This is a comment by Nick says. on the comment of the day: “I don’t want to know whether men can or can’t cook — I want to know WHY they do or don’t cook.”
Nick says. said:
As a guy who’s a terrible cook, this is something I’ve definitely been asked before, and it can be frustrating. I would like to be a good cook, and I have made honest attempts to learn, but not everyone can be good at everything. As an example, during April I made a resolution to try cooking at least one new recipe each week for the whole month. It turned out disastrously, with each dish a failure that I had to eat for the next few days (when it was even edible!). So WHY do I not cook? I have several hypotheses:
1) I have ADD, and I struggle with it a lot both at home and at the workplace. I have a lot of trouble even staying focused on a single task, and so when multitasking in the kitchen I inevitably mess something up. For normal folks I guess cooking must be pretty easy, but for me it’s terrible. Imagine cooking. While you’re reading this blog. While you’re driving a car. That’s pretty much what it feels like – every time I look around something is boiling over or burning or I forgot an ingredient. When was I supposed to add the vegetables? Oh! Before the… goddamnit.
2) I didn’t learn how to cook from my parents. My mother did all the cooking (except the traditional male cooking roles), and I was such a terror in general that I was generally banned from the kitchen while she was cooking. “Can I help?” “NO.” Growing up I also just never had any interest in cooking. Perhaps this was effect of my parents’ gender roles affecting my interests. I knew that I wouldn’t be allowed to try cooking, and I never knew of any positive male role models growing up that cooked. To be fair, since I graduated college my mother has been more than happy to help me learn to cook. And to be fair, I’m just as bad at traditionally male cooking roles as well.
3) I could always try harder. This isn’t the hardest thing I’ve done.
So what does this boil down to? If gender roles were becoming more fluid, I would predict that the discussion right now would sound something like “everyone, regardless of their gender, should be able to like, or dislike, cooking.” Instead this sounds to me like “Men should be able to cook”, which implies that this is yet another skill added to the “Man” repertoire, right next to car repair and home improvement. Spoiler alert: I’m bad at those things too.
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The post “I knew that I wouldn’t be allowed to try cooking and I never knew of any positive male role models growing up that cooked.” appeared first on The Good Men Project.