Genevieve Roberts explores the hot topics and parenting issues she encounters while raising her three children – two daughters and one son – in her weekly column, Outnumbered.
My husband Mark booked a meal out for the two of us last Saturday. “The table’s reserved for 6.45pm,” he told me. I felt grateful to him for arranging an evening out; I spend a lot of time making plans for the children and coordinating our diaries, so it’s a genuine treat to do nothing except choose from a menu.
But mostly, I felt relieved that he chose an early table: thank goodness I’m not going to have to stay up late or attempt conversation beyond 10pm when I know there’s an early morning ahead. Also, our usual family dinner time is around 5.30pm – any later and the children go beyond the point of hunger – and through force of habit, I’m now routinely ready to eat around then too.
The rise in 6pm restaurant bookings has been placed squarely at the serviette-covered laps of Gen Z, according to online booking service OpenTable, which saw an 11 per cent rise in London last year and six per cent nationwide. In fact, the average time to have dinner is now 6.12pm, hospitality tech service Zonal suggests.
But it’s not just teens and 20-somethings who appreciate an early table. Welcome to early parenthood, a time where I’m fulfilling more clean-living clichés than the average self-respecting Gen Z-er.
Take drinking. The so-called sober generation has nothing on me: I’ve managed two glasses of wine so far this year. When I go to the doctors and they ask how many units I drink, I apologise for not having a more respectable weekly quota. On holiday, I ordered a glass of wine, looked at it, and couldn’t quite stomach the idea of voluntarily missing out on any extra seconds of sleep (even one glass means I wake up at 4am) when I’m in a household of unreliable sleepers.
I’ll often automatically accept a glass if we’re having lunch or dinner with friends and then just leave it untouched, which must be rather annoying, but my habits haven’t caught up with the reality that my drinking has fizzled out for now.
My idea of a good night out also rivals the healthy living priorities of those born between 1997 and 2012. Forget pubs, I go for a weekly sauna to catch up with a good friend, which I look forward to as much as I did a night out in Nottingham bars when I was a teenager. I also try to get to a yoga class weekly, though I’ve been too busy lately and neglected that side of self-care.
Luckily, my children seem to be supporting my Gen Z aspirations: this holiday, they’ve discovered a new game called ‘spa’, where we all take turns giving each other massages. I get to pick from my neck, arm, head, or nose. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to cotton on to this brilliant activity: if parents were given a little book of parenting tips when they have children, this would feature, and I wouldn’t have waited eight years. This week, I’m extending the spa offerings with white face masks that look like they’re straight out of a horror film – even my shopping basket is a Gen Z dream.
When I looked around the restaurant last Saturday night, I saw a mix of young people, dressed in the Brighton Gen Z uniform of spaghetti strap vests and baggy joggers, which reminds me of the Appleton sisters in the late nineties (and here our lifestyles diverge: my wardrobe is not Gen Z), families with children, and friends eating together whom I was convinced had young children at home.
I asked our 17-year-old babysitter Rosie about her dinner habits. “I love going out with friends for dinner, and we go out between five to six, when it’s more relaxed. It gets so booked up and busy later – I find it loud and overstimulating. I’ll always choose to avoid a crowd,” she explains. “Often we do something really chill, like go for pizza and then sit on the beach. Or I’ll make a cute little homemade dinner. It wouldn’t be the type of stuff my mum would have got up to at my age.”
These sound like great nights out, with or without a sleep-deprived brain. I’m delighted Gen Z not only know themselves far better than I did at that age, but also, by and large, are more sensible – it means I place absolute trust in babysitters when I perhaps wouldn’t have in myself at the same age.
I didn’t mean to live so cleanly, though I’m very aware that I’m an older mum and want to live until my children are at least 50, so I’m very happy with my lifestyle changes. Psychotherapist Anna Mathur, author of The Good Decision Diary, tells me that parenting young children often forces a lifestyle shift that mirrors some of the healthiest habits we could choose for ourselves.
“Early wake-ups, more consistent mealtimes and reduced alcohol intake happen out of necessity rather than a wellness plan, but they can have a surprisingly positive impact on both mind and body,” she says. “Also, the way we often limit our activities and stop packing our weekends, when we tune into our children’s tiredness, overwhelm or limited capacity – and often end up benefiting from the slower pace ourselves.
“These shifts often happen without conscious intention,” Mathur says. “We adapt for our children’s needs, but in doing so, we accidentally give ourselves the kind of consistency and boundaries that are psychologically protective too. The challenge is recognising the benefits so that, when life changes, we can choose to keep the parts that serve us – not just to benefit our child.
“It also reminds us that healthy habits don’t have to be driven by willpower or strict rules. Sometimes they emerge naturally from the season of life we’re in. If we can notice and value them while they’re happening, we’re more likely to integrate them into our lives long-term!”
I don’t miss late nights, for now, but wonder if I would if I’d had children much younger, or had never spent a morning feeling ropey after a glass too many. I can’t work out whether Gen Z has worked everything out much sooner than we did, including the joys of early dining, or whether they might itch to discover their more hedonistic side later on when their bodies – and children – are less forgiving.
A horrifying journey with my grandfather persuaded me: pensioners need a driving test