When I was raised on a small family farm on the northern coast of Maine, 60s, "supper" was always at 5PM, and there was never any political discourse, mostly just slurping, and swallowing, and sometimes even the fart when exiting the table. Preparing a family meal was so much work and planning that the time of eating was almost exhausting.
I doubt that many in today's world could even contemplate what went into preparing a meal back then. We had no indoor plumbing and no electricity way back then in this rural community on the northern coast of Maine. Of course, as a youngun, that's all I knew. I remember waking up to frost around my face from the weighted down quilts that covered me at night, a place where one couldn't even move lest make a cold place, and the thunder jugs froze overnight.
We had to hand deliver water to the house in buckets from the well, and heat the water on top the wood stove. We had a huge vegetable garden, and a mud cellar, and my Mom canned hundreds of quarts of vegetables every year, and my Dad brought home at least one deer every year and we fished and dug clams and bartered for things like lobsters from the local fisherman.
I remember Dad, after being gone for hours, dragging home a huge buck, and he knew what to do. He had built a contraption which might resemble a swing set, to pull it up on. He pulled it up and asked Mom to hold it so he could secure it, and up went Mom and down went the deer. We all laughed. But, between us, we finally got it up and secured, and my Dad knew exactly what to do, about gutting it, and bleeding it, and so many things that I have forgotten how to do.
But, even then, we had a somewhat functioning society. There was at least one grocery that one could purchase lard and flour from, and there were still the milk men that would deliver milk, at least until we got our own milk cow. It remained a cohesive society, and I honestly can say, I never went hungry.
I might have missed the attention of my parents, the emotional connections that children need, but today, all these years later, I am grateful that I was not pampered and cajoled into helplessness. Today, I finally understand the hard work it took for my parents to provide for me. I even forgive them for their sometimes violent responses to my just being a child. In many ways it was a harsh life.
But nothing like the "harsh life" that children are facing today. We at least all ate dinner together, every single night, and we even farted together.