Like many parents, Cameron Stracher, a lawyer, author, and father of two, found himself spending too much time at work and not enough time with his family. But what makes Stracher’s story stand out is his bold about-face: he decided to cut back on his workload (despite the financial hit he’d take), get home by 6 o’clock every night, and cook his family dinner five nights a week—for an entire year. Here, Stracher shares what he learned as he made his way back to the family table, a journey which he details in his memoir, “Dinner With Dad.”
What was going on in your life in the beginning of the book that you suddenly felt so overwhelmed and disconnected from your family?
I think it was a gradual process. We had moved to Connecticut in 2001, and I was commuting longer and farther. I was teaching law school [in the city] and then getting home really late and not seeing anybody. I had also agreed to do some consulting work for a company in Kansas City. I would fly there once a week. The accumulation of all of that time away from home really hit me one summer night. I remember looking out the window and thinking, “This is my life, and it stinks.”
How do you think you got to that place to begin with?
I think a lot of it is inertia— it’s not stopping to think about the choices you’re making. It’s also being ambitious, and as I describe in the book, it’s grabbing for the gold ring. The teaching job became available, and I grabbed it. A friend of mine became CEO of this company in Kansas City and convinced me and flattered me that we could work out the commuting. Each new opportunity seemed compelling, and I took them without thinking about what life choices that I was making.
Ultimately, you decided to let go of your job in Kansas City and start working from home more to spend time with your family—including cooking dinner for them five nights a week! What was that process like?
It took a while to reinsert myself into the family dynamic and figure out what my place was and have everyone gel about what that place was. First of all, I realized it was not about me and not about me trying to make their lives better—their lives were already great. Now that I am there, I bring another part of life into the picture that I hope creates good feelings and good memories.
What was it like to rediscover your passion for cooking and share that with your family?
Cooking really is a Zen-like activity. It makes me happy to be sitting there chopping and preparing a meal. I forgot that this was a source of happiness for me, because I didn’t do it for a while. The times where I’m able to get my kids—Simon, 13, and Lulu, 9—involved are just great moments, and times where they actually enjoy the meal are very nourishing moments. But most of the stuff I made for them they didn’t eat. The interesting thing is that now I have about six to eight dishes combined with the things that my wife makes that they like, so we now have a pretty varied menu. So I know that if say, “Should I make gnocchi tonight?” I’ll get a resounding cheer.
Not only were you now eating meals with your children, but you were also rediscovering who your kids were. What did that feel like?
It is funny to discover that they had musical tastes you didn’t know about, friends you didn’t know about, things they learned at school that you didn’t know about. It was all thrilling and depressing—I was happy to learn these things but sad that I had missed out. For example, I didn’t know Lulu was taking jazz dance.
It seemed to hit you hard to miss these moments, and I’m sure it would other parents. Why do you think more people don’t commit more time to being with their families?
I think it’s inertia, financial pressures, and commutes. I also think that it’s hard to be home—it’s not the idyllic “Leave It To Beaver” life, and sometimes it’s easier to be in the office. It’s hard to come home and expect everyone to be happy to see you, and instead find your kids screaming and crying. I really struggled with this.
In the book, you talk a lot about technology and how it takes parents away from their kids and kids away from their parents. Have you created any rules for your family about how much time to spend on the BlackBerry, or watching TV, etc.?
I’d like to tell you that we are perfect about it, but we’re not. It’s still a constant battle in our home. And these electronic devices are everywhere. One thing we did do is our cable box has a parental control so you can make sure the TV is off during certain times. So, there is no TV between 9 am and 5 pm. Of course, on a Saturday morning, as you can imagine, it’s hard. My son got a cell phone and started texting his friends at the dinner table, so we banned the cell phone at the dinner table.
Not every dad out there will necessarily take the step of making dinner five nights a week to be closer to his family—but the book is really about spending more time with your family, in whatever form that takes, right?
I think what I did was extreme. Some people have said, “I’d love to do what you did, but it’s so hard”—and our commutes in the New York area are among the longest in the United States, which makes it very hard to get home at 6 o’ clock. My book is really about getting back to some place where we are together with our family more, and I used cooking and the family dinner to do that. For other people, it may be something different. When I was growing up, we had a pizza night with my father when my mom was teaching. For other people, it might be bowling or knitting or coaching baseball.
What is some of the feedback you have gotten from other dads or moms out there about the book?
Some of my women friends said, “That’s great— but that’s what I do every day. I can’t believe you’re writing a book about it.”
If readers could take one thing away from your book, what would you want it to be?
It would be that people make their own choices, and even when you feel like you don’t have a choice, you really do. I’m not talking about the people who are struggling to make ends meet and barely surviving. But there are a lot of people who may feel that they don’t have control over their lives, and if they step back and take a look, they do. I had a conversation with a guy who was a lawyer, and his wife, who was a doctor, and they said, “I wish I could do what you did. We can’t do it. We just can’t afford it.” I thought, if they couldn’t do it with those jobs, who can? I think in New York especially, it’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that our neighbor is making half a million dollars per year, so we should be doing that as well. It’s not true. We can make sacrifices and changes, and we don’t have to live exactly that way.
