‘No Dessert Before Dinner’ and Other Lies Our Parents Told Us

What’s the Worst Rule You Grew Up With? And the One You Won’t Live Without

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Last week, I wrote about my experience grieving my father over the last year and how I broke every rule imaginable. The outpouring was swift and loud. As one reader wrote in response, “There are too many rules sometimes, aren’t there?”

As if sent from the gods, a few days later, I encountered one of the cleverer articles about family dynamics I’ve read in some time. It, too, complained about rules—but not about rules imposed on us by outsiders, but on rules imposed on us by our parents. That means you, Mom! And me, too.

The article, by Washington Post columnist John Kelly, was entitled, “After 30 years, our daughter had a confession: She hated our toast.”

First of all, kudos to the title!

Second of all, even more kudos to the lede: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a child who hates the way her parents make toast.”

But the most kudos to the piece itself, which describes a trip Mr. Kelly made to Bed Bath & Beyond with his adult daughter and his enthusiasm toward purchasing her a particular toaster oven, which would take her back to the halcyon breakfast days of her childhood.

Photo credit sergiimostovyi

Except, “Ever since becoming an adult and going out into the wider world, Gwyn had come to despise our toast. Basically, we don’t toast our bread long enough. It’s slightly warmed bread, barely qualifying as toast in her eyes.”

But that wasn’t the end of it:

Suddenly unburdened, Gwyn had a few things to get off her chest about our scrambled eggs, too. If our toast isn’t toasted enough, our scrambled eggs are toasted too much. Gwyn had grown up watching us leave them in the pan till the last molecule of moisture was gone. She’d seen her mother, Ruth, tell countless diner waitresses to make sure the cook knew that her eggs should be “hard” or “dry” or “Sahara-style” — whatever shorthand described well-done scrambled eggs.

Then Gwyn leaves home and discovers that not everyone shares this view: Eggs don’t have to be dry; they can be soft and wet.

This matter of cooking eggs has been bugging me for a long time because one hateful trend of the Internet of late has been clickbaity, finger-wagging headlines like: You’ve been making your scrambled eggs all wrong (The Sun), You’ve been cooking scrambled eggs wrong (The Daily Star), You’ve been Making Scrambled Eggs Wrong Your Whole Life (My Recipes), Chef Reveals You’ve Been Cooking Scrambled Eggs Wrong (The Daily Mail).

Really, Daily Mail, mayonnaise?

Photo credit robynmac from Getty Images via Canva

But the larger point is even more poignant—and acute. Many of the rules we impose on our children are based on conventions and standards that are not only eroding in contemporary life but even bowing to more up-to-date conventions and standards. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have; I was told over and over again when I was a teenager. Well, I have the job I want, and I spend most of my days in sweatpants.

I can think of many rules that were standard in my house growing up that my children find absurd: Take your elbows off the table. Wash your hair every day. Don’t wear shorts to school. Always use a top sheet!

To be sure, I do like some rules. I’m the manners parent. And the grammar parent. I’m not particularly attached to brushing your teeth twice a day, but I care a lot about how to shake hands. And I’ll die on the hill of Don’t use 'thank you' in the opening sentence of a thank-you note.

Photo credit anilakkus from Getty Images Signature via Canva

But over time, I’ve come to realize that many of the family rules we all hold to are more sentimental than essential—more tied to our romantic version of our own upbringings than helpful guidelines that prepare our children for the new world they will enter.

And apparently, I’m not alone. I've long thought that one way of judging the impact of an article is by the reaction it engenders, and, gosh, did Mr. Kelly’s column produce an outpouring from readers of outdated family rules:

I remember my mom coming for dinner one day and I made pork chops. She was amazed that they weren't dry and asked what I did. I told her I didn't cook them for 3 days. She looked at me in shock and said "well, you have to make sure pork is well done." I responded yes, but it doesn't have to be cremated! She laughed! I hated pork chops as a kid!

It turns out that if you don't boil your vegetables, you don't need to add bacon fat to them to make them taste good! And did you know you can put salt and pepper on the eggs WHILE they cook? Instead of after?

My mother never put any condiment on a sandwich -- no mustard, no mayonnaise, nothing. A sandwich was just sliced meat or cheese, with perhaps some lettuce added, on plain bread. I was in college before I realized that most people smeared their sandwich bread with mustard or mayonnaise or both. I reacted with delight, began using lots of mustard, and never looked back.

But by far, my favorite reaction was about one family rule that almost every agrees with:

I’m a boomer, raised in a big Catholic family burdened by all sorts of idiotic “rules”. One of them was dessert could ONLY be eaten after dinner. No snacking, no pre-meal treats. I went on a date in my mid-20s with a man who sat down, saw the dessert menu, and ordered dessert. He ate it with relish and then ordered his meal. I was astonished and quickly realized I had been lied to! Dessert first won’t “ruin” my appetite or anything else. I married that man. And no, he’s not fat. He’s just always been a lean, hungry, “good eater”. I’m the rebel in our relationship but it literally never occurred to me to defy decades of “training” about food.

So, from grieving to groceries, feel free to make your own rules, everyone. And please share a hard-and-fast rule that you grew up with that now seems a little absurd.

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Thank you for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, watch my latest TED Talk, or scroll through my other posts. And if you'd like to do a storytelling project with a loved one similar to the one I did with my father, click here to learn more.

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Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families. Or my new book, The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World.

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