There are two other reasons that article bugged me. I don't think they were necessarily attitudes the writer actually had, but they are attitudes I have run up against in people who take the "What, you KNIT?" disbelieving response:
First off, and this was an attitude I saw some in the very wealthy bedroom community (my family - where my father was a low-level college admin and my mom was a stay-at-home-mom (BY HER CHOICE, I hasten to add), was actually on the "poorer" side of the income spectrum) and it's an attitude I sometimes see in academia (and I find it particularly ugly when an academic espouses it). That's the attitude that manual labor - whether it's mowing your lawn, or cleaning the house, or doing the laundry, or whatever - is somehow beneath you because you are so highly educated or such a high wage earner or such an important person.
I have no complaint against people who, say, hire a gardener because they have health issues that makes it hazardous to work out in the hot sun. Or who believe a gardener will make their yard look nicer and more in line with what they had in mind. Or who'd rather help one of the local teenagers earn a few bucks by mowing their lawn. Or who would rather pay someone to take care of the yard in return for their having that amount of free time back.
What I dislike is the attitude that "There are some people whose station in life it is to do such things as mow lawns and clean houses, and then there are people like me."
Actually, the distaste for manual labor in our culture in general is the reason some skilled-laborer jobs (like mechanics) sometimes go begging, while there's a glut of people with B.A.s in things like English and Psychology and Whatever Studies, and it's why books like "Shop Class as Soulcraft" were written.
(And I've also heard anecdotes about people with B.A.s who could have taken jobs in something more like a skilled trade - but they didn't, because, gosh, they were College Men and College Women and such a thing is below them. I just hope those folks do eventually find a job that suits them.)
The second thing about the dismissal of things like baking, or sewing, or knitting that bothers me is that all of these things are skills. I tend to be very encouraged about seeing people gain skills. Whatever they are. Because I tend to think that more skills gives you more independence and more choices.
A couple of examples: Knowing how to sew. You might never have to do it. (My brother knows how to sew, for example - but he isn't interested in making quilts or clothing, so he rarely sews. But he knows how to). But if you lose a button off a shirt, knowing how to sew means you can quickly and correctly reattach it - you don't have to wait to get the shirt to a tailor, and pay the tailor for it.
Or, perhaps a more "real" example (because I think most people who "don't sew" can reattach a button - though then again, I tell you, I've seen things): you buy a new pair of trousers. Because you're (apparently) shorter and stouter than the model they draft these things on, the trousers are an inch or so too long in the hems.
If you don't sew, or won't sew, you have a couple of choices:
1. Take the trousers to a tailor, leave them, and then pay him/her for the work when you pick them up. Two trips, plus the cost of the work, plus the time lost using the trousers.
2. You can let the cuffs drag, which looks untidy and which means the hems fray. (Or you can roll them up into cuffs, which sometimes looks goofy).
(And granted: if you're a rich-folk who shops only at places like Nordstrom, probably those places have on-site tailors that will alter things as part of the customer service. But if you're an average Jane who buys her trousers at places like "Blain's Farm and Fleet" (and yes, that's where my most recent pairs of Lee slacks came from), you don't have that option).
If you can sew, though, you have the additional option of rehemming the trousers yourself - which is what I choose to do, because it doesn't take very long, really, and it's free. And because I don't have to make two trips out to get my trousers shortened.
Now, granted, in some cases, if you have sewing skill, you may choose to hire someone instead. When my sister-in-law's parka zipper broke, she took it to my mom to see if anything could be done. My mom said she could replace it - but that she recommended taking it to "Victor" ("Victor" is the man in my parents' town who has a small alterations business) because he could do it faster and probably better, as he had an industrial-grade sewing machine that could sew on the heavy parka material better.
Another example, perhaps a more extreme-sewing one, of how having skills gives you more choice: As I posted on, about a week ago, I had had some frustration in finding a dress I actually liked in any of the shops here. So I decided to make my own. And I was very happy with the results. If I couldn't sew or didn't like to sew, my only other options would be to hire my own dressmaker (which would be nice but would probably also be so pricey I wouldn't do it) or continue to search, maybe go to mail order. And while I'd probably eventually find something nice, it was faster and more satisfying to me to make my own dresses.
