According to recent polls, 56% of Americans struggle with the most basic recipes. 56. More than half of Americans can not follow recipes, especially after Home Ec classes across the country have stopped existing, with only 3.5 million students out of 54 million being enrolled in Home Ec classes. And the end of Home Ec has some results that others could never expect.
- Cooking
As I mentioned before, a staggering number of Americans struggle with being able to cook the most basic recipes. Instead of eating home cooked meals, more and more families are eating frozen, pre-cooked food, or food from restaurants, which in turn leads to an increase in obesity rates in the U.S.
- Other skills
As financial skills have been plummeting in recent years, bringing back Home Ec would open countless doors for people who don’t know how to do taxes, because let’s be honest, school does not do an amazing job at teaching how to file taxes, how to open Roth IRAs, and various other financial forms that come with turning 18.
- Benefits
46% percent of families don’t eat dinner together at night, and with that, children who don’t eat dinner with their families are more likely to develop obesity, have lower self esteem, higher rates of depression anxiety, and are more likely to develop substance abuse problems.
As less and less families eat dinner together, which causes such a large myriad of issues, I think that bringing back Home Ec could open up the door for more kids to not only learn how to cook, but also break gender norms. For so long it was seen that only women belonged in the kitchen, but bringing back cooking classes will make it so more men can learn how to cook, and pass it on to later generations. By passing it on to later generations, and cooking for their future families, Home Ec will have a domino effect, hopefully ending the cycle of not only men not cooking, but also helping to decrease the negative effects of not eating as a family.