‘90s FAMILY : Whither the Dinner Hour? : For many, it’s a habit that never took. But experts fear without that time together, we risk losing our ties to each other.

Remember sitting around the table, night after night, usually at the same time, talking about the day, being cajoled into holding your fork properly? Remember your mother chastising you for calling your friends during the dinner hour?

Now, more and more families say they rarely or never gather around a table to eat and talk. For some, the reason is activity overload, with kids being driven off to baseball and track, ballet, piano and Scouts. For others, dinner hour is a habit that never quite took. And for many couples, long work schedules and demanding diets have led to individual grazing instead of table talk.

Psychologists and therapists warn that the loss of an Ozzie-and-Harriet-like dinner hour goes way beyond just a lifestyle change and could portend a significant loss for those who may never know the ritual of regularly dining together.

“Families get caught up in the idea that activities are more important than connecting. We’re teaching kids that everything external is more important than what we do as a family,” said Irene Goldenberg, a family psychologist at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in Westwood.

Goldenberg said she always did dinner when her children lived at home and still sits down with her husband almost every night. Those years of dinners had an effect.

One of her daughters came home from college to visit and announced that she had determined that she must be lucky to have come from a really good family. Why? “She said she was one of the only students who had regularly had dinner together as a family. It turns out there were things our children remembered from those dinners that eventually became a part of who they are,” said Goldenberg, adding that she finds it shocking how many people she knows do not regularly have dinner together.

Sometimes the lack of a regular getting-together time can be a sign of trouble, said Beth Gilbert, a psychologist in Laguna Niguel. She regularly asks couples beginning counseling how many times a month they sit down together for dinner. “They usually mumble something unintelligible in response,” she said.

Stuart Cutler, a Westlake Village-based licensed clinical social worker, said there are many families in his practice who never eat together. “There are kids who will have no memory looking back of having eaten dinner together with their family,” he said.

Cutler, who has two teen-age boys and a practice that often demands that he work nights, said he is committed to the value of the dinner hour and makes a calculated effort to schedule at least some nights every week for the whole family to be around one table.

“The dinner hour is a time to share. You can’t do it on a soccer field. It’s about talking, learning about one another, laughing together,” he said.

Some experts said the tradition of the dinner hour has deep, sacred, multicultural roots. Denise Chapman Weston, a play therapist and consultant based in North Attleboro, Mass., thinks that families should not ignore the cultural and religious aspects of breaking bread together. “While we all come from different places, we all come from cultures that unite around the ceremony of food,” Weston said. “It’s a gathering of our wayward spirits. But because we’re so hurried, we don’t put any mental energy or time into the process of enjoying food with our family.”

Gilbert agreed. She said food is the most basic way we nurture people, and sharing a meal has primordial importance.

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Not everyone’s memories of the dinner hour are pleasant, however. Some adults remember dinner as being a time of criticism--about behavior, table manners or chores undone--and they do not see the meal-focused togetherness as a sentimental favorite of their childhood.

Goldenberg said that for some families, the elimination of the dinner hour represents a purposeful step away from intimacy. “For people who do not want to face each other, not having a dinner hour is very effective,” she said.

Sandy Stotzer, a Van Nuys comedian and father of two boys, 9 and 13, said the dinner hour has been a sore subject in his household for years. He hated coming to the table. “I realized about a year ago that that’s where all the arguments happened when I was a kid,” he said. “It wasn’t a safe place to be.”

The disagreements, Stotzer remembered, were usually about manners: whether he was eating too fast or taking too much food on his fork. “My mother could have proofread Emily Post and found mistakes,” he said. “Eating was a production.”

Stotzer’s wife, Bea, manager of multicultural affairs for the Department of Water and Power, has only fond memories of childhood dinner hours, remembering them as a time for passionate debates on current affairs. But because of her busy schedule--she is out about 10 evenings a month--and Sandy’s long reluctance to make the dinner hour happen, the family eats a meal together only about once or twice a week.

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But even for the busiest, there are ways. Dinner doesn’t have to be fancy. “It’s not about Little Miss ‘50s homemaker doing her dinner thing,” said Goldenberg, who encourages people to keep the food simple and focus on the togetherness. Send out for pizza, make tacos, throw plastic on the floor and let the preschoolers eat their finger-food picnic-style while the adults eat leftovers. It doesn’t matter, psychologists say. Just talk.

The trick for those interested in creating a regular dinner hour, some say, is to keep the basics in mind. Ideally, eating together should be relaxed, with easy communication, a chance to gain insight into what everyone is doing and a way for the children to see their parents interacting, Goldenberg said. “But it’s not group therapy. Avoid making a scene out of it. And if you have dinner together on a regular basis, it’s less likely to turn into World War III,” she said.

For those whose schedules make dinner truly impossible, some suggest they consider scheduling leisurely breakfasts together--or lunch hours, if that fits. Gilbert remembered taking her son and his friend out to lunch regularly when he was a teen-ager just to ensure they would have a time for informal conversation. “Those were some of the most enjoyable times,” she said.

What is necessary, though, is the commitment to do it. “It’s not going to happen spontaneously,” Cutler said. “It’s a planned, communicated activity at first. And it’s up to the adults to make it happen, sometimes requiring new priorities be set,” he said.

The payoff for couples and families who do indulge in a regular dinner hour is considerable, these psychologists say. Cutler promises better interpersonal relationships, more intimacy and a stronger sense of support among family members.

“It’s one of those things it’s hard to know the loss of,” Goldenberg said. “People may not even know they’re missing it.”