I Hate Dinner

I spent an entire therapy session talking about dinner. About how much I hate it. I hate planning for it, shopping for it, cooking it, fighting with the kids to eat it, and cleaning it up.

She told me to stop putting so much emphasis on dinner. Get take out, make easier dinners, ask for help from my husband (even though he puts in his fair share of cooking, the rest usually falls to me).

While I recapped this conversation to my husband, he asked me who is putting this dinner pressure on me. 

My defensive reaction was to almost say it was him. He comes from a family that had a stay at home mom who could be a gourmet chef if she wanted a job. She prides herself on the hot delicious meal she always had ready every night for her family. Knowing what I know now about cooking for a family, that’s quite an accomplishment. 

But he wasn’t putting the pressure on me, he never made me feel in charge of the dinner realm.

So I responded that it was “society” putting the pressure on me. But it’s more so an invisible expectation and mom guilt. Moms are supposed to have dinner planned and cooked. It’s in the job description, isn’t it? 

Please consider this my formal resignation as family chef.

Have any conversation with an adult from a couple generations previous to yours, they’ll say things like, 

“no one sits down to a family dinner anymore” or “don’t cook your kids a separate me from yours, they need to eat what you eat”.

Thinking back to my childhood, both of my parents worked full time and then came home to three kids and an evening to-do list. Dinner being top priority. God bless my mother, but she was not the gourmet chef. Often times I was forced to clean my plate and even though I hated the meal. I would choke the food down with a tall glass of milk. Milk that, if I didn’t finish it all, would sit on the table, becoming room temperature and need to be drank before going to bed.

Maybe that’s where my hatred of dinner began. 

We rarely went out to eat because money was tight. So it was usually something from home that wasn’t the best and forced. I don’t remember having lively conversations around the dinner table, maybe we did. But if I don’t remember, then is it possible that it didn’t have a lasting effect on me?

I don’t want to put my kids through the same dinner time grief that I went through as a kid. 

So maybe I…don’t?

Maybe this is an example of breaking generational cycles and now is my chance to build something that works for me.

Maybe I shouldn’t care if they don’t want what I planned for dinner and I let them eat mac and cheese instead. 

Maybe I should look for ways to make dinner enjoyable for me and then the rest will follow. If I’m happy, they are happy.

I hate dinner. I have no answers, or ideas to make it better. If you do, please email me.