The Surprising Power Of Family Meals

How often does a book come along that will change your life? The Surprising Power of Family Meals will. Digesting its information and implementing even a few of its helpful suggestions will benefit every member of your family in deep and lasting ways. The Surprising Power of Family Meals is the first book to take a complete look at a ritual so common it flies beneath our radar screens. Virtually universal a generation ago, family supper has undergone a striking transformation. No longer honored by society as a time of day that must be set aside, some families see it as little more than a quaint relic. But others are beginning to recognize it as a lifeline - a way to connect with their loved ones on a regular basis and to get more enjoyment out of family life. The Surprising Power of Family Meals presents stories, studies, and arguments from the fields of psychology, education, nutrition, family therapy, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and religion. It provides examples of families and communities around North America responding creatively to the pressures of a 24/7 world to incorporate memories of their own childhood meals and to share strategies for taking what is best from our past and transforming it to meet current needs.

The facts are on the table. Dinnertime is truly the most important hour in a day that a family can spend together. Focusing on the family meal, this book will help strengthen families by showing them how to reclaim this important time in order to build relationships, draw closer to one another, and restore a sense of peace in their homes. Millions of parents in America can picture the kind of home life they want but don’t know how to make it a reality. The Hour That Matters Most will help readers strengthen and transform their own families—specifically around the dinner table.

Once only a topic among women in the private sphere, motherhood and mothering have become important intellectual topics across academic disciplines. Even so, no book has yet devoted a sustained look at how exploring mothering rhetorics – the rhetorics of reproduction (rhetorics about the reproductive function of women/mothers) and reproducing rhetorics (the rhetorical reproduction of ideological systems and logics of contemporary culture) expand our understanding of mothering, motherhood, communication, and gender. Mothering Rhetorics begins to fill this gap for scholars and teachers interested in the study of mothering rhetorics in their historical and contemporary permutations. The contributions explore the racialized rhetorical contexts of maternity; how fixing food is thought to fix families, while also regulating maternal activities and identity; how Black female breastfeeding activists resisted the exploitation of African-American mothers in Detroit; how women in pink-collar occupations both adhere to and challenge maternity leave discourses by rhetorically positioning their leaves as time off and (dis)ability; identifying verbal and nonverbal shaming practices related to unwed motherhood during the mid-twentieth century; and redefining alternative postpartum placenta practices. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s Studies in Communication.

This first-ever biography on Yiddish is “a charming and highly readable history of the language” that “recreates the sound of a world . . . gone forever” (The Washington Post) For a thousand years Yiddish, was the glue that held a people together. Through the intimacies of daily use, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, their increasingly far-flung relations. In it they produced one of the world’s most richly human cultures. Impoverished and disenfranchised in the eyes of the world, Yiddish-speakers created their own alternate reality—wealthy in appreciation of the varieties of human behavior, spendthrift in humor, brilliantly inventive in maintaining and strengthening community. For a people of exile, the language took the place of a nation. The written and spoken word formed the Yiddishland that never came to be. Words were army, university, city-state, territory. They were a people’s home. The tale, which has never before been told, is nothing short of miraculous—the saving of a people through speech. It ranges far beyond Europe, from North America to Israel to the Russian-Chinese border, and from the end of the first millennium to the present day. This book requires no previous knowledge of Yiddish or of Jewish history—just a curious mind and an open heart.

