Cause and Effect of the Family Dinner

Heard a great story on NPR the other day, deconstructing research about the "effects" of the family dinner on children (Thursday, February 7).

Reporter Alix Spiegel laid out the findings of the research we've all heard about in the media: that having dinner regularly with family protects teens from getting into drugs, alcohol, and early sex, that it leads to earlier reading in young kids, and so on. Having grown up having dinner with my family, and replicating it myself in my own household for the most part, I've hoped that this is true, but wondered how it worked exactly.

Well, others wondered, too, and some have done additional research. And it turns out that it's not dinner itself that "causes" these good effects. It's actually more of a correlation.

Sometimes it's the conversation the families have -- asking each other with genuine interest how the day was, in the case of the teen effects, or using the time to tell stories and explain words and concepts, in the case of effects on younger kids' reading.

The fact that a family can be organized enough to get dinner together on a regular basis in the first place was key as well. The reporter summarized this point to one of the experts by saying, more or less: So a dysfunctional family would stop being a dysfunctional family if they could organize a family dinner? And the expert had to agree that, yes, that was true.

Repeat after me: Correlation is not causation.