- $20/meal for a couple or small family is still cheaper than eating out, especially for the kind of meal you're getting from BlueApron
- People like knowing what goes into their food
- Using your cool kitchen gadgets is fun, even if you don't have great recipe ideas
- In some places, to make a specific dish may require a trip to two or three or more grocery stores
Growing up in the 80s with two parents that worked, there was a wife/mom who knew our preferences, but we ate a lot of hamburger helper anyway.
Meal planning is the least fun part of cooking for me and my wife. Executing the plan is easier and funner than than coming up with the plan or getting the ingredients. Maybe we're outliers.
On your subtext, it's true that society has changed a lot since we have two career professionals, but knowing several families that are trying the stay-at-home mom thing, I can't say it's working well for them, largely because there was a lot more institutional support for it in the 50s and earlier. The ones I know certainly don't spend their entire day coming up with luxury meals for their pampered families. But that's a topic for another day.
My wife and I fall under the "using your cool kitchen gadgets.." category. We used Platejoy for this but we stopped after a month or so. The reason wasn't Platejoy, it was us. The habit of cooking food on such a regular basis just didn't stick. Unless we made it regular, forever, we didn't see the benefit of being a member of this service.
I think this is a big challenge for all these companies. They aren't selling to existing frequent cooks. Those people don't mind going to the grocery store to pickup ingredients (at least most). They are selling to the aspirational people who want to make the habit of cooking at home every night stick, and thats really hard. There are lots of other options.
I thought you were suggesting that life was better when we had a sole breadwinner and a stay-at-home wife. I don't agree with that and read your comment uncharitably that way. On rereading it, I think you're saying there are two optimal points on this curve: having a live-in cook ("the wife") and going to a restaurant, and most of the stuff in the middle is pointless. I don't agree with that either but it's less of a charged topic.
All I'm saying is that it is a hard problem to solve. Our previous solution was full time wives. This had its good points and bad points. We do not appear to have found The Solution since moving away from that earlier model for the most part.
In my experience, when people are reading "subtext" into my comments, they are typically projecting something that is simply not there at all. I do my best to be a straight shooter. I am not big on implying anything. The internet is not a good environment for trying to imply things. It lacks voice tone, context, facial expression etc and it puts people in contact from around the globe who come from very different cultures even when they are both, say, upper class for their country. It is just a terrible place in which to try to be subtle.
If people systematically seem to misunderstand you, maybe the problem is you. "Everywhere I touch hurts" sometimes means your finger is hurt, not your whole body.
I wonder if you've considered that, in some respects, for some people, it was better, or would be and is better?
Or, assuming a couple could choose their roles, or even have the option of a stay-at-home mom, they wouldn't jump at the chance?
Is it that hard to believe that not being required to have to full time wage earners and no-one to handle at home duties vs. having a more complete division of labor, might actually work out well overall for both people's happiness?
Obviously it did work out better for some people, and some people continue to do it today. And it's unfortunate that the people who live this lifestyle today are missing many of the social supports that would have made it easier back then: a housewife in every home on the street for support, milkmen, society basically trusting kids to amuse themselves and get to school on their own, etc.
But, I think it's easy to romanticize those aspects and ignore what happened to people who had kids out of wedlock, people who did not want that lifestyle but were forced into it, kids who grew up isolated, institutional racism, what happened to mixed couples, etc. During the magical 50s, my grandfather was disowned by his family for marrying a non-Jew, was denied a job at DuPont for being a Jew, my stay-at-home grandmother couldn't work despite having a chemistry degree, and my mother contemplated suicide just from sheer loneliness growing up fairly isolated.
So yeah, it worked out great for some people. And it didn't work out for other people. And that's basically the situation we're in now, except that today, there's a lot less social stigma associated to people living the life they want to live rather than the one their family or their society wants them to live.
I just think compared to what was wrong with the 50s, the situation today is obviously better. Yeah, it sucks figuring out dinner sometimes, but there's really no comparison.
- $20/meal for a couple or small family is still cheaper than eating out, especially for the kind of meal you're getting from BlueApron
- People like knowing what goes into their food
- Using your cool kitchen gadgets is fun, even if you don't have great recipe ideas
- In some places, to make a specific dish may require a trip to two or three or more grocery stores
Growing up in the 80s with two parents that worked, there was a wife/mom who knew our preferences, but we ate a lot of hamburger helper anyway.
Meal planning is the least fun part of cooking for me and my wife. Executing the plan is easier and funner than than coming up with the plan or getting the ingredients. Maybe we're outliers.
On your subtext, it's true that society has changed a lot since we have two career professionals, but knowing several families that are trying the stay-at-home mom thing, I can't say it's working well for them, largely because there was a lot more institutional support for it in the 50s and earlier. The ones I know certainly don't spend their entire day coming up with luxury meals for their pampered families. But that's a topic for another day.