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There is a change that is taking place in America today, and it is defined by family mealtime.

While the 1950's version of the Nuclear Family is in the distant past within society there remains an underlying nostalgia for the days when kids would arrive home from school to find mom in the kitchen frying supper, with fresh baked bread cooling on the counter - the entire home filled with the aroma of home cooked food and filled with comforting warmth. Children felt safe because someone was always home with them.

Some might say that the 60's brought us love and war, the 70's brought us peace and disco, and the 80's brought us the beginning of the end of the traditional family.

Why the 80's? By the 1980's women had advanced significantly in their rights and freedoms within not only society but also within the family unit. Men were learning to respect that women had an equal right not only in general society, but also that their voices were just as relevant and important within the family structure.

However in the 1980's there was one remaining bastion where women continued to be quietly held back. This culture remained within the working class offices and boardrooms where the old boys' club was alive and well, and the glass ceiling remained bulletproof.
According to "History of Work Ethic", published by Robert B. Hill, Ph.D. in 1992, he wrote:

"the workforce of the 1980's and 1990's reflected a larger number of women and a reduced number of workers older than 65. Changes in gender and age of workers had a significant impact on the culture of the later twentieth century and influenced the pattern of work related norms such as the work ethic."

In fact, women entering the work force brought a new gender equality to the working world and to American culture that it never could have attained had women not struggled to break through that glass ceiling. This movement of women surging ahead into the corporate and executive work force in the 1980's was critical and important to the advancement of our country into the next century.

However there was a side effect to that advancement, and it is a side effect that we experience now at mealtime.

There are a generation of 80's children who are the products of those women who were so focused largely on their careers. They were the "latch-key kid" generation arriving home to an empty house, left to fend for themselves until one of their parents came home. Even then family mealtime had not yet disintegrated as it has today. However this

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