Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr.
- Nickie Charles
- Date:
- [1988]
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![44 Women, food and families more traditional.] Traditional, the cloth cap image. I think that's true I mean not a lot of them wear the cloth caps - But even with young lads there doesn't seem to be much change from generation to generation - maybe a bit more now obviously but I think they're very traditionalist. Despite these apparent class variations in the form taken by gender divisions it is still the case that the majority of women in all social classes are responsible for the preparation and cooking of the daily family meal. If men did cook without their wives' instructions it was often not a proper meal that they prepared: If he said he was going to do a meal he would do something like fried egg, fried bread and fried potatoes which I wouldn't normally do. Well he never cooks a dinner. He just does something simple, something on toast. He could do more elaborate things but he thinks that's my job to cook, his is to make the money. This last point is interesting because it underlines the signifi¬ cance of the way tasks are allocated within marriage. If men were to share cooking then it would clearly have implications for their undisputed status as the main breadwinner, it would indicate a willingness to discuss and even problematise the gender division of labour rather than accepting it as natural and immutable. However, most of the men ensured that this 'natural' division was not questioned by never, or only rarely, cooking run of the mill, proper, family meals. If called upon to cook they usually relied on sausages and chips or other convenience foods: Well, like me I can do Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and do a cheese pie and all he can seem to do is open a tin of beans or spaghetti. He'll get a few rashers of bacon and chips and a load of beans - ugh! Clearly this type of food does not constitute a proper meal and men were not expected to be able to undertake this type of cooking. Most of the women felt that this was basically their job and any help they received was a demonstration of the generos¬ ity of their partner: I do more than he does but I think that he does more than his fair share. When I compare him with my father and his father they do nothing, he does quite a lot... he'll get the meals a couple of times a week. If men were involved in cooking proper meals it was usually a rather more special meal that they cooked, such as the Sunday](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18028706_0057.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
