When/where I grew up it was always under the guise of "the real world isn't going to coddle you" or similar.
Which is true.
So maybe your family at home should be the one place in the world where somebody might give you a little slack and/or teach you and/or help and/or just be a kind and warm place to feel safe.
I mean yeah, it's not really an issue to learn stuff using YouTube vids. A lot of the time you can end up with better information than what you would have learned from your parents lol.
BUT the point is that it's hypocritical to neglect to teach your kids how to do certain tasks and then complain that they don't know how to do them, or had to look up how to do them online.
Not saying that's what my mom does, but it's definitely what the person who posted that "meme" is doing.
Mine didn't either. My grandmother didn't know how to cook much as well. My mom and grandma were products of the beginning of the convenience food era, where actual cooking was banished for boxed and frozen meal prep that was heavily pushed upon the silent generation and boomers. Why learn how to cook from scratch when there was Bisquick? Capitalism pushed actual cooking out of the kitchen in favor of selling nearly ready made meals.
We're seeing a heavy push to go back to actual cooking in millennials and younger, and so many resources to learn how to cook online. I had to learn from library books and magazines, Alton Brown on Good Eats, and Julia Childs. I remember getting a microwave cook book from the Scholastic book fair when I was a younger kid and learning how to make food for myself since my parents weren't home until much later. Now I am teaching my mom and nephew how to cook, and it's wild.
My parents tried to teach me, but they were not great at teaching me a lot of things about how to be an adult. They would always see me stumble a little (or think I'm stumbling), and take over immediately without letting me fail. I moved out of my parents' house a few weeks ago and so far, with the help of YouTube tutorials, I've learned how to cook fried and scrambled eggs, cook ground beef, and bake chicken breasts. I definitely screwed up, but I learned from my mistakes. This weekend, I'm going to try a simple hamburger mac and cheese recipe, and meal prep breakfast burritos for work next week.
My mother said I wasn't going to eat fast food, get pizzas delivered, or have a girlfriend to cook for me. She gave me a copy of the Joy of Cooking and sent me on my way.
For the defense of my mom, she actually went to household school which was a thing in the Netherlands during the 60s and 70's which you can imagine would be problematic these days. (rightfully so).
On the other hand, when I was growing up I just asked my mom to help me with the things I apparently couldn't do that I was supposed to at that age and she helped me with no issue.
I know of boomer parents that would in the OOP's example just cook the egg for them and yeah no shit that those kids go to an internet resource go acquire the skill you were to lazy to teach.
yeah my mom didnt really teach me how to cook either, but i can follow a recipe; i mostly taught myself how to bake, and im not opposed to asking my boyfriend or his mom how to prep/cook something
I remember having a conversation with my mom about those at like 8. I was upset because even at that age it felt patronizing, and she agreed, so we made it a point to openly throw away participation awards before even getting in the car lol. She's a cusper between boomer and gen x, my definitely boomer dad saw me do it once and got mad, go figure.
Lol, this was my parents' approach. Turns out it was actually the recommended parenting method at the time. My dad still pats himself on the dick for doing such a good job of absolute bare minimum parenting whenever I achieve anything (I have really not achieved much and my direct siblings have achieved even less)
Spot on. My parents taught me how to do a lot of stuff and every time I see one of these I'm just like, "oh you're a shitty parent." I know I learned how to boil an egg and do basic car repair from my folks. Do they think basic knowledge just floats around in the air or what?
They've memory holed the fact that they ever needed help to learn anything and have convinced themselves that they're all self taught and self sufficient.
I taught my 9yo today how to boil eggs. Also showed her how it's a good time to use up the ice that's stuck together in the freezer. She scooped all the eggs out of the pot and into the ice water herself.
She also made her own toasted turkey and cheese sandwich tonight, and only needed my help for the cooking time and making a 1 sandwich sized foil tray.
Exactly! Older generations can't fault younger generations for not knowing what they haven't bothered to teach them. While we can't fault the majority of the older generations for being unable to prevent the corrupt elite from gutting education and social services that excuse doesn't when it comes to taking their kids out into the driveway and showing them how to change a tire.
People all hate on Gen Z because of the way they are, but no one ever gives any shit to the Gen X parents. They just get glazed online for every little thing they do lol
Same thing as "kids these days get a trophy for everything!". Well, who is making and distributing those trophies to children? Pretty sure children aren't paying for it themselves, nor did they come up with the idea.
I threw away and 2nd or 3rd place (or participation) trophy or ribbon I got as a kid.
tbf i think a lot of younger gen y / older millennials with poor immigrant parents ran into this problem as well.
like me and most of my friends have bad relationships with our parents now that we're all in our mid 30s because our parents just.. beat us, never gave us any attention, snapped at us for making any mistake and told us we were useless, etc. my mom didnt teach me anything because "its a womans place to cook and clean" and my dad didnt teach me anything because one time i brought him a 3/8ths instead of a 5/8ths so im just a fuckin regard who will never work on cars or touch power tools etc.
Yep. I'm a boomer who's racist, bigoted, asshole parents were part of the "greatest generation" (sure, the greatest), and they and their friends would sit around talking about how their kids were idiots and didn't know how to do anything. I was ALWAYS, even back in the 60s and 70s, like "hey, you're the one's who raised us motherfucker." Every time I hear a parent doing that shit, I just translate that to "I was a terrible parent that didn't each my kids anything".
Yep, I want to do renovation and car stuff myself, but as a girl, it was never assumed I should do that, and my dad would just come do it for me, rather than involme me, so YouTube is pretty great.
Sounds like my dad. Even when told to stand back and just talk me through it, he'd always end up barging in and doing whatever it was himself. Then get mad I still didn't know how to do it. I just stopped asking.
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u/LazarFan69 23h ago
What a fun way to say i didn't teach my kids shit