Are there skills which you lack due to your fear of stereotyping yourself?

[turdass]

Sorry, badly written title.

What I mean is that my mother is very repressed and tried to bring us up the same way. She made us (sister and myself) do housework as 'We would need to do it too when we had a husband to look after'. As a result, I am crap at housework because I totally rejected where she was coming from with it (even though I realise that being clean shouldn't be associated with gender in any way.)

Similarly, I cannot type/knit/sew as these were all skills which were associated with being a 'good girl' when I was young. (I am 40 now).

Weirdly enough, I am a SAHM right now whilst my DCs are preschoolers. However, I had to really, really fight with myself over this issue. I hated myself for conforming to my parents' views that women should stay at home with the kids but really wanted to spend my children's infancy with them.

Has anyone else had these kinds of weird interior struggles where you reject something which is beneficial or which you want to do because of the 'shame' involved in being a 'stereotypical' female?

...or is it just me?

Proportions are more important in cakes/biscuits/pastry/bread (basically anything with flour in it) than in other food, it's true.

But you get cake at the end!

What mumwithdice said! I always felt quite a lot of pressure to have a sucessful career instead of being a SAHM. I too walked out on my degree after it making me miserable. I work park time now, but I would love to be home full-time, and it's only very recently that my own Mum admitted that she was much happier as a SAHM too. Luckily for me, she did teach me cooking, baking, sewing etc. My Dad taught me woodwork and basic DIY. There was never any hint on a skill being gender specific from them, they were just useful things to know.

I love baking and seem to be a fairly good cook and cake decorator, I can just about sew and feel a need to be on top of housework and ironing (I also hate mess). However, I can also put up shelves, strip down an engine and unblock a u-bend (not to mention tile a bathroom at 39 weeks pg).

I don't think these are gender specific so much these days, just essential life skills. My 2 DDs will be taught all of the above.....

I knit/sew/cook adnintend to teach both DSs and DD how to do these things. I hate the way so-called 'women's jobs/activities' are devalued and looked down on. I think being able to sew a button on to a shirt or bake a cake is as essential is knowing how to check oil in a car, put up a shelf and change a plug.

I'm split on this - I don't like the devaluing of sterotypically 'women's crafts' like (home) cooking and sewing. I wish I could knit but I'm rubbish, too clumsy. My mum taught my to do DIY, to cook, lots of useful skills ... but she also gave me the message that it is unforgivable every to take the short cut. She is just a massive snob about ready-meal and shop-bought bread and so on and doesn't see why I don't make my own bread and cakes (she also considers it a minor miracle that DH occasionally does).

So, the skill I really wish I'd learned is, how to just do the easy thing without worrying about it - cook if I feel like cooking and buy it in if I don't. And the skill of admitting when I'm just crap at something without feeling I owe it to someone to meet some ideal of capability.

And WoT, just out of interest, are you in the UK? I have never, in my life, heard of anyone actually changing a plug!

LRD, I learned how to change a plug for a 'home maker's competition' in the Young Farmer's Club . I was about 12 at the time. Only the girls entered. I didn't win.

I think I learned it in Science at school ... never needed it since and hte teacher did admit it's a pretty obsolete skill these days!

We had to do a 'Hostess' badge for Brownies that sounds a bit similar to your 'home makers' competition' thought .... what were tehy thinking?!

Which wires are which in a plug was on the GCSE Physics syllabus. No clue why.

I remember that you used to buy all sorts of electrical appliances and they never came with plugs, so you had to know how to wire one on. They only recently (in the last 10 years or so) cvhanged the law to make it comulsory to actually sell a microwave or whatever with a plug already on it.

I am - I don't think you can change them any more but I was taufght in physics at school

but not how to spell

I think what gets up my nose most is that it's considered good and important to get girls to do 'boy' things (and it is) but not considered important to get boys to learn 'girl' things (like sewing, knitting) it's a bit like telling boiys to 'man up' if they are crying or upset. Femaleness and female activities are to be discouraged.
I love knitting - i'm into socks at the moment and like i said will be teaching both sexes how to do bith types of activity.

I hate cleaning even though it really annoys me when the house isn't clean. I just saw myself as 'above it' I think and did the bare minimum until recently, thinking life's too short. My DH doesn't clean either but the difference is he couldn't give two hoots whether the house is clean or not.

I visit other people's houses now and am envious of people for whom cleaning is second nature.

I agree with GetOrf that baking is pointless and twee.

Baking is great. Like any cooking, if you enjoy eating the finished product, then creating your own version is infinitely satisfying. I bake a cake about once a week. Look at the ingredients in a bought cupcake then look at the ingredients in a homemade one - that's why I bake!

It's only 'twee' to bake because the media have latched on the idea of baking being something girls do - especially recently regarding cupcakes with all their associations. Is it twee if Gary Rhodes makes a pudding? No.

As a child I was into baking, cooking, gardening, crafts, diy, computers, everything really. From teenage years on that seemed to be replaced with the pressure to be intellectual rather than hands on and the social pressure to spend most of brain power and thoughts on beauty work, even if I hated it all.
Since I've had a man about the place I take 0 interest in DIY, etc. which is extra stupid as DH is crapper at it than me.
So I can't do anything useful at all now.

