Feminism's fault that people can't cook?

[sethstarkaddersmum]

From a feature in today's Telegraph on Rose Prince's new book Kitchenella:

'Prince is championing a return to the feminine-inspired, nurturing kind of practical cooking that disappeared around 1962, a casualty of feminism.'

People often fling this claim casually around but it doesn't ring true to me - my working mum was always a better cook than her SAHM mother and anyway DH and I both cook and feminism doesn't seem to stop us.

The change in schools to food technology rather than cooking (design a pizza box rather than actually make a pizza) seems to me to be more of a factor.

WDYT?

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.

you don't need to be taught to cook

that's why there are recipes

if you can read you can cook

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.

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.

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.

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

I am agreeing a lot with Trillian on this thread.

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.

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 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.

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

excellent point Milly.

Also maybe a chilli and stir-fry don't count as feminine-inspired, nurturing cooking as in the bit I quoted.
Yeah, I bet that's it - stir-fry just isn't nurturing enough!

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?

I just noticed this bit in the article too:

'Her quiet revolution aims to show working women how they can cook imaginatively, healthily, affordably - and without fear. She hopes to restore the familial ?conversation? about food that used to be part of growing up. ?My mother wasn?t a yummy-mummy who made fun cakes with us. She was quite stern about passing things on. She saw it as a training. Women are still the main carers of others but there is silence now. Secrets are not passed on. You don?t hear people tell one another what to do - and they don?t ask. My concern is that kids grow up without learning because mothers don?t answer this call to nurture?.'

rofl. So 1. working men don't need to be shown how to cook cos the woman will do it and 2. dads don't have any cooking skills worth passing on?

my dad taught me how to cook steak, which I guess is a bit masculine and bloody.... However in our house dh is the poached egg expert.

also:
'You don?t hear people tell one another what to do - and they don?t ask.'

They bloody do on Mumsnet love!

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?

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.

and you can Google it.

Quite.

Does this woman live in the middle of nowhere? What is she so worried about? Or does she know tht that "OMG, this is a skill we're losing" angle will appeal to the "It's all going to hell in a handcart" audience?

I do always ask myum how to make crumble. Even though I know it's flour and sugar and butter, and ebb tough I probably made crumble more recently than sge last did. :)

well it was the Daily Telegraph.

excellent response in Guardian Comment Is Free, well done Jessica Reed - couldn't have put it better meself!

This 'casualty of feminism' nonsense annoyed me but if you read the article, Rose Prince didn't say that. The journalist tossed it in as a casual aside with no justification. I actually like the sound of Rose Prince (never heard of her before and was geared up to hate on her due to the 'casualty of feminism' remark). She sounds pragmatic and no-nonsense actually, and fed up of the fake stuntmanship and posturing that passes for cookery shows these days.

She actually sounds quite feminist herself in the way she critiques how Nigella and Sophie Dahl are put on TV as sexpots rather than the serious chefs that Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver are seen to be.

Both DH and I cook equally well though so I do challenge her statement at the end that the small minority of young men who do like to cook today couldn't hack doing it every day. Not true in my case but maybe my husband is a rarity. I actually get annoyed with him because he can even bake as well as I can and I find myself getting a bit territorial about that... despite being a feminist. My mother baked all our bread at home and made scones, apple tarts etc and made her own jam etc so I feel like baking is something only I should be good at. Reverse sexism on my behalf!

Actually I do agree that parents ought to try to teach their children to cook the very basics (pasta/baked potato/boiled eggs). It's a useful life skill. Yes it is possible to teach yourself to cook but it's a hell of a lot easier if you have some pointers from your parents first.

The idea however that this is the mother's job as opposed to the father's is clearly ridiculous. As is the idea that feminism has anything to do with the decline in cooking.

My mum's a non-feminist and doesn;t much like cooking (she likes Cook-In saauces and packet mixes et) I am a raving feminist and like cooking though I am hopeless with recipes and more inclined to sort of guess at things and invent them - I remember taking a one-term adult education cookery course when I was 18 because we didn;t have it at school and I wanted to know about it before I left home.