I feel like the real problem with meal-in-a-box delivery services is that they are trying to fill the empty shoes of a missing full-time wife and mom because there are more two career couples and both spouses now "need a wife" and it can't be found.
One of my girlfriends used to say, "I need a wife!" She used to specifically mean what you're talking about above. Then I used to raise my hand to volunteer, but she wouldn't have it. So the next step would be polygamy, but she didn't want that either. (Nor did I ask for that!)
I had the same discussion with my fiancee just last night. (The "wife" part, but not the polygamy.) She doesn't want me to be her wife either.
I got my oldest son to take over the "women's work" when I had a corporate job. He was willing to meet the incredibly high standards of freshness and quality necessary to keep us healthy and out of the ER (due to our genetic disorder) but he was absolutely not willing to cook a traditional meal with meat, potatoes, two veggies, fresh bread etc. He made a lot of one dish meals.
I sometimes think if I can ever get off the street again, we have found a solution to the problem of keeping people well fed without having a de facto live in servant and it has to do with the kind of cooking we do and maybe I could turn that into a blog or app or something. I think a lot about the fact that there are some serious problems surrounding having everyone get paid jobs and somehow also have quality of life stuff adequately addressed.
And it is a conversation that is mostly not happening in earnest. What happens is people with upper class two career type situations just hire servants and pay for take out and for machines to do some of the work for them and so forth. And no one wants to really talk about the fact that this doesn't really work on a global scale. This model of two career upper class coupledom assumes some kind of servant class supporting it, in much the same way that the traditional male breadwinner assumed a full time wife. This does not create a world of real equals.
In my teenage years, I was heavily encouraged to cook for the family, especially when I was between school/uni and work years. It was a great opportunity to learn, and also relieve pressure on working parents. It should be more common than I bet it is.
One of my girlfriends used to say, "I need a wife!" She used to specifically mean what you're talking about above. Then I used to raise my hand to volunteer, but she wouldn't have it. So the next step would be polygamy, but she didn't want that either. (Nor did I ask for that!)
I had the same discussion with my fiancee just last night. (The "wife" part, but not the polygamy.) She doesn't want me to be her wife either.