Part cookbook, part reflection on the changing role of dinner in our culture and part celebration of family and community—that's what you'll find in Whatever Happened to Dinner? by Melodie M. Davis. It's a book that invites people to eat together, even as it acknowledges the challenges of living in a culture that often pulls us apart. "This book attempts to be an honest appraisal of family meal customs of the past while sending a clear invitation to reexamine our lifestyles of thrashing about madly in relentless activity. It is a road map—or at least ideas—for how to manage regular family mealtimes, along with simple quick recipes and more complicated dishes. It is an examination of the role food and mealtime play in the family and a reminder of how God gave us the good gift of food." —Melodie M. Davis "Whatever Happened to Dinner? will be a great help and comfort to parents who are looking to make their family mealtimes more satisfying, more regular, more meaningful, more tasty." —Miriam Weinstein, author of The Surprising Power of Family Meals "The author loads the book with helpful suggestions and illustrations from life and Scripture, and with practical ideas as to how it can be done today. The family meal can still be the family's finest hour." —John M. Drescher, author of Seven Things Children Need "In her creative style, Melodie Davis calls us to meaningful family times as well as to community hospitality . . . come to dinner, one and all." —Myron S. Augsburger, president emeritus of Eastern Mennonite University "A real eye-opener to the many positive influences acquired by sharing at family mealtimes." —Esther H. Shank, author of Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets Read the complete list of endorsements Read the press release about the book Read an interview with the author Read the foreword by Martin Marty Learn more about the author Table of Contents Benefits of Eating Together Free downloadable study guide available here. Join the Hang on to dinner! Facebook group.

To progress successfully through all of their stages of development, children need to grow up in good communities. Good communities do not occur without viable, productive families. In Restoring Power to Parents and Places, author Richard Kordesh makes a compelling call for the productive familys renewal and provides creative steps for parents, professionals, and policymakers to take to strengthen communities around all children. Kordeshs experiences as a planner, professor, and father, have taught him that productive families are vitally important to the creation of good communities around children. He details historically, and with contemporary examples, the forces in our society that place stresses on families in all sectors. Restoring Power to Parents and Places presents a pointed critique of economic and political forces that have harmed families, but it also offers practical suggestions for action by parents, community leaders, community development and planning professionals, and governments at the local, state, and federal levels. Restoring Power to Parents and Places celebrates the productive potentials of a familys habitat, and it provides tools for empowering familiesgiving them more time and ability to raise their children.

The meal is the key eating occasion, yet professionals and researchers frequently focus on single food products, rather than the combinations of foods and the context in which they are consumed. Research on meals is also carried out in a wide range of fields and the different disciplines do not always benefit from each others’ expertise. This important collection presents contributions on meals from many perspectives, using different methods, and focusing on the different elements involved. Two introductory chapters in part one summarise the key findings in Dimensions of the Meal, the first book to bring an interdisciplinary perspective to meals, and introduce the current publication by reviewing the key topics discussed in the following chapters. Parts two to four then consider how meals are defined, studied and taught. Major considerations include eating socially and eating alone, the influence of gender, and the different situations of home, restaurant and institutional settings. Part five reviews meals worldwide, with chapters on Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and Thai meals, among others. The final parts discuss meals from further perspectives, including those of the chef, product developer and meal setting designer. With its distinguished editor and international team of contributors, Meals in science and practice is an informative and diverse reference for both professionals and academic researchers interested in food from disciplines such as food product development, food service, nutrition, dietetics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, public health, medicine and marketing. Summarises key findings in dimensions of the meal Considers how meals are defined, studied and taught, including eating alone and socially and the influence of gender Reviews the meaning of meals in different cultures

This textbook equips students with the ability to analyze and think critically about contemporary food topics. A thorough introduction to the sociology of food and eating, the book also acts as a primer to the discipline of sociology more generally. Chapters start with a 'common sense' assumption about food which students frequently encounter in their own lives or in the mass media. Topics include family meals, ethnic cuisines, cooking skills and convenience foods, eating out, food waste, and 'overpackaging'. Anne Murcott shows how systematic academic research approaches can allow students to move beyond 'conventional wisdoms' to examine sociological perspectives on food and eating. Key sociological concerns such as class, gender, age, ethnicity, power and identity are also introduced, accompanied by a wide range of examples from around the globe. By the end, readers will be able to think more critically and to apply sociological approaches to questions about food and society. Introducing the Sociology of Food and Eating is an essential introductory textbook for students in sociology and food studies. It provides readers with a solid basis for success in their studies - and with a new understanding of their own attitudes to food and eating.