Definitely more now than when I was a kid. In fact, I just told DH over the weekend that DS has probably ate out more already in his life (he's 3!) than I did during my whole childhood. I also grew up in a small town with only a handful of restaurants so a sit down meal was only done on vacations and it was a real treat. I grew up with 3 siblings so I think money was an issue too although we did get pizza a lot on Friday nights and there was a time where we would get a happy meal on Thursdays since my mom had a class. I wonder if it is more of a generation thing- maybe we are busier now and rely more on convenience food vs. cooking a home cooked meal. There certainly seems to be more options available now than before with restaurants and now the meal prep. places popping up everywhere!

I remember visiting my grandparents in the summers and we would go out daily for lunch to fast food and then they would take us out one night for a nicer dinner. I remember going to Red Lobster and thinking it was the big time!

Now, eating out is not special since we do it ALL the time. We live near a mall that has every restaurant you can think of. I hate it in a way because going out for birthdays or other special occassions is not even a treat anymore since we are always eating out.

Dh and I eat out as a couple fairly frequently. We have a few great places, we love to go to. Our parents entertained a lot more in our homes growing up - dinner parties, cocktails parties etc It was the 70's! LOL!

We really don't eat out as a family all that often. We prefer not to go to chain resturants or eat fast food...so it's just not our thing. I'd rather cook good food at home! LOL! We like to go to family owned local businesses when we do go out...we just find the food and service to be so much better.

Growing up, if my Dad was out of town on business, my Mom might order pizza or take us out for chinese. We really didn't have many fast food places near our house. It just wasn't considered a 'treat' in our house.

We eat out much more often now than I did growing up. I grew up in a resort town at the beach and there were no fast food restaurants, only expensive restaurants catering to people on vacation. We rarely went out. Now I live in a big city with dozens of choices in a 3 mile radius from our house. We go out once or twice a week. We rarely eat fast food (except we do like to get biscuits from Chick fil A on Saturday mornings before soccer or basketball games - yum!), but we do eat at places like Moe's and Mama Fu's (don't know if those are just in the South or everywhere) where the food is fresh and pretty healthy but it comes out quickly. We can't go anywhere where we have to wait long with our 2 year old.

We definitely eat out more than when we were children. When I was young, eatting out was more for special occasions. Fast food was a rare event also. DH and I eat out more as a couple without the children than my parents did growing up. DH's family was very poor growing up and they ate out very little as well. A few years ago, we are eatting out way too much spending an outragous amount of money. Over the past couple of years, we are definitely more careful trying to eat in more,taking lunches to work and not being so wasteful.

I think it is about equal. Though, I have to even out the years before and after the divorce. I seem to remember my dad took us all out to Big boys or Little Ceasar(it had seats then) about once a week. After they divorced, we rarely went out, because my mom didn't drive.
Now it varies, if you count fast food, maybe we eat out twice a month with all the kids. But not always. Some months we don't eat out at all. But I am sure hubby eats out nearly every day for lunch. I have got to start packing him lunches more often.

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I have nothing to declare except my genius."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) upon arriving at U.S. customs 1882

Oh no, not at all. My mom was not a cook. They didn't have a lot of money but knew every burger, pizza, hash house, tamale stand for miles. I miss those tamales.

I love to cook and I don't want to die from heart disease like my mother. I think her favorite meal was Frito pie and Coke.

Cathleen

I definelty eat out more now than I did when I was a child, my mom and dad split when I was about 8 and there were 4 of us kids so eating out was more of a treat or on special occasions, and I think that is how it should be with my kids aswell. My girls probably had more McDonalds now than I have had this day and that is partly my fault. However that will be changing real soon as I will be staying home and will be cooking alot more. And eating out will become more of a treat or on special occations. Its just gettin way to expensive.

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Shatema
mom to Destiny and Daija divas in training

I could have written this very post! We went out to eat more often than my mom cooked and to be honest, there are very few memories of my mom cooking, and more memories of eating out. I was overweight as a child and now as an adult and I really do attribute that to eating out so much. Now I want to totally avoid that for my son so we eat out WAY less than I did growing up. Now, we still eat out once or twice a week and I'd love to cut that out so when we DO go out to eat, it's a treat for DS, like it was for Dh growing up.