I prepared for adulthood/marriage on the old model, and it did not serve me well.
As an extra anecdote, my wife says she prepared on the old model, and that it did serve her well (or at least, she doesn’t regret).
I can see two perspectives:
A) The “traditional” model is good advice for a majority of the population, but is useless or harmful for a minority, in which case situations (like yours) where the advice failed may not be enough evidence that the advice was bad.
B) The “traditional” model may have been useful in the past, but society has changed too much (we live in large cities and know few of our neighbors; there’s less physical work, a single earner can not usually support a family any more, many house tasks have been automated or outsourced), that the “traditional” model is about as useful as career advice from the 1920s.
I expect it’s a mix of both, with the second effect probably being a bit stronger.
Good cooking skills provide a lot of utility for all members of the family. The costs of cooking are mostly the time spent cooking and the time spent learning cooking. The benefits of good cooking are pleasant experiences of eating tasty food, better health because of using more healthy ingredients, and saving some money (depends on cost of cook’s time, and the size of family).
The traditional heuristic reduces the total costs of learning cooking by assigning the task to one gender. Also, in the context of traditional society, it is the gender with less income from work, therefore the opportunity costs of learning cooking are smaller.
On the other hand, contemporary society increases the opportunity costs for women, and also provides relatively cheap cooked food (probably still not as good as a good cook can make at home, but the difference is getting smaller). Also the costs of learning cooking are smaller because of available semiproducts and internet recipes; you can get mediocre results with trivial costs.
My (male) opinion is that the best solution today would be for everyone to learn some basic cooking (pasta, rice, soup...), at least the trivial recipes of form “put all ingredients together and cook for n minutes”. After three experiments with each of them you learn to avoid the basic mistakes (too much salt, undercooking, overcooking) and get some basic confidence. From that point later: if you need to cook, cook; if you don’t need to cook, at least do it once in a few months to preserve the skill. You have passed the psychological barrier, the rest is mostly about experience.
Perhaps one problem here is expecting too much too soon. A beginner cook may feel pressed to provide results on expert level. (An advice to the expert cooks: you are really not helping by providing thousand little unsolicited information. Inferential distances, et cetera.) This is why many people learn cooking when they are alone, cooking only for themselves. Also: Learning basic cooking is not a precommitment to get to the expert level. There is nothing wrong with mediocre cooking skills, they already give lot of utility; and if you later change your mind about this, you can complete your learning later.
My (male) opinion is that the best solution today would be for everyone to learn some basic cooking (pasta, rice, soup...), at least the trivial recipes of form “put all ingredients together and cook for n minutes”. After three experiments with each of them you learn to avoid the basic mistakes (too much salt, undercooking, overcooking) and get some basic confidence. From that point later: if you need to cook, cook; if you don’t need to cook, at least do it once in a few months to preserve the skill. You have passed the psychological barrier, the rest is mostly about experience.
Agreed. I myself am slightly ahead of the “put all ingredients together and cook for n minutes” level, and planning to move forward.
As an extra anecdote, my wife says she prepared on the old model, and that it did serve her well (or at least, she doesn’t regret).
I can see two perspectives:
A) The “traditional” model is good advice for a majority of the population, but is useless or harmful for a minority, in which case situations (like yours) where the advice failed may not be enough evidence that the advice was bad.
B) The “traditional” model may have been useful in the past, but society has changed too much (we live in large cities and know few of our neighbors; there’s less physical work, a single earner can not usually support a family any more, many house tasks have been automated or outsourced), that the “traditional” model is about as useful as career advice from the 1920s.
I expect it’s a mix of both, with the second effect probably being a bit stronger.
Good cooking skills provide a lot of utility for all members of the family. The costs of cooking are mostly the time spent cooking and the time spent learning cooking. The benefits of good cooking are pleasant experiences of eating tasty food, better health because of using more healthy ingredients, and saving some money (depends on cost of cook’s time, and the size of family).
The traditional heuristic reduces the total costs of learning cooking by assigning the task to one gender. Also, in the context of traditional society, it is the gender with less income from work, therefore the opportunity costs of learning cooking are smaller.
On the other hand, contemporary society increases the opportunity costs for women, and also provides relatively cheap cooked food (probably still not as good as a good cook can make at home, but the difference is getting smaller). Also the costs of learning cooking are smaller because of available semiproducts and internet recipes; you can get mediocre results with trivial costs.
My (male) opinion is that the best solution today would be for everyone to learn some basic cooking (pasta, rice, soup...), at least the trivial recipes of form “put all ingredients together and cook for n minutes”. After three experiments with each of them you learn to avoid the basic mistakes (too much salt, undercooking, overcooking) and get some basic confidence. From that point later: if you need to cook, cook; if you don’t need to cook, at least do it once in a few months to preserve the skill. You have passed the psychological barrier, the rest is mostly about experience.
Perhaps one problem here is expecting too much too soon. A beginner cook may feel pressed to provide results on expert level. (An advice to the expert cooks: you are really not helping by providing thousand little unsolicited information. Inferential distances, et cetera.) This is why many people learn cooking when they are alone, cooking only for themselves. Also: Learning basic cooking is not a precommitment to get to the expert level. There is nothing wrong with mediocre cooking skills, they already give lot of utility; and if you later change your mind about this, you can complete your learning later.
Agreed. I myself am slightly ahead of the “put all ingredients together and cook for n minutes” level, and planning to move forward.