[Kulturkampf]

Once upon a time the majority of Americans ate together at meals. There was a time when it was not unacceptable for a woman to desire to be a mother as opposed to a worker, a time when such a role wasn't viewed as downright villainous and destructive to women. I can only imagine the uproar that would ensue in a high school class if a girl announced her ambition in life to be a housewife.
I grew up in a typical American home (well, almost typical, being that my parents were married and never had divorced) with a working mother and father. Eating together was a little less than possible all of the time and with a mother that worked 9 to 7 the notion that we would wait until perhaps 7:30 or 8:00 to eat or even think of requesting our mother to cook after such long hours was both unreasonable and cruel.


At the same time, our father worked virtually the exact same hours over the years and my brother and I were left at home for dinner. Usually, our dinners consisted of frozen pizzas, Chinese or Vietnamese delivery, hot dogs, maybe re-heated chicken from Sunday night or even waffles -- this delicious breakfast food was very fitting at dinner due to how easily it was made.


On weekends we'd occasionally have a dinner made by our parents but more often than not the weekends were the glorious time for the weary to rest and go to a neighborhood restaurant or sit around a TV watching movies and eating pizza.


I cannot help but think that the expanding waist line of the American people could directly be contributed to the lack of homemade food we eat anymore. There was once a time when McDonalds was even viewed as an occasional treat as opposed to every other day at lunch time or in the long list of rotating food mom or dad picked up on the way home. When I ask myself what an American dinner is really like I usually think of a time when people actually cook, such as Thanksgiving. I hate to admit it but I have probably eaten more Chinese take out food in my life than I have eaten anything else. American food can best be described as General Tso's Chicken or pepperoni pizza. Perhaps in the future no one will be referred to as a good, wholesome meat & potatoes sort of guy but rather a salt of the Earth, General Tso sort of fellow.



Call me whatever you want but I will not apologize: it is best for a family to have someone at home to make dinner. Our food culture is being destroyed. The only upside of this is the increase of masculine icons in America (Colonel Sanders, General Tso, Papa John, Papa Murphy, the Hamburglar, etc).



I'd love to give in, right now, to the modern day egalitarianism and merely dismiss this as it being perfectly fine whether it is the father or the mother at home providing the cuisine but something else inside of me would call this capitulation.


The role of mother is a sacred image -- she has been tattood on the very arms of the American people, she is the nurturer of the American nation, she is sacred. It has always been mother who can make things better and lovingly prepare our meals. God knows if it were my father as the chef du maison I would be raised on a strict regimen of barbecued chicken and steak.


I have a ghastly proposal that would make liberals cringe, conservatives denounce me as going too far but perhaps would make a small amount of reactionaries smile: maybe our mothers should cook for us, again.



The dramatic revolution of our nation from one based on families to one based on divorce, from one based on parents being parents and not laborers, has left us with crippled families.
The American people work too hard and too long, they have no time to cook; when they should be eating healthy they are eating mass produced garbage.


And more than that: The American kids do not know their parents. My generation is one that was raised by the television and the internet; we were indoctrinated into our beliefs by our peers. We never had anyone waiting at home when the school bell rang. Our most in-depth conversations were over commercial breaks during Seinfeld and Law & Order.


It is probably too late for us to ever go back to ideas like family dinners. I heard an expert on Korean radio say "You should never be so busy that you don't have time for at least one dinner a week with your family." I immediately thought: How can one dinner be the goal? How can we be so deprived from our families and have them so weakened that suddenly once a week is some sort of accomplishment?


Friends are a passing thing in life, but family is forever. But I can definitely say that I have more dinners in a year in my adult life than I would have had with my family in five years.


Something has collapsed along our sad little walk down the postmodern road to decadence. We may never get it back.
You know something is wrong when the best shot I can see at reestablishing the family as a strong institution would involve fundamentally withdrawing from the world as we know it and living in a virtual commune.



It's broke. I don't think it can be fixed. Now what?