When Will You Teach Your Kids to Cook, Clean, and Sew?
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What domestic skills do you remember your parents teaching you — and what do you plan to teach your children? If you have brothers, did your parents teach them different skills than the ones they taught you? When do you plan to teach kids to cook, clean, and sew (as well as other domestic skills)?
Some backstory here: Somehow, recently, my boys amassed like six pairs of pants with rips or holes in them. I almost never get out my sewing kit, but when I pulled it out to see if I could sew up some of the rips and holes, I decided I was going to show my 10-year-old son how to mend.
My mother just about fell off her chair laughing at me — as a child I had a kneejerk NO THANKS reaction to anything related to domestic arts. (Where “no thanks” probably would have been a lot kinder than whatever sarcastic reaction I came up with back in the day. Sorry, Mom!)
But part of me remembers feeling like this act of passing down domestic skills was a sexist, patriarchal thing — why did I have to learn how to sew but my brother didn’t? Why did I need to take a cooking class? (In fairness to Mom, I’m four years older than my brother, so it may just have been that I was getting these lessons first.)
I fought hard against all of it, and as a result had very few of those skills when I finally went off on my own. The first time I did my own laundry was when I was 17 at summer school. I was 20 before I cooked raw chicken for myself. Around the same age, when some of my favorite socks got holes in them, I was quietly happy I knew enough sewing skills so I could mend them.
(Meanwhile, my husband started doing his own laundry around age nine — and knew how to cook the basics by his early teens.)
So I thought it might make an interesting discussion here — what domestic skills are you planning on teaching your children, and when? (Do you plan on teaching your kids to cook, clean, and sew?) How did you acquire the domestic skills you have — parents, friends, special interest, or necessity? If you have brothers, did your parents teach them different skills than the ones they taught you?
Stock photo via Deposit Photos / Spaces.
