Working parent(s) of school age children, how often do you have weekday home prepared meals?

We have home cooked meals most days. Occasionally we will decide to go out for dinner, but that’s only on nights I’m off of work. Right now, I work and my husband stays home (he’s working on his Master’s Degree), but even when we were both working we always had home cooked meals, unless we were going out for dinner as a special treat. On the nights I work, my husband and son eat before I get home and I get a plate they saved for me when I get home from work.

My son eats breakfast at home every morning before going to school and has dinner at home every night. The only meal he doesn’t eat with us is lunch and that’s because he’s at school. Sometimes he’ll eat dinner at a friends house instead of with us and sometimes he has friends that eat with us.

We have home cooked meals most days as well. Though we don’t have room at our little table for everyone, so I end up standing up. =)

If you mean meals at home instead of going out the answer would be different, than if you mean not using pre-prepared foods. When I worked, we rarely ate out but often used convenience foods like fish fingers, chicken nuggets, oven chips (fries). Now I am unemployed, I am making things from scratch a lot more, like lasagne, stews, pies and stuff. We still rarely eat out, can afford it even less now

I’m obviously not a parent, but my two sisters and I are all in high school and my dad makes meals at home probably 5 or 6 days a week. Pretty much the only time he doesn’t is the day when my mom comes down and gets us dinner and an occasional day when we’re on our own for dinner.

We’re much like @Stinley. We have Wednesday pizza night and go out a couple of times – usually during the weekend.

Just about every night. The kids don’t like leftovers, so we’ve been trying to prepare new stuff most every night. I used to do all the cooking when we were both working, but now that my wife has retired, she has been trying to do more cooking. Unfortunately, she doesn’t cook very well, so the while it is more rest for me not to cook, it is more stress for me not to enjoy my meal. I also enjoy the satisfaction of doing trying new things and having them work out well. You don’t get that if you don’t cook.

Finally, it’s really the only time the family gets together, and if you do it every night, then the family gets together every night and you get to find out what’s going on. You know people will be there. It’s a good ritual.

When I still had children in school & my husband & I were both working, I cooked breakfast for my children before they caught the school bus every morning, & I cooked dinner almost every night. I am retired now, but I still eat out very seldom, & I generally prefer my own cooking.

If we had my husband’s 3 kids f/t, there’d be no one home before 9pm to fix them meals. They’d be on their own to heat up pre made stuff or to cook from scratch.

When my mom was a single parent with my sister, she used to cook the night before meals for a few days and also call delivery to go to the house now and then. Our family thinks it’s a treat to sit at a table together and eat something home cooked.