GetOrf, Textiles would be handy if one wanted to go on to study Textiles, or Fashion etc. One of our more succesful industries in the UK I believe.

I would love to be able to tile a bathroom. Where does one learn how to do this?

I've never felt opposed to learning anything, but that is because I am one of those people who hates not knowing how to do things.

Turd, it's the faff of measuring for me too. Also it's something I feel I should do, which puts me off. My MiL makes amaaazing cakes which I'll never beat anyway. She did a true face combined with a face when I confessed I didn't actually own a cake tin.

Interestingly, DH gets really stressed because now that he is a dad and a husband, he feels that he is expected to do 'man's stuff' like tiling, drilling etc. He does it because I can't but actually, he can't do it either and was never taught to (absent father). DH gets very very stressed when he has to do DIY and says that when he fails at something he feels that he has shown himself to be a failure as a man. So I guess the sharp blade of gender stereotypification (is there such a word?!) cuts both ways.

Heh. My mum got in loads of trouble with her second MIL (my step-father's mum) for serving up a meal with M&S salads featuring. I remember once telling her (the MIL) I had no intention of ever learning how to cook and my mum having to try not choke for laughing. Still can't 'cook' cook in that I can follow a recipe and bang out a few different meals for family and, at a push, friends, but nothing fancy or requiring any great degree of precision.

My own MIL makes wheat-free, sugar-free, dairy-free cakes especially for dh when he visits. So I generously allow him to eat my portion as well .

I'd definitely like to see boys encourages towards the more traditionally feminine pursuits. What do they do about craft subjects in school these days? Ds is in year one and they seem to do painting of course, and he thinks he knows what knitting is (as he calls my embroidery knitting)

Despite my parents' many and serious faults, they tried to give us all an equal skill-set ('60s-'70s). I'm always astonished when a woman tells me she doesn't know how to change a plug OR a man says he doesn't know how to cook/sew.

So I have a decent set of practical skills and got a fairly balanced education. Anyway, you can find any "How To" you need on the internet :)

BUT ... Although I'm perfectly competent at housework, I have a near-phobia of it! I wade through filth on a daily basis. I'm 100% sure this is because of the vast numbers of people who judge a woman by the home she keeps (my home, therefore, wards the woman-hating judgeypants off).
It's slightly irrational but I can't shift it

op - good thread and know exactly what you mean. my working full time single mum brought me up and i have always thought being able to change the oil, put up a shelf, mend things etc as being sign of independence from men (and i've shut up a few scoffing men in the past being better at these things than them) BUT in the same way i find housework type skills like cleaning demaning in the context of doing them because dh works and i dont atm.

I love cooking and baking, wish I was more crafty and would love to be able to sew properly and knit. I can sew a button or hem something but that's about it. I think being able to make clothes would be a very useful skill. Housework is done 50/50 between me and DH, DD will start having to do her share when she gets older. I hate when people I know moan that their older kids do nothing or they spend all their time tidying up after them!!

Equally though I like to know how to do more 'manly' things. I can change a plug and had to donut once. I can't remember why but I taught myself from the piece of paper attached to the plug. I'm quite good at flat pack and decorating. I grouted the bathroom too. I have been driving for 9 months now and would love to go on a course about car maintenance. I know how to oil, tyre pressure etc but would like a bit more knowledge. I know how to change a tyre in theory but never actually done it. The only time it's needed changing was when (6 weeks after getting it) my tyre blew on the motorway, during rush hour, in the dark and it was -7. I let the RAC do that one!!

I have to say I disagree about child development GCSE being worthless. My sister did this and went on to do 3 years at an FE college and now works with children in a residential setting who have severe autism. She's hoping to go to uni to become a soial worker who specialises in working with disabled/SN children. The GCSE gave her a good foundation for what she later went on to do.

Good thread! I'm in both camps. At school I avoided needlework, child care and typing like the plague but did do Home Ec.
Childcare seemed a complete waste of time to me plus all the not terribly bright pretty and popular girls did it so that was me out.
Now, I can bake , I'm a SAHM but I also look after my car, fix stuff around the house and run four kids and a house on my own five days a week.

I used to reject traditional "womanly" activities as mentioned in the OP but have really started to enjoy a few of them in the last few years.

What motivated me to learn was in fact basic necessity. I did take up cooking and baking only when I realized that a) I was spending a fortune on ready meals and restaurants and b) was not liking the food I ate very much a lot of the time.

I consider dressmaking my favourite hobby. Again, the reason why I decided to learn how to sew was the fact that I could not afford to buy the clothes I really liked - so I thought I could make my own. I'm now the proud owner of a collection of stunning cocktail dresses I never get to wear (as well as some more practical stuff).

Practicality really matters to me, though. If it doesn't benefit me, I don't need to know. I don't like knitted stuff much, for instance, hence I'm not interested in knitting. I'm also definitely not an artsy type, so please stay right away from me with your flower arranging and embroidery.

That having been said: I can't type my way out of a wet paper bag - and I'm a programmer!