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That’s a really good start. Some people are helpless in the kitchen. I’ve known two women who were older and told me that they had never cooked anything. Both were married.
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Restore AllHide UnarchivedIt's extremely common, and is largely considered one of the biggest causes of skill drain in Millennials and gen z.
Boomers and older gen x LOVE to talk shit about how the younger generations don't know how to do basic shit for themselves, they need to ask for help and/or look for tutorials online.
Yet they're conveniently ignoring the fact that it was their job to make sure their kids learned those skills. They didn't come out of the womb knowing how to change the oil in their car. They had to be taught, just like we do. Except while they grew up in a time where most families still prioritised teaching kids these things, they never bothered doing the same themselves for their kids because they "were just too busy". And then wonder why their kids never picked those skills up and have to play catch up well into their adulthood?
I'm not saying it's necessarily their fault we turned out like this. They were the first generation/s to find themselves raising a family during the rise of modern capitalism, and the ever-present pressures of earning a paycheck to support the family at the time no doubt left them feeling like they genuinely didn't have the time to actually raise their kids. But Jesus, a little self awareness would be nice??
You know what also screwed millennials and gen z over in this respect? The decline of home ec and shop classes. There was some basic instruction given in many schools, but as budgets got squeezed and teaching to the test(which did not cover those subjects) was prioritized in order to retain funding, a lot of schools dropped or severely cut back those programs. So if the parents didn't teach it, and the schools stopped teaching it...yeah, nobody's gonna magically just know it!
For Americans, this is the correct answer. Many boomer and gen x's were able to learn life skills (cooking, changing a tire, etc) from their parents, but almost all of them were taught basic life shit in home economics and shop classes in high school.
EDIT: To be clear, until the early 90's home economics and shop were REQUIRED classes in most school districts.
When you realize you have to learn this stuff on your own, you will be light years ahead of others...
Of course learning to critically think and assess new information, read & retain relevant information, and learn on your own...is something that must be learned (and everyone learns in different ways)
just think about driving a vehicle. did you want to learn to drive a stickshift? well you have to learn it yourself or good luck in the USA to have someone teach you. Then when you go to Europe you don't just sit in a car befuddled how to drive it...
I'm a millenial. My mum never taught me either. Not once. Didn't even try. I saw her cook, though, and grasped basic concepts through watching, but I mean very basic. And others out there, I know they didn't pay this much attention at all, so they can't even boil an egg. I moved out when I turned 19. I was like "o-, I guess I gotta cook now". The first few years mostly consisted of pasta and sauce, and oven meals with frozen ore-made stuff 😅
Millennial as well, my mom never taught me to do chores and cook as well. I pretty much picked up the skills by becoming invested in cooking shows (Good Eats), watching the early morning shows on my local news station that featured a Queen of Clean, and public broadcasting in general for helping me get those skills.
That said I will forever suck at mopping the floors.
Aww...I'm Gen X and my son is an amazing cook. He's 20, lives out of home and eats so well.
Growing some herbs and veggies helps get kids interested in cooking.
I never made anything more complicated than a toasted sandwich the entire time i was living at home. It was a rough adjustment going straight into living by myself.
I'm a pretty good cook now, turns out i actually had somewhat of a natural talent for it, but i never picked up the joy of cooking that a lot of people who grew up cooking with their family usually have. Feels like i really missed out there.
Good on you for doing right by your son. Not everyone is so lucky.
Yeah in my case in the rare event they would try to show me or I would try to help they would usually watch and like end up just doing it and not really letting me fully figure it out.
Generally I know most things but hadn't actually DONE a lot. Now I'm alright and know more than a lot of people my age like car stuff and general troubleshooting skills and all that for many areas but I still feel like I was held back greatly.
Also I'm now EXTREMELY nervous learning anything new say in a work environment because I can feel them staring knives into the side of my head and it makes me not think clearly and mess up and it just snowballs from there. I feel like I learn slower when in that kind of environment but on my own everything is a breeze.
Gen X here. I was a latchkey kid, no one was ever home so I had to learn how to cook, clean and do things myself without anyone around. It was pretty common.
Bingo
"They had to be taught"... No this just isn't accurate. You can learn on your own. ANd that's what the Internet is for...well the Internet of the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Now it seems everyone goes online to spread misinformation or vegetate on social media
... Did you think about your comment at all before you posted it?
????
There used to be a magical class called 'home economics' that students (mostly girls cos sexism) got to learn some of these basics. Cooking, cleaning, mending, budgeting, taxes.
Then school funding was gutted by the people who were voted in by the people who'd had those classes but those voters didn't have any self awareness and assumed their kids would learn those things in school just like they had. And then blamed the kids when those classes didn't exist anymore.
This is something I’m trying to fix for my kids. I also just want a quiet empty kitchen while I cook, so I haven’t really taught my kids much. I need to figure out how to include them more.
