Barefoot N’ Pregnant: Why I Never Learned to Cook

Let me start by saying that many of the reasons why I barely cook are the reasons that lots of Americans don’t cook: an overscheduled, workaholic life, the convenience of eating on the go, and the availability of quick and tasty food.  My recent decision to remedy my cooking impairment goes beyond my concerns over my weight—it has led me to spend too much money on eating out and to feeling that I am not self-sufficient; not fully a Grown-Up, if you will.

My toast is better than your toast

There’s another reason too, one that’s a bit more personal.  Up until recently I felt it was my duty as a “liberated” woman to avoid learning how to cook.  When I was little, my mother instilled in me the importance being a modern female.  She encouraged me to pursue any career I wanted, stressed the value of being an independent person, and taught me to believe that my abilities were equal to that of men.  For that, I’m really grateful.  Despite all that she taught me, I couldn’t help but notice the asymmetry of her own marriage to my father—how she seemed both to work and be in charge of all domestic duties.  I resented this, and vowed to myself that I would never accept a relationship that wasn’t 50-50.  This became crystal-clear to me after my father retired and became a man of leisure, while my mother continued working, cooking, and doing all the housework.

“Why don’t you make him cook for himself?”  I asked her all the time, and she never had a satisying answer for me.  In my mind, my mom’s cooking represented the essence of an old-fashioned marriage in which women are as much servant as partner.

My mom turns out to be typical of women in general.  According to a few polls, women—including working women—still do the lion’s share of domestic chores these days. A 2007 study based on data from the British Household panel survey found that working women spend an average of 15 hours a week doing household chores, whereas men spend only 5 hours.  The data from this study on cooking are even more asymmetrical: 75% of mothers and only 9% of fathers did most of the cooking for their children.

I am the Wife Robot, here to serve you (image via las - initially at Flickr)

I don’t think this is fair.  For me, a fear of upsetting the equality balance in my relationship kept me refusing to cook.  My husband is the opposite of a “Where’s my dinner, Woman?” sort of man, but throughout our marriage he hasn’t been interested in cooking either.  He has a pretty good reason, though: he barely has an interest eating.  He has a medical disorder called Gustatory Anhedonia (a fake disorder that I just made up), meaning that he hardly notices whether he’s eaten food and could go a whole day without eating if I didn’t remind him.  He’s been that way ever since I’ve known him.  For him, eating is usually just a body requirement, not a source of pleasure.  In contrast, I love food.  It has always made more sense for me to become the cook.  The payoff for my stubborn refusal to do so has been an extra thirty-odd pounds of body weight and terrible cholesterol—a brilliant strategy, no?  In an effort to keep my identity, I have lost another part of my identity: that of a healthy person.

Obviously, I have been very silly for a long time.  It took me too long to realize a few important things: 1) My health—as well as my husband’s—is more important than any other consideration, 2) It’s unreasonable to expect him to become the primary cook, given his general disinterest in food, and 3) He is a trustworthy, generous person and I have to trust him to pick up the slack in other household domains to compensate for my extra efforts—no matter what my past experiences tell me to expect from men.

So here I am, learning to cook. No evil, anti-feminist genie has gone “poof” and caused me to end up barefoot and pregnant, carefully reapplying my makeup and putting on heels that match my frilly apron while I wait for my husband to get home from a hard day at work.  Imagine that.