I don’t get this either. How can you make it to adulthood without learning how to cook? Even if someone does most of it for you, you’d think you’d learn a few things along the way, like I learned so much about cooking just working near a kitchen in my 20s.
I guess, though, if you don’t think it’s a skill you need, you just don’t put effort into it. That makes it easier to play dumb.
And, I guess that big thing here is the distinction between can’t and won’t.
Same. Baking is where I draw the line. Unlike cooking, you aren’t just following directions. There’s a magic X factor in baking that I just can’t deal with it.
I’d define it as the ability to prepare food in whatever format you like. Opening a box and dumping something frozen on a pan is cooking. Being able to cook well is another thing. Some people just don’t have the knack and that’s fine. The problem isn’t those people. The issue I have is with those who never even try to pick up this basic life skill.
I used a bread maker for years. Even though it simplifies things, you can still do everything right and get it wrong. That’s why I don’t like baking.
Yeah, for me it started with being pretty poor and starting with package meals, like Knorr’s fettucine type things, or that boxed cornbread or cake mix.
The guy I mentioned above, when I “brought stuff over to make him soup” it was a can of soup and some bread and butter. He didn’t even have a means to make such a thing at home. He got literally everything he ate from take-out places. To me, living on a shoestring for decades, that just seemed like a waste of limited funds.
So I guess “necessity was the mother of invention,” but then we’re back on the “women’s work” train.
It gets exponentially more complicated and hectic as a single parent.
The social fabric of the USA is built around the nuclear family, at least in my area. School sports or parent teacher conferences? All have to be done by 5:00 pm, when I’m supposed to be at my paid job. Ballet practice? No matter how much I’ve pleaded, always start no later than 5:15. Everyone expects you to “find the time” for everything, and you’re a bad parent if you don’t. I’m often starting work at 6:00 am or working until 1:00 after the kids go to bed to for it all in.
That’s where I see the mysogyny the most. I get treated like an effin’ saint for taking care of the household and kids. Single mothers, on the other hand, are assumed to be some sort of moral failure, as opposed to, say a widow, or someone who left an abusive relationship, or were abandoned by a deadbeat partner. I’m constantly reminding my boss, who is a great person but hasn’t lived the life, that, no, he can’t just voluntold staff to work at conferences because they have home duties and no child care options.
I can imagine it’s waaaay more complicated for single parents. I had a taste of that this summer when my wife broke her ankle. The amount of work required to get everything even kind of taken of was intense, especially since I still had to work throughout everything.
Around here, though, a lot of married women basically are single parents. If their husbands are just straight up gone 3 weeks at a time for work (and completely useless when they’re around), they’re just completely useless. One woman my wife knows refers to her partner as “the fully grown child I’m marrying”. I was raised in a pretty traditional household and I still can’t imagine expecting someone to do literally everything for me like that, especially when kids are involved.
I can’t understand that, either. My grandpa, the one who killed nazis with his bare hands (okay, he was actually part of an AA gun crew), would say something to the effect that a man wasn’t a real man unless he could cook and clean for himself.
He was a great role model: he cooked, cleaned, did the dishes; whatever needed doing. He and grandma would coordinate the house work so it got done and they had time for more interesting things. They had five kids, and grandma worked full time.
He was very egalitarian, and all around great guy!
