Domestic de-skilling: What happened to us?
Allison, always good for a colourful anecdote, commented provided this description of her female ancestors: "My grandmother could darn but was too much of a ‘career girl’ in her youth ( she didn’t marry until thirty) to learn much more than the basics.
Her younger sister was a genius with the knitting needles, spending one winter knitting herself a suit (skirt and sweater) from cashmere wool and decorating the collar with a bit of fur from an animal she had trapped herself…for my great aunt the feminine arts thrived alongside chopping wood, cruising the trap line, hunting and fishing."
Thanks too, to Laura J., whose comment on the erosion of domestic skills encouraged me to write this post.
I thought, Allison's great-aunt was some woman! Then I realized that Mom would have viewed her outdoorswoman's skills as worthy, but not unusual. They endure today in country life, but the home-based, textile-related arts like weaving, needlework and hand-sewing now mostly serve as hobbies. Canning, once a requisite for families in northern temperature zones, is endangered, though Millennials have resuscitated pickling and fermenting.
In the past, the more a woman could do (though running a trapline is unusual), the more she was celebrated; extra points for caning seats, sinking fence posts, laying linoleum. Today, knitting a matching sweater and skirt is viewed as more craft project than wardrobe production. Who tats anymore?
The de-skilling extends beyond handiwork. With the closure of home-ec classes, at least one generation isn't proficient in the management of food costs. When my father was courting my mother in the 1920s, he was often invited to her family's Sunday lunch. Occasionally, he would bring two (uninvited) classmates, young men interested in a home-cooked meal and perhaps Mom's sister. The chicken roasting in the oven, meant to be carved for five, was stretched to feed those hungry boys by transforming it into chicken à la king on biscuits—and no one the wiser.
For at least the last 25 years, I have met women my age who shamelessly say they cannot cook. Their elected ineptitude startles me; making a simple meal from scratch is a useful life skill.
Hats off to one; Kris, who before the pandemic had relied on frozen dinners and prepared food. She polled friends about their favourite cookbooks, borrowed Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and the classic "Joy of Cooking", and warned her husband that there might be a learning curve. Within a day she had made a sheet-pan dinner. Three years in, she has kept to her goal of trying new recipe every week.
My own domestic competence has eroded like a garden chair left out over winter: rusty spots, wobbles, and areas beyond preservation. In my twenties, I could make most of my wardrobe—and also curtains and slipcovers; refinish furniture; quilt; perform basic carpentry; do crewel and beadwork. I made excellent yogurt (no machine) and barely drinkable wine. You would have killed for one of my macramé belts.
Everything but cooking has eroded, but now I can figure out why Netflix isn't working.
Some of that erosion is due to aging, but more often the result of infrequent practice; I deeply admire those who have dedicated years to mastery. An anonymous commenter sent a link to a British organization, The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) dedicated to teaching and sustaining traditional crafts through scholarships, apprenticeships and the funding of educational programs. I was enchanted to read of persons who pursue bell-making and thatching.
We no longer apprentice ourselves; we have become so accustomed to fast food, fashion, and overnight deliveries that we balk at putting in the hours required to falter, rip out, rework. We want to vault over the beginner stage, accelerate the process. I am a voyeuristic reader of sewing blogs. Paraphrasing Groucho Marx, these days I wouldn't want to wear anything I could make. But at age eleven, I did not begin with a tailored shirtdress, I made an apron with fabric from Penney's end-of-bolt sale pile.
Those who have put in the hours to build their eyes and hands travel another path. Hand-embroiderer Sarah Weiland is one recipient of a QEST scholarship; her printed and embroidered work, the Bushy Bunny Print, is from her web site, Sarah Weiland Collections©.
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| Courtesy of Sarah Weiland Collections© |
And you; I'm always curious about you! Are you in building or maintenance mode, for these domestic talents? What calls to you to learn or develop further?
Comments
Upon opening up a storage bin of summer clothes, I found a (too) long eyelet skirt and two pairs of linen wide leg trousers that needed drastic shortening. They were bought TWO years ago and never used. Out came the sewing machine and ironing board and now I have three new items in my wardrobe.
Nothing compared to obtaining one's own fur trim, but I realized I hadn't done any of these things in years. Maybe it's time to look at those old canning recipes again.
From my teens through college I made most of my clothes and always had an embroidery project going, then working life got in the way. I am an accomplished gardener and that will need to do. Im pretty sure I won’t take detailed needlework up again!
Maybe it is taken as a given that men can’t cook so they feel no need to declare it. More’s the pity.
I am of two minds about this. I really value traditionally feminine domestic skills and enjoy practicing many of them (there’s no thrill quite like that of cobbling together a delicious dinner out of odds and ends that might otherwise go to waste). However with full-time paid work and creative ambitions on top of that my time is limited.
