Jeremy S. sent me a link to a Hanna Rosin article talking about her struggles to remain in the kitchen as her foodie husband micromanages the microplaner.

I usually like Hanna Rosin and her story was amusing enough, but she makes the error of assuming that her family drama is a typical family drama. She moves from the first person singular pronouns to the first person plural pronouns. There's no evidence that macho chefs on the Food Network are leading to a mass movement of men in the kitchen. As Michael Pollan wrote, the Food Network has resulted in food spectators, rather than food makers.

After we were married and Jonah was a baby, Steve and I cooked together a lot. We made Jonah fresh, organic baby food, and Steve brewed his own beer in a vat in a closet. We were able to be happily chopping vegetables together at 5:30, because we were in graduate school. We didn't have jobs. 

Now, Steve doesn't walk in the door until 6:30 or 7:00 or later. He's lucky if he can eat with the rest of us, instead of warming up leftovers in the microwave. He'll cook one meal over the weekend, but it usually involves frozen tater tots.

Even when Steve was home, he wasn't cooking porcini risotto. He was making fish sauce.

Steve doesn't like nouveau cuisine. He prefers traditional cuisine. Really old cooking. From the Roman Era, if possible. He got his hands on a cookbook of ancient Roman dishes. I think the cookbook was meant for historical study, rather than actual implementation. The Romans were really into a fish and wine sauce that was reduced into a viscous consistency. I think it was called golum or gorum. I can't remember. Steve'll give you a long lecture on how the modern Worcestershire sauce is a descendant of the Ancient Roman fish sauce.

Anyhow, this stuff was nasty and really smelled up the place. I can't say that I miss the fish sauce at all.

Most men might not be the porcini risotto-types like Rosin's husband, but they are slowly, very slowly, doing more domestic work. The annoying thing is that as men take on domestic work, it suddenly becomes cool. Example A has to be all the articles on Stay at Home Dads. There have to be more articles about Stay at Home Dads, than actual Stay at Home Dads. In a few years, there's going to be a guy version of Martha Stewart. He's somehow going to make vacuuming cool. Get ready for it.