IT’S the ultimate image of the happy, well-adjusted family: mum, dad and the kids sitting around the dinner table together, politely passing the carrots and potatoes and discussing the day’s events.

No one talks with their mouth full, there’s no sulking or kicking each other under the table and the children leap unbidden to clear the table.

In your dreams.

As most parents know, real-world mealtimes rarely live up to this Cosby Show ideal. More typically they resemble feeding time at Taronga Zoo.

Is it any wonder a substantial proportion of parents give up on the rose-tinted ideal of the family dinner, either abandoning it altogether or succumbing to demands to keep the television on during the meal.

According to a report, 22 per cent of Australian families eat together four times or less a week and 60 per cent of all families always, or often, have the television on during meals.

While the demise of the family dinner is far from imminent, according to Dr Rebecca Huntley, author of the report Because Family Mealtimes Matter , there is still “definite room for improvement”.

“This is particularly the case for families with teenaged children, who are more likely to enjoy fewer family meals and more likely consume those meals on the couch and in front of the TV,” she says.

Psychologists, dieticians and sociologists are such passionate advocates of the family meal because of something we all instinctively know – it’s a valuable ritual that brings an enormous string of benefits.

First cab off the rank in that list is improved relationships between everyone in the family.

A 2007 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in the US found a strong link between family dinners and teens’ risk of going on to abuse drugs.

“Compared to 12- and 13-year-olds who have frequent family dinners, 12- and 13-year-olds who have infrequent family dinners are six times likelier to have used marijuana, more than 4½ times likelier to have used tobacco and more than 2½ times likelier to have used alcohol,” the report says.

Then there’s the link the same study found between family dinners and academic performance. According to CASA, teenagers who have fewer than three family dinners in a typical week are more than twice as likely to do poorly in school.

There are also very obvious nutritional and health benefits.

“We know that [with] families that eat in front of the television and kids who spend a lot of time in front of computers, the proportion of junk food they eat is greater and the quality is worse,” says Dr Clare Collins, Associate Professor in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle.

“That means that biochemically you are missing out on nutrients that actually help your brain work better and produce energy in your body.”

So if sitting down together daily to break bread is such an incredibly powerful force for good, why are so many of us not doing it as well or as often as we should?

Collins is uncompromising: “People come up with all sorts of reasons why you can’t do it but I say ‘No, that is simply not good enough’,” she says. “If you value it and prioritise it there are no excuses.”

And it always helps to give the kids a job so they feel involved in the family meal. “Someone puts out the cutlery, someone puts out the tablecloth,” Collins says. “And even a young child can have a go at helping with vegetable preparation, or, on the weekend, when you have more time get the kids involved with helping prepare a simple meal.”

Getting older children involved – especially teens – is more problematic, however CASA’s results should hearten parents engaged in that battle.

The overwhelming majority of teenagers said they preferred to eat dinner with their family – 84 per cent compared with 13 per cent who preferred dining solo.

For Collins, the beauty of the family meal ritual is that it can easily be distilled into a simple message.