.jpg)
Due to all of my volunteering, I spend a lot of time each week with people who are more in my parents’ generation than mine. That’s normal enough; once we graduate and enter the work force, our pool of peers naturally expands beyond our age group. I have no problem with this most of the time, but once in a while I feel our generational difference, and that usually relates to our views on marriage.
My friends don’t have extremely different views on marriage than me; they’re certainly not the types who think their husbands rule the roost. I don’t think I’d be able to spend much time with them socially if they did. But there’s one area in which we often differ: making dinner.
Sometimes my volunteering friends and I engage in good-natured grousing about our husbands. This is where the “life with engineers” column came from, because my two closest volunteering friends are also married to engineers. They like to poke gentle fun at their husbands for expecting food, or getting excited when they bake, or their husbands being hungry when they’re not. One new volunteering friend shared that she and her husband go out for dinner every Saturday and Sunday, because she wants a break from cooking every weekend.
All of this is so baffling to me. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked, and how many more times I’ve wondered, “Why don’t you just make your husband cook that night?” or, “if he wants a cake so bad, why don’t you make him bake it for himself?” Many times, my reaction has been met with laughter, as if the concept of the husband feeding himself is so foreign that it’s funny.
I can kind of relate to this. My dad’s not that great in the kitchen. It’s one of the reasons why my brother and I are such good cooks; when my mother first married him, he really didn’t know much about cooking, and she vowed that her children, no matter their gender, would be able to cook for themselves. It’s a life skill, after all. By the time we were teenagers, we were responsible for one meal a week during the summer.
Of course, my dad’s improved a lot since his early marriage days. And the difference between him and many of my friend’s husbands is that he’d never complain if there wasn’t dinner, because mom’s too busy or not around, or didn’t feel like cooking: he can cook for himself and would do if he was hungry. Even if that’s not his strongest skill set, it’s not like he puts the entire burden on my mother. He also balances things out by always doing all of the kitchen cleanup (and he’s also in charge of the laundry, though that’s unrelated).
Jonathan cooks. His family was shocked, but he never did so at home because he didn’t need to. He really doesn’t like coming up with a grocery list, and he’s not a huge fan of shopping (but if he has a list he’ll do it), but if I give him a recipe and provide him with the ingredients, he’ll make it. Many times we make dinner together.
It’s just so strange to me that some of my friends laugh at the concept of their husbands cooking. I wonder if it’s a generational thing, because with most of the friends my age, both genders cook.
Who does the cooking in your house? Would you consider it strange for your husband to do so?
Related Articles:
Who Does the Cooking at Your House?
Is There Such a Thing as Too Nice?
How Does Having Children Affect Friendships?
*(The above image by imagerymajestic is from freedigitalphotos.net).