Thread by @studentactivism

know this article is so two days ago, but I keep coming back to the fact that most men learn these kinds of household skills from their dads. So if they don't know them, well...

nypost.com/2019/06/06/mil…

Also: I own a corded drill, not a cordless, and no stepladder because I'm tall and live in an apartment.

Also also: Buying new stuff is a lot cheaper than it used to be, and fixing old stuff is harder and less useful. I'd love to be fixing everything that breaks around my place, but often it's either impossible or pointless.

My dad taught me to solder, for instance, and I taught my kids. But I've been able to fix exactly one broken thing by soldering it in the last fifteen years.

I talk to my students about this stuff—about how my grandma was indignant that young women don't learn how to darn socks, for instance. But I've never owned a pair of socks it'd make any sense to darn, and hardly any you COULD darn.

So many DIY skills that used to be markers of poverty and/or frugality—woodworking, knitting, gardening, making your own clothes—are now increasingly likely to be evidence of the opposite.