Dining Rooms, RIP?

A plea for eating together

I confess that my particular sensibilities include an unabashed affection for dining rooms. 

So, with great dismay and a healthy dose of “it’s so obvious, why didn’t I think of this before?” I read “Why Dining Rooms Are Disappearing From American Homes” in The Atlantic. 

The article notes the trend towards large, open spaces that may (or may not) include room for a dining table. 

The apex predator of the dining room is the “great room”—a combined living room and kitchen, bridged by an open dining space. “It’s not that Americans don’t want dining rooms. It’s that they want something else, and that takes up space,” explains Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Center for Building in North America, a nonprofit that advocates for building-code reform. “In a single-family home, that’s a great room. And so that’s what developers build.”

According to surveys in 2015 and 2016 by the National Association of Home Builders, 86 percent of households want a combined kitchen and dining room—a preference accommodated by only 75 percent of new homes. If anything, the classic dining room isn’t dying fast enough for most people’s taste.

And then there are smaller spaces, like apartments. Many have nowhere more conducive to group eating than a kitchen island. Bobby Fijan, a real-estate developer and apparent “floor-plan expert,” explained the trade-offs to The Atlantic:  “The reason the dining room is disappearing is that we are allocating [our] limited space to bedrooms and walk-in closets.” 

Clothes over camaraderie. A king-size bed over meals fit for a king. 

The article has some interesting historical flourishes, noting the rise of dining rooms among upper-middle-class households early in the previous century: “Many American homes from that era were designed around creating a separate sphere for ‘the help,’ with sectioned-off kitchens, laundry rooms, and servants’ quarters.” The article also noted gender roles in less affluent households: Kitchen work was walled off for women, and the dining room was a more male domain. 

But the piece’s thrust is in the present. It notes building codes that limit space and thus rooms dedicated to dining. It weaves in the prevalence of loneliness in our current culture, which means fewer group meals (“nearly half the time we spend eating is spent in isolation”). It explains how housing preferences, driven by economic forces, prioritize maximizing personal space among roommates.

The causes are interesting, but I am more concerned about the effects. 

Many of my happiest moments in life, the ones I can recall in vivid detail, occurred around dining tables laden with food and surrounded by well-known faces — many now long gone. The dining room was a place to enter something special, to leave behind the TV and the comfortable couches. It was a place to recognize and be thankful for the food we had to eat and the company we could keep. And “sit up, no slouching.”

I was fortunate to know all four of my grandparents well, the first passing away when I was 18 years old. If you ask me to close my eyes now and try to picture them, the image I summon likely would be of them sitting around a dining room table — in their homes or those of my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

I don’t only remember the meals. There was a production around the countless brunches, lunches, and dinners: “Elliot, can you help bring up the folding chairs?” “Where should I put the salad?” “Can you rinse the dishes?” There were doorways to pass through from spaces for eating to spaces for preparing. There was order and expectations, evolving roles and responsibilities, all as some of us grew up and others aged. 

Most of my grandparents had been born into some level of poverty, certainly by comparison to the relative comfort they were able to enjoy later in life. All knew the ravages of The Great Depression and the rationing of World War II. Some came from unhappy households, some from formal ones. Others grew up in warm, loving environments. But they all built families that cherished gathering together. 

Time in the dining room was sacred. And the example they set endures. Even when the remnants of the family gather now, it’s often around a table in one of our houses. 

I think about the way we live today. Busy schedules often make aligning for dinner difficult. The distance from siblings, parents, and extended family scattered across the continent or beyond makes large gatherings less frequent. And so much of modern life is focused inward on our screens. We frequently don’t communicate with those with whom we share physical space, and when we finally do, it’s often via text. 

And yet, something special emerges when we find ways to break through, like an impromptu dinner with friends, even if we bring in the food. It’s even okay if the kids leave the table (yes, you may be excused) to play video games or gossip with their friends in bedrooms with doors closed. Sometimes the dining room is best left to the adults at the end of the meal in any case. When the plates are cleared, there is often that calming interlude before the dessert. Who hasn’t used this time to discuss (and solve?) the world’s problems?

For me, the debate over dining rooms isn’t academic. My wife and I have considered ways to remodel our home around our dated kitchen. Right now, we have a separate dining room. The house was built in the 1940s. None of the space is all that big, and many have counseled us on what we could gain if we “opened things up.” 

But Malia shares my love for a dining space. We often use it when just eating as a family of four. Something a little more special than the small table in the kitchen. Sometimes the girls don’t even have to be asked to put out the placemats, and they even put the forks on the correct side. Cleaning up is still a work in progress. 

Whatever we end up doing with the space, we intend to keep our walls. 

Even in our tiny New York City apartment years ago, we sacrificed “hang out space” for a small dining room table. I will never forget friends and family squeezed around it and the eventual need for a high chair with the additions to our family. 

I’m not good at remembering what year something took place, but I can mark time by who was sitting around the various dining room tables. 

I know that having enough space for a table or even a dining room is an unaffordable luxury for many. I see the concern about living space of any kind among younger generations. It pains me because everyone should be able to feel like they have a place to gather, even if it’s small. 

Although I am apparently in a distinct minority, I wish everyone had a dining room, whether they wanted one or not. Because maybe if we all had it we’d all remember how to use it.

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