General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How the Fast Food Industry Destroyed "Home Ec" to Hook Americans on Processed Crap [View all]bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)Mandatory. Both genders all classes.
I first noticed this over 30 years ago when I took a group of kids out on a trail ride picnic. Most of them had never seen corn in the husk or had any idea that baked potatoes had to be washed. Apparently none of these kids, all from upper middle class families, had never seen food prepared from scratch.
Ideally, kids should learn this stuff from their parents, but let's face it, these simple life skills are often not passed down. Most parents have fairly limited knowledge or have strict ideas about what children of each gender need to know.
My husband's and I grew up in the 60s. My husband's mother was of the firm belief that boys did not need to learn to cook. His father thought that a woman working on a car was a joke. My parents were a bit more open. Once my mother went back to work, my Dad, who got off work early, did the cooking and I helped. He also taught me to change a tire and check the oil on the car and do simple electrical repairs around the house. To this day my husband is helpless in the kitchen though he has learned to do the dishes and laundry, much to my mother's horror, by the way.
The point of this is that ideally kids should be exposed to the full range of everyday stuff they'll need to know to survive in the real world.
There are plenty of villains here. The fast food and convenience food industries are just two. I'd add also a brand of feminism which demeaned traditional homemaking skills, the rise of the two job family--when both parents are working it's hard to take time to cook and the over scheduled child. When Mom's ferrying the kids from class to game to party to practice it's hard to find time to sit down and cook with them, much less to teach them to balance a checkbook or change the oil.