Ask parents at random whether they sit down and eat daily family meals together, whether they give in to the pressure to let the kids watch TV at meal times, and you'll get a variety of surprising responses - sometimes to do with flooring. "Well, I used not to, because we had a carpet in the TV room and it was really hard to clean if they spilt food on the floor. But now we've got hardwood floors," said one mother.

A father of small children saw the issue as a battle between traditional family values and the Nickelodeon TV station, with its endless cartoons and sitcoms. "Nickelodeon would like to take over, but we insist the kids sit down at the table to eat with us." (He admits this means the kids eat a pretty high-speed dinner.) In other families, it's ceased to be an issue - because conflicting schedules mean that on most weekdays, there isn't enough family together at any one point to make dinnertime a family affair.

Many parents regret the fact that the family dinner has become a moveable feast, still carrying in our heads that nostalgic ideal of mam, dad and the kids all sitting down to eat and share the day around the dinner table. They try to keep up standards in the teeth of opposition. One mother of four, with children ranging in age from five to 18, gets home from work every day in plenty of time to make the evening meal. She sets the table with knives, forks, napkins and glasses - but regularly ends up eating by herself.

"One lad heads off to the TV room. The other brings it up to his own room. You find plates, glasses, forks, half-eaten food - just like in that ad on TV, under his bed. Now the younger children have started to plead to eat their meal in front of the TV and, yes, often I let them." The father in this family gets his dinner at work at midday, and has a light meal when he gets home from work around 7.30 p.m. - at which point, the youngest child may sit down to share it with him. ["]The only time we all sit down to eat together is on Sunday, and even then, the older children often aren't at home. Oh yes, and for Christmas dinner." Another mother is adamant that all her family sit down to eat their meal at the dinner table - but she's not with them. They eat a meal prepared by her childminder around 5.30 p.m., an hour or more before she and her husband get home from work. In another family, policy depends on which parent is making the meal and who is at home to eat it. In this household, the father has been the regular cook for several years, since his wife's shift-work leaves him in charge between 6 and 7.30 p.m. His children like this, because he doesn't have meal-time "issues".

"He pretty much lets us do what we like as long as we put the dishes in the dishwasher afterwards," says his teenage daughter. "And if we do all sit at the table, he's reading the paper, and we're stuck in our books - so what do you mean, do we `share the day'?" Ah yes, reading at the table - a good old-fashioned issue that. So many of us would be so pleased that a child is (a) at the table and (b) reading, we'd hardly row about it as our own parents did. Whether it's TV that is ruining the family meal, or TV-plus-hectic-life-styles, a lot of us feel bad about it: but should we beat up on ourselves? Make a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the situation? Is the family meal the last symbol of the family - and if we give up on that, are we throwing in the towel completely? Senior clinical psychologist Dr Marie Murray says the family meal is worth fighting for, for the sake of family togetherness as well as good nutrition - but also believes that modern families need to be flexible in their approach to it. The old-fashioned family meal, after all, like the old-fashioned family, had negatives as well as positives.

She does not believe that a return to the rigid everyone-must-be-at-the-table-on-the-dot, must eat-everything-that's-on-the-plate and stay-there-until-everyone-has-finished would be beneficial, even were it possible. Meals as a power game between parents and children should definitely not be on the modern menu. That said, she reckons the family meal is an important opportunity for a family to regroup. If everyone in a family eats separately, if the family never regroups, "there is a loss," she says. Even if most of a family sits down to eat together for 15 minutes, two or three times a week, it is better than giving up on the family meal entirely. For toddlers and pre-teens, she says, routine meals are important, and that it is better for the children to sit down at the table with a childminder than to be allowed to graze in front of the TV. "Children like and are comfortable with predictability, and with someone being in control."

Parents who can't eat dinner with young children can still bond over another ritual, like a bedtime story or snack. Faced with the "can I eat in front of the TV?" whine, perhaps with a side order of "ste-e-ew? You know I hate stew!" many a parent may weaken and let them slide back to the telly - in preference to sitting down with a resentful child either playing with food or wolfing it down to get away from the table quickly.

But yes, that's the wrong thing to do, says Murray. Parents should face children down in this situation and try to create a good atmosphere at the table themselves - ignoring whines, sibling battles, deficient table manners. (This will all be easier if you don't deliberately time dinner to conflict with a favourite programme.) "The family meal gives children a chance to learn how to converse, to talk about themselves, to learn skills they don't get in another context.

AS CHILDREN reach their teens, they slide more easily from family events. The microwave has made it easy for them to prepare their own meals.

But nutritionally, it's probably a good idea for someone to prepare a family meal - balanced, nutritious, healthy - even if everyone eats it separately a lot of the time. "A lot of young people could eat pizza four days in a row, otherwise," Murray says. Ideally, teenagers should be persuaded to eat with the family. "It gives parents a chance to look at their teens, see how they are, find out how they're getting on generally." Some families, of course, are more Simpsons than Seventh Heaven, eating a family meal together all right - but in front of the TV. There are plenty of nutritional arguments against this - the overweight know that most diets recommend that you don't watch TV and eat at the same time - because you eat thoughtlessly, without noticing what, or how much, you're scoffing. Ironically, technology, in the shape of cheap TVs and multichannels, has nearly made family TV-watching a nostalgic tradition whose passing we mourn . . . . But that's another story.