Family Meal Time and Life Satisfaction of Fathers with a Child Younger than 18 Years Old

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between family meal time and emotional well-being for 5,186 fathers who were employed and had at least one child aged under 18 for the years 2009 and 2014 by analyzing their time diaries. In doing so, changes in time spent by fathers on family meals between 2009 and 2014 were also examined along with the factors associated with the amount of meal time for each year in order to understand ways to increase paternal participation in family meals. Analytic results showed that a father's family meal time had a positive association with his time use and life satisfaction; however, fathers who spent more than 40 minutes a day having meals with the family reported the highest score in time use and life satisfaction. The amount of time fathers spent on family meals increased from 38 minutes in 2009 to 43 minutes in 2014, whose change turned out to be mainly attributable to something more than the compositional change in the population between the two years, such as growing public awareness or cultural acceptance of the value of family meal. Fathers in dual-earner households tend to have longer family meal times; however, different factors were associated with their family meal times in 2009 and 2014. Policy implications are discussed in light of the government-initiated dining table education campaign to increase family meal time for the sake of children's character education at home.

Determinants of Family Mealtime Frequency for Fathers with their Children

“…이처럼 가족식사를 다룬 국내연구들은 가족식사가 자녀의 발달 및 적응에 미치는 영향을 살펴보는 데 관심을 두었기 때문에, 가족식사가 독립변수로 간주되었다 (Lee & Choi, 2013;Bae et al, 2013;Lee, 2014b). 가족식사를 종속변수로 보고 가 족식사에 영향을 미치는 요인을 살펴본 연구 (Cho et al, 2011;Kim, 2017) (Weinstein, M., 2006 (Fiese, Folkey, & Spagnola, 2006). 가족식사를 통한 상호작용은 가족체계를 안정시키고, 가 족구성원 간 의사소통을 촉진함으로써 가족을 결속시키고 가족 구성원 개개인의 심리적 안녕감에 기여할 수 있다 (Fiese et al, 2002 (Bandura, 1986).…”