Reflections on fatherhood: Train boys to cook; women are buying cars and apartments too

“If my son ever compares his wife’s cooking to his mother’s, that will be the end of it,” a friend texted me. She was taking pride in her culinary expertise after I coveted the food images in her WhatsApp status.

The hilarious imagery left me in a state of reflection.

Are we still bringing up boys who depend on cooking from girls rather than training them to do so themselves?

It is all over in society. At family functions, girls are more likely to be serving and cooking for visitors in many homes compared to boys.

It is the age-old division of labour; mothers were confined to house chores, gathering firewood and water, before retiring in the house to prepare food for the family.

From this arrangement, a woman was judged according to her performance in the kitchen and there are a lot of idioms in my language discrediting a woman who cannot cook well.

Good cooking as a feminine virtue has been reinforced over generations of commercial and domestic socialisation.

We hardly celebrate boys for cooking well or keeping the house clean. We acclaim them more for physicality and academic performance.

In other words, boys are still prepared to be hunters and strangers in homes and housework.

The tragedy, however, is that the world has shifted fundamentally. Technological and economic revolutions have radically overhauled the social order rendering the historical division of labour absolutely outdated.

First, technology has unshackled women from the slavery of domestic chores. As a young boy, my mother’s life, as most of her peers, revolved around the garden, cleaving firewood, and fetching water from the river. Many modern homes now have all these in the house.

Secondly, and partly as a consequence of the above, women have “invaded” the working place. They are earning income almost as much as men and competing professionally in all sectors of the modern economy.

In practical terms, men no longer dominate or monopolise economic production, which previously gave them an economic edge. This is what men used to bargain for beauty and things like cooking.

Without the historical monopoly of income provision, would men still have any justification to demand that women cook better than them?

Put differently, wouldn’t a modern woman have a right to demand that a prospective husband be a good cook as well?

Cooking is not a trivial affair. It will remain a core element of social and family life into the foreseeable future.

The challenges of current modern life are exerting more pressure on families to cook healthy foods in their homes instead of going to commercial outlets.

So, even with all the technology and upsurge in delivery services, cooking is not about to lose relevance.

Food artists are highly sought after. Great chefs, irrespective of their education, are among the highest-paid workers in the hospitality industry, with some earning way above degree-holding accountants and managers.

And the fact that men excel as cooks in the hotel business is evidence enough that there is nothing inherently feminine about cooking.

So, is there justification to continue treating cooking as a woman affair?

Recently, there was an uproar on social media over a prominent radio personality whose cooking goof had gone viral. One person wryly commented:

“…marrying such a lady (who cannot cook) shows that men prefer zebras that are beautiful but don’t work instead of ugly donkeys that work.”

Yet, men openly flaunt their poor cooking skills and are celebrated as heroes. But I doubt they will enjoy the bias for long. Women are buying cars and apartments just as men did before; men had better become good cooks too.

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