Single dad under fire for teaching daughter to cook to ‘make her family happy’

A dad admitted that he was teaching his 14-year-old daughter to cook to make her family happy – but he saw cooking as a sign of love, and said she’d been fantastic in the kitchen from a young age

If you want to teach your children vital life skills, should you come under fire for wanting to help them? One dad claimed he wanted to teach his 14-year-old daughter to cook so that she’d make her family happy in the future but understood that some people may take issue with this.

The single dad took to Reddit’s Am I the A**hole forum to ask whether people thought that he was in the wrong for wanting his daughter to cook, because he sees cooking as something you do ‘for the people you care about’. Rather than wanting her to assume a stereotypica l ‘feminine’ role in her future household, he noticed she had a talent for cooking since she was just four years old, so he wanted her to pursue it.

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He wrote: “I am a single father to an absolutely beautiful daughter, ‘Mary’. Mary’s mother died when she was two, and except for the four years when her mother was alive, or we were living with my parents while I attended college, she has been raised solely by me.

“I have been cooking since I was 14, always at home and for the people I care about. It is fair to say I am a pretty damn good at-home chef. It is also fair to say that my daughter blows my cooking skills out of the water.

“She has always taken a keen interest in cooking and has been helping me in the kitchen since she was 4. At 12, I have been giving her 50 bucks a week to pick out her own ingredients at the store and cook dinner every Wednesday, and she has absolutely loved it.

“To give an idea of how skilled my daughter is, last week she made a four cheese risotto, twice baked potatoes and sous vided a steak to a perfect medium rare and seared it perfectly. For dessert, it was a strawberry rhubarb crumble and homemade ice cream. Everything was completely from scratch.

“When she was young, she asked me why I learned to cook and why I always cook dinner. I told her that my philosophy around cooking is ‘you cook to make the people you love happy and healthy’ and that I originally started to learn to cook to impress her mother on our first date.

“Since then, every time she tried new recipes on me and I loved it, she would always joke, ‘If you love it, dad, then (her crush at the time) would love it and would be very happy!’

“This semester at school, she decided to take a ‘Home Cooking’ option in hopes she would learn new recipes and cooking skills. Today the teacher asked everyone why they wanted to learn how to cook, and my daughter responded, ‘To make my future husband and kids happy and healthy.’

“The teacher was shocked at that answer, and I was requested for a meeting with the principal and teacher after school hours. They chewed me out for my unhealthy parenting and grooming my daughter to be a housewife for some man in her future.

“I talked to a group of mothers that I go to for daughter advice and they said I am an a**hole for instilling such sexist ideals in my daughter and allowing her to think that is all her cooking is good for. I am ready to accept any verdict. So, court of public opinion, am I the a**hole?”

People were quick to praise the father and affirmed he was being a good dad by teaching her essential life skills – which she actually thoroughly enjoyed.

One wrote: “I’m a pretty hardcore feminist and a teacher, and this teacher was TOTALLY out of line. If she thought there was sexist brainwashing going on (which there wasn’t) she still had no right to criticise a student’s personal feelings about their future.”

Another commented: “This seems like a miscommunication. Your intentions were to teach your daughter a necessary life skill. Not to teach her that she needs to cook to get a husband or to please him. Plus you’re a man and you cook for your family, so she’s seeing that at home already.

“Plus there’s nothing wrong with that being something that a girl aspires to. Not every girl has to want to be a career woman and that’s ok. Some women enjoy taking care of their families and that’s just as admirable as the women who enjoy reaching new career goals.”

Someone else said that the girl’s response was ‘perfectly lovely’, writing: “It’s a joy to cook for others who appreciate what you make and it feels so satisfying to directly contribute to your loved ones’ well-being.”

“Even more – you don’t have to choose, it is not either/or. Can be ambitious about career AND enjoy cooking for family”, someone added.

What do you think about this situation? Let us know in the comments.