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Soon after school started last fall, my freelance workload reached an all-time low. I hadn't gotten any shifts at the newspaper for several months, I’d wrapped up a long-term project and networking was yielding, at best, tepid “We’ll call you” responses. It was time to tighten the budget.  

We whittled down our “entertainment” spending as much as we could, leaning more on the public library and free outings. We got creative with meals and I made plenty of treats to offset the lack of dinners out. We got rid of our weekly smoothie habit in lieu of making cocoa at home. I was expecting whining and deprivation, but it’s no exaggeration to say that an unstable economy lead to a more stable family.  

We all know how important it is to eat dinner as a family. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, teens that eat dinner with family less than three nights per week are “three and a half times likelier to have abused prescription drugs or used an illegal drug other marijuana.” Their likelihood of using marijuana is three times that of teens that do eat meals with family, and they are more than twice as likely to have used tobacco and 1½ times as likely to have used alcohol.  

Those statistics make a compelling case for family dinners, but our time together, around a table where it’s just us and there’s no limit to how long we stay or what we talk about, has brought us so much more. At our dinner table, mother, stepfather, boy (10), girl (8) and grandmother discuss politics, religion, sex, marriage, drugs, alcohol, parenting; you name it.

The relaxed setting allows us to share our thoughts and opinions in an organic, age-appropriate way. It’s not The Talk. It’s just talking. And it’s addictive. The more we talk to each other, the more we want to talk to each other. Our kids are heard, and they listen. My husband and I are hopeful that our voices will drown out those of their less-informed peers, and that the kids’ habit of bringing their questions and concerns to the family, knowing we won’t shy away from tough topics, will continue as they grow older. So much of the news on the recession has been of loss, of dreams destroyed. I'm amazed by how much we've gained.