learn to cook

From a NYTimes profile of the novelist Claire Messud:

"I had a sense that the costs [of having a family] were high,’’ she said later. ‘‘And I had a sense that I didn’t want that to be my fate. I had a sense that I’d better not learn to cook, which I never did."

From a Harper's magazine article on women in the alt-right:

In late 2016, two pundits started an online advice column...a female reader looking for an alt-right spouse got [this] advice.“Become as attractive as you are capable of. Commit to having many white babies!...Learn to cook.”

Why is a woman learning to cook making a "traditional" statement of some kind? Cooking is a skill, and a crucial one at that.  You will eat thousands and thousands of meals in your lifetime. Why would you cede the responsibility for preparing all of those meals to others? By learning to cook you are neither resigning yourself to a lifetime of drudgery nor preparing to find an alt-right husband: you are learning a basic skill. 

Obviously this applies to all humans, regardless of gender. It always seemed insane to me that anyone could make it to adulthood without learning to prepare a simple meal for themselves. This is poor parenting! Learning to crochet can be optional, learning to feed yourself should be mandatory.

And maybe if Claire Messud ever learned to cook, her husband—who, according to the article, is an excellent cook—could finally be free to have a career! Poor man.