It seems to me that most of the respondents who adhere to the practice of
excusing themselves and others from the table are Europeans or former Europeans.
I don't dismiss the possibility that I live in an exceptionally rude area,
even by US standards, but I doubt that I have ever seen a child asked to be
excused from that table here, in my region.
Being 47, I think I lived through a transitional era. My parents tended more
to be in the vanguard than behind the times in cultural change. I recall the
whole, "may I be excused" concept being introduced to be me in early childhood,
but it became irrelevent in the face of the demise of the family dinner. My
father, who was often late or traveling on business decided with the opening of
the first fast food restaurant, Karel's, that he need never eat my mother's
cooking again. (My mother was more the intellectual than the housewife.) Her
evening routine involved driving to Karel's to pick up his dinner, heating a TV
dinner for me, as was my preference. Her own dinner seemed to consist of
expensive seafoods like lobster and crab than no one else liked.
In my own home, again the husband is frequently not present for dinner at
dinner time due to work or businsess travel. However, on those three nights a
week or so that we all have dinner together the heirarchical structure of the
family is totally at odds with the child asking permission to leave the table.
Instead the parents occupy more the position of very obsequious servants,
running back and forth to the kitchen to satisfy the child's whims, getting it
glasses of water, pleading with it to eat nutritious food, frequenly receiving
reprimands. My husband and I often wonder why it is that when we were growing up
the parents were boss and now that we are adults the children are boss. But
that seems to be the way it is in our home and in the homes of most of the people
we know. Is this true in the rest of the US or are we just a peculiar social
enclave like the Amish?
Devon
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