(no subject)

[ysobel]

Hypothetical situation: take a family of four, two parents and two kids, that does a family breakfast every Sunday morning. Three of the four prefer option A as the food choice. The fourth prefers option B; will eat A (under some protest), and allergies are not an issue, but there is a definite preference. The other three will eat B but prefer A. 

This is a weekly occurrence, and the family needs to work out when to have which foods.

For arbitrary reasons, it is not possible to a) make both A and B for the same meal, b) find an option C that all people feel equally pleased with, or c) let dissatisfied members make their own breakfasts. It is always either A or B, and all participants must partake.

Poll #14986

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

View Respondents

What is the best option?

View Answers

A every week (straight vote-counting)
0 (0.0%)

AAAB repeated (rotation of member preferences)
9 (40.9%)

AB repeated (everyone gets one off week and one on week)
4 (18.2%)

B every week (executive decision, with coup as necessary)
2 (9.1%)

Random lots, weighted 3-to-1
3 (13.6%)

Random lots, weighted 1-to-1, e.g. coin toss
1 (4.5%)

Other
3 (13.6%)

So, perhaps obviously, this is not entirely hypothetical.  When I was growing up, we had a tradition for Sunday mornings. I don't know how it started, though as I am the younger child I suspect it was established well before I came along; I don't know why an option C never entered the picture. I just remember the disagreement, because I was the odd one out. 

Sunday mornings were almost always oatmeal, which I tolerated but only because I didn't really have other options.  Very occasionally, we had cream of wheat, which is how I discovered that I liked it a hell of a lot better.  It was reasonably equivalent effort for the person making it. 

I can tell you that my preference differential was high. It wasn't that I liked oatmeal but liked cream of wheat more; I didn't really like oatmeal at all.  And being forced to eat it didn't help matters.

(I have no idea why I couldn't eat an option C, except that the point was sharing a single meal and also not causing extra work for my parents.)

I can't, of course, tell you about the other three preference levels.  I have the impression that they liked my option better than I liked theirs -- that the dislike wasn't as strong -- but I was young and not really aware of nuances and also wasn't in their heads at all.

My parents adopted a policy of rotating who got to choose, which led to the AAAB option of the poll.  I consistently campaigned for the AB option, because that meant everyone got their favorite every other week,cut my sister maintained that doing that weighted it unfairly in my favor.

I know I can't change anything about the situation, or about the fact that I'm clearly still holding it in the back of my head, or about the fact that i still tend not to like oatmeal even when I try (there are occasions when it's fine, and more occasions where I want to like it) but I'm just ... curious what other people think.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I was going between AAAB and ABAB, but the "under some protest" decided me in favor of ABAB, because it's not just a preference vs. a preference, it's at least a mild aversion vs. a preference.

[rainbow]

i chose other because i can't get my head around it being *difficult* to give the person who loves cream of wheat that, especially in the age of microwaves. but i grew up without microwaves and made both oatmeal and cream of wheat on the stove. cream of wheat was both easier to make and easier to clean up! and i was making it for myself by the time i was 8 or 9 years old.

if it was something like "we go out to a given restaurant and all have to be at the same one", then i'd say let each of the 4 in turn pick, but which *cereal* each person's allowed to eat? i'm thinking there were some hinky control issues going on.

[shoaling_souls]

i chose before reading the explanation, and AAAB works better if it's "family chooses which restaurant to go to". but also more of a "if the family is all adults".

for breakfast cereal though, i wouldn't weigh the parents preferences at all, if the parents could tolerate both options and no allergies. with children i'd alternate between the children's preferences not the adult preferences.

[vass]

I chose 'other' before reading the explanation, and was going to suggest A, coin toss, B, coin toss (everyone gets their preferred choice once a month, plus a 50/50 chance of their preferred choice two other times a month, no one is assured their least favourite option more than once a month.)

Then I read the explanation, and I'm now going with WTF. I don't know how much you hate oatmeal, but if it's as much as I hate cheese, well, if my family had insisted we all eat a cheese breakfast three Sundays a month, then I would have skipped breakfast three Sundays a month.

And something about 'the point was sharing a single meal' as a symbol of family togetherness, at the expense of the person who dislikes that food, really rubs me the wrong way. Instead of saying "because we're a family, we share a meal," it becomes "because we're a family, we make Ysobel eat something she doesn't like so as not to inconvenience people".

I just don't get why letting you have a tub of yoghurt and a banana or something would have spoiled their family tradition, if the point of it was to celebrate the family they had, not some hypothetical focus group family.

[princessofgeeks]

I never make the kids eat what they dont like. Try a taste of it, then move on.

We have one kid who hates Mexican food and the rest of us love it. When we go out, we try to rotate in non-Mexican restaurants or make sure to go to Mexican places that have burgers or something else for him.

I too am puzzled why it was so impossible to have something different available for you. ??? Especially when options that took very little work to get on the table exist. Toast and a banana? Cold cereal? I mean really.

Sorry that happened that way for you.

[exor674]

Also, darnit, I want cream of wheat now, and it's all your fault!

[pauamma]

If the one preferring B is a kid, prefer AAAB. If a parent, random lots 3-1 or AAAB.

[helens78]

As long as B was okay with microwave Cream of Wheat, they could have it any time, as far as I'm concerned. It would not have occurred to me not to do that!

[phoenix]

I went with AAAB for the poll as it seems fairest, but reading your explanation changes the situation a bit. Outside of situations where affording and obtaining food are major issues, no one should have to persist in eating foods they dislike as though it's an issue of morals.

I am a little biased in that I'm a very picky eater who had allowances made for her as a child. It's possibly meant I have limits on my tastes as an adult that persistence in childhood might have done away with, but it would have been hard to do otherwise with me. I refused food when there was no alternative and gagged on food I disliked - my parents were reasonable where I wasn't. Or where my tastebuds weren't; I'm almost definitely finicky because of supertasting, and it's annoying to feel a need to scold myself for a quirk in genetics because of maxims like "eat everything that's put before you" and "clean your plate".