the heat up a plate later does seem less hassle to me than cooking twice, and maybe cheaper in some cases too? Economies of scale?

Ive never done that, never seen it done in my home country and have always though people were crazy to do so.

I DID follow the English customs by having my dcs eat around 5.30pm instead of later. We just ate together, the same thing for everyone.

No way I was going to do two meals etc...
Plus preparing a meal for the children assumes that children dint eat the searching than adults, which, imo, pave the way to ‘difficult to feed’ children amd then teens.

Not everything is nice when heated up in the microwave. Baked chicken? Stir fry? Steak? Ew.

In my experience the two dinners thing is a commuting thing. Also my experience is that hour+ commutes are more common in the SE of England.
Where I live now people are home 20-30minutes after clocking off so much easier to eat together.

Also for me, dinner is the one time in the day where we are sat at the table and we can share our days. It’s the one time where everyone is there and not busy with . That’s one place where relationships are built.

THIS is just as important for me than the Not cooking two meals.

And much more important than a ‘date mea’ (everyday isn’t a date for me) eaten at 8.30pm when everyone is tired and just dreams of going to bed (well I was when my two dcs were pre schoolers).
Esp when it then means your u need to tidy up the kitchen etc,.. basically you haven’t stopped befor 9.30pm at best and don’t have any time at all to relax in the evening.

My children eat the same kind of food as we do, just not necessarily the same thing on the same day- they hate 'beige food'.

I can't eat dinner so early as I would snack all evening 😬 and my DH eats so many meals that we have to fit them all in!

Children are hungry by 5.30 so that's when they eat. We don't mind cooking so many times at all- used to it!

When we were kids we ate as a family between 5.30 and 6.00 pm - Dad got home from work at 5.15, Mum finished at 3.30pm, so could have dinner ready by 5.30pm.

DH and I have always eaten at about 8pm, too late for small children (although they seem to manage OK in Spain, Italy and SE Asia!), so we did do kids tea at 6pm - or at least I did, DH never gets home until 7pm at earliest, then we ate later. Far more civilised, and we got to spend some time together without constant interruption.

We ate together on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

In my experience the two dinners thing is a commuting thing.

I’m in the North, no commute to talk about.
People would often look horrified at the idea that we were eating with our children. Even when they had reached primary age.
The done thing was ‘a light meal because they’ve already had a cooked meal at school, you know. At about 5.30pm because they are starving. Adults have their meal later on to have some peace and quiet’

Well I'm going to bow out now. As I said I can see my assumptions were incorrect, and that's all I wanted to know. I don't want get sucked into a debate about the pros and cons. Each to their own.

Btw children aren’t starving at 5.30pm IF they have a proper lunch (so NOT a school dinner) and a snack at 3.30pm when they are out of school.
That’s what they do in France, Spain etc etc. And it works.

OP- I don't think you've offended anyone? I certainly don't mind the assumption- I know plenty of people who eat separately! I'm English, I see it as being fairly common.
I also know people who eat with their children and that works for their families.

I don't want to say anything negative about two dinners and then be called racist .

I love the English

MyBrexit

I suppose all children are different. Mine take a huge lunch, have a snack after school and are still ready for dinner at 5.30pm. Extremely active so that may be why.

OP maybe your question should have been
Is it a british thing rather than English?
And are other COUNTRIES doing that too? (As in not the U.K.)

I think you wouod have git a different answer there...

I don't want to say anything negative about two dinners and then be called racist

Anyone who would consider it racist needs to worry about much more important things!

Sometimes we do this, sometimes we don’t. A lot of what we eat would be vile reheated in the microwave for whoever is in late (microwaved steak anyone?). We try and eat all together at 6ish (no way I could eat a main meal at 5, I don’t have lunch until around 2-3pm!), but sometimes the DC eat earlier and DH and I eat later.

Don’t do it here, I ate at the same time as our children, if their dad was home he’d eat too. If not his dinner would be plated up and he’d eat later ( worked vise versa also). Interestingly my sister did the children’s dinner and later adult dinner thing, think growing up it went the way I did it.

Do know a family (Irish incidently) who would wait until the dad was home, and he’d cooked dinner, before anyone ate. Which was about 8pm. Only discovered this because his mum told me he was ‘impressed’ we ate at 6 when he usually started to feel hungry. Odd phrasing, but they were quite an ‘eccentric’ family!