Feminism's fault that people can't cook?

people don't ask any more because they already know how. They are bombarded with bloody cookery programmes. You can't move for effing chefs and cooks on the telly giving you tips on how to get rid of the garlic smell, adding a bit of worcestor sauce unexpectedly etc.

Honestly turn on the TV at any time and there will be at least one mainstream channel with a cookery programme on it. No one needs to ask their mum anymore because Anthony Worrall Thompson told them last week.

I thought WW2 rationing was meant to be the great slayer of British cooking.

IMO, if people can't cook, that includes men as well as women. If men can't cook because their mothers never taught them, it's highly unlikely that feminism was the cause now, is it?

My mother is anti-feminist, almost militantly so, and can't cook. Neither can my dad.

My brother and myself both taught ourselves from recipe books, the internet, newspaper food sections, and random recipes on the backs of some product jars and packets. It's not a difficult thing to learn.

The idea of it being a 'lost feminine art' sounds a bit silly to me. If anyone's going to complain about it not happening any more, why not call it a 'lost art' and have done? If there was a sudden dearth of rocket scientists or dentists, would anyone refer to science or dentistry as a 'lost masculine art', just because those used to be male domains?

HerB, I think we're expected to feel guilty about leftovers.

I agree with milly. I think there probably are plenty of people who cannot make a pie, but can make a very nice stir fry or chilli.

But they of course could make a pie with a recipe and a bit of practice.

V. good point milly.

Though I don't know, I still think people are expected to know how to use up leftovers aren't they?

But you're right, you're not expected to get 3 meals out of a chicken anymore.

I think our idea of what 'being able to cook' means has changed. For my grandmother's generation, being able to cook meant knowing how to prepare 7 different nutritious basic meals on a budget.

I think it was a combination of the drive to get women out of work and back into the kitchen post-war, and the rise of consumerism that pushed cooking from being a basic skill to becoming a 'feminine art.' This continues to get more and more ludicrous.

So while my grandmother was considered a good cook because she could make a pie, a Sunday roast, a stew and a special occasion cake with some fancy piping, I am expected to be able to cook food from every continent and make the world's most complicated and sexy cupcake.

I don't see how these changes have been brought about by feminism.

I'm with trillian's earlier comment.

I'd love to force feed the author on a diet of my circa 1960 Marguerite Patten 'Cookery in Colour' (generally known in our household as Cooking for Martians) for a few weeks.

She'd be running back screaming to the 21st century pdq

Yes I don't think people don't cook any more.

I think people are more adventurous than they used to be. My mother would never have dreamed of cooking a curry, or a chili con carne, or a nasi goreng, or even a spaghetti bolognese for years.

Fishfingers are nice. So are covent garden soups. Cooking is also easy. You have a go, and mostly you end upwith something that isn't poisonous. The Internet, Jamie Oliver etc, all means it must be easier than ever to learn how to feed yourself even if your parents taught you nothing.

Ho, yes, this 'wicked working mothers' shite, plus the idea that anyone who reaches, exhausted, for a carton of New Covent Garden Soup or a packet of fishfingers is a Bad Mother.

Feminism has raised men's cooking skills, that's for sure.

you don't need to be taught to cook

that's why there are recipes

if you can read you can cook

I'd say its the long hours culture for both men and women is why people might not cook as often as once they did. If you both are out at work all day (maybe out of necessity to put a roof over your head) , then have a commute home, kids to "give some quality time to etc" it stands to reason you might be tired and hungry and want a ready meal.

My mother was working so hard she had neither time nor energy to teach me to cook.

My expensive academic girls school most certainly did not teach cooking.

I cannot tell you how much I wish I had been taught to cook as a child. I am defnitiely making sure that my dd can cook!

Mayornaze- I'd say laziness is why people don't cook, but there are other reasons why someone might think they can't cook.

Fine to be lazy by the way, if you think that ready made meals taste ok, or that the improvement in taste is not worth the hassle of cooking.

In general object to the assertion that people these days can't cook, or English people can't cook, or young people can't cook. I don't think it is based on any evidence.

my dad is a chef

my grandad is nearly 80 and still makes his own jam

laziness is why people can't cook, not feminism

I think the "around 1962" comment might be referring to the publication of that classic feminist book "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan in 1963.

Feminist influence on the school I attended probably did more good than bad, because it led to boys learning to cook as well as girls.

I think feminism has actually raised interest in cooking as one of the lost arts of women. It tends to be women with a social conscience who also tend to care about where their food comes from, what's in it, what the raw ingredients add to it etc. as they don't want to be disempowered consumers eating whatever shit the industrial food companies choose to feed us. I only know one feminist who is not a brilliant cook - all the rest of us are shit-hot, eat yer heart out Nigella.

Me and DH can both cook but he's better than me cos I'm crap at timing, leave things to burn while I lurk on MN etc...

DM is a fantastic cook despite being one of those pesky feminists (although there were rather a lot of lentils in the mid 80s I seem to remember!)

Both my Grandmas(1 working, 1 SAHM) boiled veg until there was no flavour or nutrition left. Neither could be called feminists.

MIL (who pays lip service to feminism but obviously thinks DH's career is more important than mine and once tried to show me how to iron a shirt!) is a pretty crap cook tbh. SIL is a massive feminist but oddly imh expresses this in refusal to cook. So I don't know if she can or not

So I can't see any correlation in my family between feminism and cooking skills. Seems more men can cook these days which is surely a positive outcome of feminism?

Sad that the author of this book and presumable rightwing journalists see "antifeminist" as a selling point for this book! Can't say I'll be rushing out to buy it.

I am the same age as boobooglass and I dont know many people that know how to cook. Its not something that a lot of people bother with nowadays as you dont learn it at school and most people arent interested in it. I think it is mainly because we have so much choice nowadays you can cope perfectly fine if you cant or dont want to cook.

post- WWII ws the dearth of English food. marg relaced butter, evapped milk replaced cream... primula replaced cheddar...

proper cooking witgh good ingredients became viewed as the exclusive province of french chefs.