Food for thought

Some people believe that eating together as a family has important implications for children. A study published in Child Development investigates the link between the frequency of family breakfasts and dinners and children's academic and behavioral outcomes, in a sample of 21,400 children aged 5-15. In child fixed-effects models, which controlled for unchanging aspects of children and their families, there were no significant (p < .05) relations between family meal frequency (FMF) and either academic or behavioral outcomes. These results were the same for various specifications of the FMF variables and did not differ by child age.