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Nancy Gibbs's The Magic Of The Family Meal

486 Words2 Pages

Family is an important part of everyone’s lives. Whether you have a large family, a small one, or somewhere in between, its role has a crucial influence on the people we are. In their essays, both Nancy Gibbs and Barbara Kingsolver discuss modern day families and their roles in our lives. Nancy Gibbs’s article, “The Magic of the Family Meal,” relays the importance time spent as a family around the dinner table has on children through the course of their lives. This article argues strongly for the benefits of doing so, stating that a family meal, “acts as a kind of vaccine, protecting kids from all manner of harm” (Gibbs 2). This is further proven by the facts and statistics provided by Gibbs displaying how the children of families who engage …show more content…

So often, we hear the term “nuclear family,” and how it is what we should strive to model in our own family. Kingsolver discusses how instead we should learn to recognize families for what they are in the modern era – not always nuclear – and not judge them harshly. “It’s awfully easy to hold in contempt the straw broken home, and that mythical category of persons who toss away nuclear family for the fun of it” (Kingsolver 397). But what is easy, is not always right. Kingsolver suggests we, “let go of the fairy tale of families functioning perfectly in isolation,” so that, “we might embrace the relief of community” (402). Thus, we should reconsider how we view a perfect family, and instead accept reality as it is. Modern-day families are no longer what they used to be, instead they encompass the many people of our lives. This is a fact we should accept with open arms and realize the importance of. Both essays discuss the importance of family in everyone’s lives. Gibbs’s article, “The Magic of a Family Meal,” conveys just how important time spent as a family is on a child. Similarly, Kingsolver’s essay, “Stone Soup,” discusses our evolving definition of family and just how important its inclusive companionship is to us. One way or another, family is something intertwined into all of our lives and it is without a doubt exceedingly

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