And I don’t believe we ought to expect women to cultivate these skills simply because they are women. Or maybe, we ought to expect/value competence in these realms regardless of gender.
Personally I feel a lot more shame about my lack of competence at male-coded domestic skills. I love watching YouTube videos of women DIYing and imagining being able to do the same! Your countrywomen The Sorry Girls are great in this regard.
Marla: That's terrific! It is one of Mark Bittman's adages that cooking "real food", and largely pant-based, will yield the kind of tangible results you've achieved. I now see that detailed needlework strains my eyes after only an hour.
Sarah: IMO cooking a basic meal in each of the three-squares categories is an essential life skill for anyone. The boasters I refer to are women, and I always wonder what's behind that. Sometimes I ask. None has said it is because she is protesting female skill stereotypes. ("Don't enjoy it" is a frequent reason.) The men in my circle are on a continuum from expert to utterly uninterested. During the pandemic, several moved from casual to more adventurous cooks.
I agree, one should not be expected to cultivate domestic skills because of gender and historic precedent. Whether practiced by males or females, the domestic skills have fallen into disuse more, in my experience, because of the economic system's emphasis on buying services than because women put down their needles and aprons as a protest against gender bias. Urbanization is another factor (my paternal grandmother could butcher a chicken raised on the family farm), as was the postwar boom that made eating prepared foods and restaurant meals more affordable.
I grew up in the US, and my mother married in the depths of the Depression. The idea that someone would take trousers to a drycleaner to have a button sewn on, as a paid service, astonished her. Prosperity never dimmed her DIY ethic.
We should value competence in all the basic household management life skills. Certain environments require supplementary skills and there could be "electives"; if someone is just burning to tat, we should not stand in the way.
I don't think knowing these things are necessarily gender related, perhaps at one time, but now everybody should be able to look after themselves. My nephews are all great cooks, but their mum encouraged (and expected) them to help which, quite frankly is the most important thing in the learning curve. I do wonder about young people generally though, who seem never to have mastered any of these kinds of skills or simple basic knowledge of vegetables as in knowing what a cucumber might be - a real life experience with a cashier in the grocery store. Or where milk comes from. In this regard I think they have been let down, both by their parents and the school system.
Anon@ 3:02: I hope many more readers enjoy the artisan profiles and activities on the link. Please comment anytime but though I allow Anonymous comments, I do appreciate some kind of signature (a pseudonym is fine.)
I think one of the things that has contributed to the lessening of domestic skills is the fast pace of life. There literally are not enough hours in the day to cook, do needlework, sew, garden, and can. Any activity seems to take half a day. And all the while, there is traffic to battle, bills to pay, paperwork to wrangle. I'm all for people doing what they enjoy and love. Cooking does seem to be a survival skill, but not everyone sees it that way.
To this day I cringe when I hear people of any sex declare that they ‘can’t cook’. After my youngest son had toured a friend’s parent’s very high end kitchen renovation the friend stated that he didn’t know why his parents had bothered because neither one cooked. Indeed that kid ate out 6/7 days a week!! As a young bride ( almost fifty years ago;) I was given a little cookbook called Cooking for Two. In it the writer said that ‘ nothing was more comforting on a cold wet day than coming home to a pot of chili that just required you to reheat it and open a couple cans of beer’! It was filled with simple recipes like shepherds pie, grilled pork chops, brownies and chili. It still has a home on my kitchen shelf.
School boards are being pound foolish by not supporting Home Ec programs and shop classes all children benefit by knowing their way around a kitchen, how to plan a menu, write a shopping list, sew a button on and know the business end of a hammer or how to change a tire. These are skills many young parents today can’t pass on because they don’t know how themselves.
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Susan: I've been thinking of that boasting. If one had a formative experience where cooking was drudgery, maybe they decided, I'm not signing on for this. But there is so much room between the grinding out of yet another dinner and utter refusal. A whole generation of food writers have created many quick, easy and healthy recipes. (My mother did not know what a sheet-pan dinner was.) People have alos relaxed their idea of a "proper dinner"; she would never have, for example, served a frittata for dinner.
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/jun/09/australian-fashion-history-timeline-1990-to-2023-top-designers-famous-clothing-labels
Please, dear readers, take time to read this, and, if you possibly can, continue to support local shops and makers.
I appeciate these links so much!
i can knit (dont like it) dress make (quite enjoy it) and embroider and quilt (love them). i also do the traditionally male skills like woodwork painting etc because i was interested in house interiors and in the early days couldnt afford to pay for what i wanted so i learnt to do it myself. i enjoy being independent of tradespeople and knowing i can achieve what i want. i do think people no longer like to put in the time to learn skills that take time... although youtube is a fantastic resource for learning even the most esoteric skill. i recently learnt how to reproduce mercury glass!