And another thing about having skills and being able to do stuff: it makes you less helpless in the face of whatever. A person could argue that not knowing how to make stuff leaves you helpless in the face of having to be a consumer of whatever's put on offer - for example, if you don't know how to bake bread or won't bake bread, and the little town you wind up living in has one grocery store and the bread they sell is terrible - well, you're stuck, if you want to eat bread.
I think also having skills that make you feel independent in one realm encourages you to make an effort to be independent in other areas.
Not to wave my toughness cred, or my "so you think you're a feminist" cred, but over recent years I've changed the wax seal on a toilet myself, removed a large tree branch from the roof of my house myself, and removed a mouse or small rat from my toilet myself.
In two of those cases it was because the people I could have hired - or who would have come help me - were sufficiently busy that I couldn't get them out in a timeframe that worked for me (for example: I have one bathroom in the house. Waiting a week for my toilet to be fully functional again is not an option) or I didn't know to whom I could appeal (the mouse). So I did it myself.
And this is another thing about me: it frustrates me when I see people being what I perceive as helpless. Oh, I understand physical limitations and phobias and everything, but I've also seen my share of people who believed they "couldn't" do some thing that I knew very well that they could. And I don't have a lot of patience with that attitude, I suppose it's because I live alone, so if something happens - like the wax seal on the toilet failing and all the plumbers being too tied up with other work - I just kind of sigh and square my shoulders and do what needs to be done.
And actually, I don't think that's a behavior I learned recently. I think I've said before that I was one of those little kids who, if a teacher tried to help her too much, would flail her arms around and go, "I want to do it MYSELF!!!"
And I wonder now how much of that attitude came from my parents - I was pretty much allowed, with supervision, to do a lot of different things as a kid. My parents were good and attentive parents but they also were not overbearing helicopter parents who worried excessively about me - so I got to do things like climb trees, and poke mud with sticks, and build things, and make messes, and generally do the sort of fun little-kid stuff that some of the kids of hyperprotective parents miss out on.
And also, I remember reading the Little House books as a kid. I found parts of these fascinating - how the family smoked meat in a hollow tree, for example. Or the descriptions of the food stored up for winter. Or how Pa built stuff.
I re-read big parts of the books (also some of the later books, which I hadn't really read as attentively - I kind of lost interest as a kid when Laura "grew up" and became a "boring teenager."). And I'm struck about the level of independence that's promoted in the books. And now I can really see Rose Wilder Lane's influence (or perhaps, her influence being influenced by growing up as Laura and Manny's daughter) - Rose Wilder Lane was one of the founders of the libertarian movement.
(N.B. I don't agree with everything the libertarians - either little-l or big-L - say, by a long shot. I just thing it's interesting that she edited her mother's memoirs and was involved in the movement, and I can see aspects of the philosophy in the books).
(Actually, I wonder how some school districts today would react to the books - given the treatment Native Americans get, and the "minstrel show" in one of the later books, and also the very common references to the family's Christian faith).
But now I wonder if reading those books as a kid - and some of the other stuff I read, as well, things like Abel's Island (upper-middle-class-twit mouse winds up stranded on an island and learns to be self-sufficient) and My Side of the Mountain (Boy runs away from his crowded family apartment to family land in upstate New York, lives in a hollow tree with a hawk that helps him hunt) influenced my independence and ideas that knowing how to do stuff for yourself is important and valuable.
(And in reading done much later in life - Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac" - in his chapter on "Good Oak", he writes:
"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside."
And while I don't know that I'd go that far - I'd probably be pretty thin and malnourished if I had to grow and/or hunt all my own food - I do think there's some value in knowing where stuff comes from, and the work that goes into making it.
