It’s a 2 way street. Parents teach but children also must learn. My father was.. in short.. good at anything involving tools. He built houses, he behold cars that won trophies at shows like Hot August Nights. He tried desperately to pass this skill and passion to me, and I refused to learn. Both actively but also passively. Years later I became interested in many of those things. But he had tried to teach me many skills, like a typical child or teen I often turned my nose up or reacted with a shitty or dismissive attitude. “Why would I need to know this- I’ll just pay someone to do it...” “Maybe later dad, I’m going to go play with friends...” and so on. Some people would have killed to have access to the tools and skills and materials he was offering, but most of the time when he taught me anything, it was him forcing me to do some chore that I would half ass or try and get out of. I only learned through what would now be called child abuse. So yes- many parents have failed their....
... kids, but it isn’t any more fair to put all the blame on them than it is to put it all on the kids. What’s more- those parents of the past who taught their kids these skills? Often it was as part of daily life- a life you wouldn’t want. You learned to see because you were a woman so that was one of your “woman jobs.” Or because you were poor and had to fix your pants to wear next week. For the most part we’ve moved passed the idea of drilling “homemaker skills” into women from a young age because we realized women are equals. For the most part- if you didnt need these skills your parents probably didn’t have you living truly poor. Your parents took the burden so you could study and enjoy being a kid. In the end that hurt you in some ways because now you don’t know this stuff. But that’s being a parent. Your kids either appreciate what you’ve done, or they turn around and tell you what a failure you are. You either pushed them too hard or not hard enough. Gave them too much...
... or didn’t give enough. You were too affectionate or too distant, you were too focused on their future or didn’t plan enough for them. It’s a game. You make your life. So in the end you appreciate your parents or you don’t. They did the best job they knew how in a changing time while trying to keep up themselves. Some ass hats will now give you shit for talking button sewing classes. Fuck em. There’s always some dick that will laugh at a person who can’t lift on their first day at the gym- that’s why they are there though isn’t it? They know they can’t and are working to fix it. The fact these people have time and money to afford a class to sew buttons as opposed to having to figure it out says their parents must have done something right. So welcome to the 21st century. Do a better job with your kids- so they can turn around and tell you how much you fucked yo their life someday too.
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· 5 years ago
You looking for an editor by chance? I could use the cash.
I appreciate it, but no thank you. I write on my phone and am usually doing other things while writing, so sometimes autotype gets the best of me, and a large part of my job is being precise and concise- So a good deal of the time I just enjoy being able to speak as I think, without having to be so concerned about executive bullet point or anything. If people read it, that’s nice and appreciated, but if they don’t, I’m not exactly writing world changing or genre defining stuff here, so I doubt they’ll regret it on their death beds.
There are actually many ways to sew a button
And not all of them are effective so
You can mock people for not knowing basic things but mocking them when they're trying to learn is just rude and ridiculous
Is it helpless to actively seek out knowledge to improve your daily life and life skills? Because that seems like a strength to me. Better they actually spend the time to learn the skills they don't know than have to rely solely on others for help because "no one ever taught me" or " I never had to do that as a kid". That is being helpless. Where's the headline calling the Baby Boomers helpless because they're paying people to teach them simple things like how to use a computer? Oh, that's right it's not a problem if they're trying to better themselves but it's pathetic and we're "helpless" when we try.
Sewing on a button and making small repairs to your clothing is easy, I've done it since I was 10. I suspect the title of the original article is highly misleading because from my observations, many young people are sick of the Boomer consumerism on overdrive and as we realize that most stuff on the market is made by Bangladeshi and Chinese kids, we look for more ethical ways to get our clothing. Some people take courses to be able to make their own clothing, some go for ethical brands, some (like myself) buy clothes mainly from thrift stores.
I'm not saying we're all super woke or anything, in fact fast fashion is definitely a problem that maybe not even the boomers had, but my 70 year old grandma and most of her friends could never sew beyond reinforcing buttons. Same with my parents, my mom can do small repairs but that's it, when it comes to a lot of "crafting" I'm the most proficient one in my family. But that's just my personal experience, so feel free to share yours.
Then again when it comes to fast fashion and buying from places like Wish or AliExpress, I find it to be mainly the domain of middle aged soccer mom types rather than young people. But again, just my experience, I'm not trying to pass this off as any kind of evidence of anything.
I agree and disagree. Young kids seem more into “cottage industry.” Learning largely “lost” skills or niche professional skills like making and recovering their own furniture, clothes, etc. building bespoke fishing poles by hand from bamboo or other things like that. They’ve romanticized low volume hand production of physical goods- in part I believe as an attempt to “stay connected” to the physical aspects of life and the history of human industry in an increasingly “cloud” based world where things are nebulous and most people work in fields based in abstract ideas or philosophies as opposed to actually producing anything. It’s an expression of the human need to create tangible works and not just resell the work of others or manage cells on a spreadsheet. People want to touch. It makes the world real to us, and more and more isnt about touch in a downloadable ikea world. The ikea Splörtzplātz may look fine- but it’s hollow and to actually touch it isn’t as satisfying as a 100yo...
.... solid oak piece with intricate embelishment and hand laid stain, with all the imperfections and eccentricities of a thing made one off by human hands and grown in nature; not engineered in a computer program and grown in a chemistry lab. However I disagree that it is the middle aged leading the charge on cheap crap that is gutting humanity. Largely economic factors play in. That $50 printer is $50 for a reason, those $2 flatware sets and the other trappings of “basically college broke” that furnish many young folks lives are part of that same coin. Most people I know don’t use $2 forks to eat off their $40 plates of food cooked in a cheap $40 pan. But not everyone can afford a $300 frying pan. Most kids don’t pay $300 for their whole set of pots and pans. That isn’t age- it’s money. Kids and the middle aged tend to want to do more, and it’s easier to buy cheaper things than make 6x as much money.
But there is a trend in younger generations that is moving towards the trends of the much older and wealthier crowd- to have less shit, and make it higher quality and take care of it. “Disposable living” with its cheap and plentiful goods that you can abuse and replace, or change on a whim is seeing lush back from the younger generation. However- this is cruciallly important to note: responsibility plays a factor as well as economic status. If you’re 22 and have 3 kids- your concerns are more likely more inline to that middle aged person. You have real bills and expenses. It’s easy to judge the stranded man who eats the other passengers when you aren’t in his shoes. Likewise, it’s easy to criticize people who have student loans for 2 kids, a third in high school, a mortgage, insurance on 5 cars, an elderly parent they pay care expenses for... etc. one can understand why they might try to save $20 on a microwave for Cindi’s dorm room by buying it from Ali.
Well, it would be nice if the public education system was actually concerned with making us functional human beings with applicable skills instead of trying to ram a one-size-fits-all curriculum down our throats in which more than half of the information we learn will be purged soon after graduation because it has no bearing on our career choice.
And not all of them are effective so
You can mock people for not knowing basic things but mocking them when they're trying to learn is just rude and ridiculous
I'm not saying we're all super woke or anything, in fact fast fashion is definitely a problem that maybe not even the boomers had, but my 70 year old grandma and most of her friends could never sew beyond reinforcing buttons. Same with my parents, my mom can do small repairs but that's it, when it comes to a lot of "crafting" I'm the most proficient one in my family. But that's just my personal experience, so feel free to share yours.