Could try getting them involved with different steps one at a time. Have them help with prep one meal, then you finish up as they set the table or play for a few minutes. Then the next time you handle the prep and have them do the second part. If you have multiple kids you could limit to one at a time so it isn't too much for you to manage, doing alternate nights could also create some 1:1 time which is great for bonding.
This is honestly very common in southern households, I don't know how to cook but I can read directions for recipes online and whatnot so that's how I make do. When I was younger and all the adults were cooking for holidays or just cooking in general it was " kitchen is off limits"
My mom didn’t let me cook. I had to take home economics to learn how to cook for myself. I was called slurs for being a male and wanting to know how to care for myself
My MIL taught her sons all the homemaking skills she knew specifically so they would never need a woman to take care of them. God bless that woman’s soul. I wish every boy mom were like her.
These women had an attitude…both said “I DO NOT cook, as though it was something they were proud of”…the one I worked with had a sister who worked as a cook.
With so many women in the workplace these days it’s not a big deal, but in the 80’s you could more advanced degrees than any of the men in office, but as a female you would still be expected to make and serve coffee to everyone in a meeting. If someone wanted pastries or something they would assume you would make them for the group. A lot of professional women my age absolutely refused to learn to cook for this reason. It was sort of an ‘I am the opposite of women who are housewives’ vibe.
Yup, that was my aunt. She could cook, and was great at it. None of her coworkers knew she could. Potlucks she would bring canned soup poured into a crockpot. I saw her prepping that one time, after making an elaborate easter spread, and asked her about it. She was a Personal Assistant to the CEO of a defense company. She had high ranking security clearance, because in those days the PA would take meeting minutes (notes) on a typewriter, establish his schedule, travel with the C-suite, etc. Even in a position of higher rank, when the CEO wanted to host skip-level meetings with those not under his direct report (the drones), the men would expect her to refresh their coffees and bring in cookies (homemade snacks for a meeting over 2 hours long was super common). A few burnt coffees and terrible cookies later, nobody expected that from her anymore.
She has been retired for ~6 years now, so it’s not like shes ancient.
Your Aunt sounds cool and it's women like her that have helped improve things for the rest of us.
Thank your Aunt from me! x
I totally respect women who refuse to do that kind of menial stuff in professional scenarios... but isn't it LITERALLY the job of a PA to do that kind of thing?
Like this isn't a gender thing, that's just literally the reason you have a PA to begin with right, to handle the menial duties. I would expect one to do stuff like take notes or arrange food regardless of their gender because that's straight up what their job is.
Most of us think that this is kind of a silly thing to have someone dedicated to doing, but that's why the majority of people don't have PAs at all anymore, even relatively high management.
Pa’s can arrange a food delivery, and contact maintenance to ensure the coffee machine works. But she should not be going around a 30 person conference table like a waitress and topping off coffee.
My mom was at the tail end of the silent generation and was the same way. I was born in '78 and she absolutely did not want me in the kitchen. She figured I'd learn by osmosis I guess? By just watching. I got married right out of high school and had to learn everything by myself. Thank goodness for the classic Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, it was a lifesaver!
This is what happened to me exactly.
I’m a guy in my mid 20s and I am not good at making food, my parents always said to get out of the kitchen as to not get in their way and because of that, I rely a lot on other people preparing my food and ordering out.
I started to make some effort to learn but I don’t really have much time to learn anymore so it’s slow.
That was my mom too! But I figured out how to cook ramen, soup from concentrate and fried eggs on my own by the time I was in high school. Actually learned to cook on my own in a grad school dorm. Asked my new friends for help and each taught me a recipe from their home country.
I was a disaster in the kitchen until 2 years ago. Now I can whip up a meal with whatever’s in the house at a moments notice. I wish I’d learned much earlier instead of in my 40s. I might have had a career as a chef if someone had taken the time to show me anything as a kid
When I met my husband he genuinely did not know how to boil pasta. In his defense, his mom died when he was young but somebody should have stepped up and helped him out. So I did. :) he can at least air fry stuff now.
I can understand not being very good at cooking but by the time someone is college aged they should be able to put something together. There are some really basic recipes out there like fried rice that are really forgiving and great for starting points
is this in USA? how were these people eating?
Buying everything premade to eat at home or going to restaurants a lot. It costs so much more when a person doesn’t know how to cook. One of these women lost her husband about a year before she retired. He was the one taking her out all the time to eat. About 6 months after she retired she was telling us that she was going to have to find a job, and the closest place was a small Braums’s restaurant. She had never learned to drive either. And the other one got divorced when she was about 60 years old. She had been married to a dentist and didn’t work any job besides assisting him. I can’t imagine how she could live on whatever money she had to eat in restaurants all the time.
I can cook, I just dont want to. I need to throw my oven in the trash. It smells like someone died in there.
Do schools not have a cooking class in your country? Heimkunnskap (literally 'home knowledge') was one of the most fun classes we had during primary and middle school as we got to make some food and eat it.
let me tell you how I got this ring