(There's also supposedly a Buddhist saying about how it "takes 99 people to feed you" and the idea that you should express gratitude for those people - the farmer, the seed-merchant, the person who harvests the food, the person who transports it to the store, all of that)
(Leopold also later discusses how his dog interposes itself between him and the fire he is trying to build - the dog wants it to be warm, it knows that the hearth brings warmth, but, because it does not understand the cause and effect of "man lays wood on hearth, man lights kindling, man tends fire until wood catches fire," it just blunders there in the middle and gets in Leopold's way. And I think there is something symbolic about that. I've occasionally said, "Don't complain about how something is impossible to the person who is doing it" - in other words, if you're being helpless, don't get in the way of someone who's working).
At any rate: I tend to think that developing skills in whatever - cooking, baking (and cooking and baking are two slightly different, if related skills: I know gifted cooks who don't bake, and also people who would much rather bake than cook), sewing, knitting, playing an instrument, building stuff, basic car repair, even things like beekeeping (I have a student this semester who is a hobbyist beekeeper. I think that is very cool) - has value. Both in terms of what you can do with it (I could see my beekeeper student earning extra money corralling swarms, or carrying his hives to melon farms or somewhere where a pollination force is needed) and in terms of what it does for you (it's a little hard to explain to someone who is resistant to the idea that people in the modern world would "bother" to knit the satisfaction that comes from making your own hat or sweater). And also, I just find it interesting when people have "unexpected" skills - like the student of mine who keeps bees. (And I daresay having interests outside of work make a person more interesting. I remember talking with a man on the train - we were sitting at the same table for dinner - and he expressed concern that his father-in-law was approaching retirement and that the man had no interests outside of work. My dinner companion's concern was that his father-in-law would either become one of those men who hounded his wife as she went about the daily tasks (I've seen that happen) or he'd become one of those men who retired, and then died not long after, perhaps in part because he felt he'd lost his purpose in that life (I've known people who said they thought that's what happened to husbands/fathers/brothers).
So, I don't know. I know I really don't have to justify my hobbies to anyone, and anyone who thinks ill of me for having them, the shame is on them. But I also think for people who do want to develop interests and/or skills, there's a lot of value to that.
3 comments:
The third way of dealing with trousers that's too long: come to your mom and harass her till she shorten the hem (that's what my son does). Thank god for longer-than-needed pants: who knows how many times a year i'd see him otherwise!
I agree with you on importance of having skills, especially self-serving skills: ability to cook for oneself or family, to sew, to knit, to clean or do laundry. There is another aspect: only a person who tried to do all these things, however imperfectly, will appreciate the quality and level when these skills displayed by professionals. If your "sunny side" eggs flopped time after time and it took you 3 months to arrive at something edible, you can give full credit to a tender omelet you're served at a restaurant, not take it for granted. Same with a handmade Scottish sweater you buy at a boutique (for what you'd thought an exorbitant price - unless you tried knitted yourself.
Acquiring any skill is good and the more diverse your skills the better. Maybe that's a lesson to be learned in these crappy economic times.
We (as a society) have focused on demanding that people specialize for too long, to our detriment. I can't be too harsh on the young 'uns getting a B.A. in psychology, because there's the pressure to choose a major and there's probably an academic advisor or parent telling them to choose something. Maybe it's time for universities to offer people more multidisciplinary degrees. I would have liked that as a student.
Besides, the more stuff you get to do, the more engaged with life you are, the more people you meet and learn from, the happier you are!
As for that attitude in academia you mentioned, yes, I've seen it too, and it is ugly. I've had some professors who made disparaging remarks about the jobs that students had or jobs their parents had and my thought was always, "Hey, genius, people have jobs like that so they can, you know, PAY, for your exalted class in medieval literature."
As for the helplessness issue, count your lucky stars that you had smart parents who taught you self-reliance. Many kids don't have that.
I have a friend with a PhD in French Lit. Absolutely awe-inspiring command of the subject. She told me that she wound up with basically two career options: teach the next batch of French Lit students, or become a translator at the UN.
She spent the next thirty years teaching middle-school English.
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