Dads in the kitchen: a dad’s perspective on parenting
Stuart Derrick
When I was a child I reckon that about 90 per cent of my meals were provided by women: my mum; my gran;
aunties; friends’ mums, and school dinner ladies.
My dad could cook, but he kept his powder dry for special occasions, such as the Sunday roast, Christmas dinner and barbecues. He also had a penchant for exotic new dishes, such as spaghetti bolognese, which was
about as far out as things got where I grew up in rural Scotland. Maybe it still is.
The everyday grind of turning out breakfast, lunch and dinner was given over to my mum, despite the fact that
she also worked. It was just the way things were in those days.
As a consequence I was largely brought up on convenience food. My mum was one of the first generations of
women to benefit from the widespread availability and relative cheapness of processed food. She was also a
sucker for TV advertising. My sister and I used to joke that whenever there was a new product advertised on TV,
we would be seeing it on our plates next week. We were brought up on fish fingers, potato waffles, crispy pancakes and frozen pizzas. Whatever veg we shuffled to the side of our plates inevitably came from a tin.
Well, it never did me no harm!
Fast forward 30 years or so, and haven’t things changed? Thanks to Jamie, Gordon and a host of other TV
chefs, cooking has been reinvented as a suitably male friendly activity - it’s competitive, has lots of gadgets and
even more swearing - and the kitchen is no longer a place where we dads fear to tread. Dads are as likely to be
hustling everybody out of the kitchen to make room for their cheffy touches as they are to be banging cutlery on
the table and demanding to be fed.
But it’s no longer enough to shuttle a frozen offering from freezer to microwave, et voila, dinner is served! Nowadays, parents can spend as long fretting about the provenance of the food they serve their children as they do
cooking it. Is it local enough; is it GM free; is it Fairtrade? And that’s before it has even felt the hot side of a frying
pan.
I’m as guilty of this as the next new man. I’ve certainly gone down a different route to that taken by my parents.
By and large we cook meals from scratch, try and use fresh vegetables as much as possible, and try to all eat
together. And I do a lot of the cooking. It’s something I love to do.
One of the reasons, besides innate greed, is that it’s a great way of bonding with our kids. Like many NCT
parented children, both of our boys were breast fed for the first year, which seems to have given them a great
start. It does however limit a dad’s involvement in the early stages of childhood. Unless your wife or partner is
expressing milk, or you are mixing feeding, there isn’t a lot dad can do to interject into this cosy little relationship.
So the introduction of solids is a happy time for dads, as they can start to become more involved with feeding.
This is probably of great relief to partners as well, as they can share a bit more of the burden. It’s a time for dads
to step up to the hot plate and start showing off their finely honed chef skills.
Or maybe not. In as much as cooking for children can be fun and fulfilling, it can also be a soul destroying affair.
There is little appreciation of your efforts and little discernment. A carefully crafted, nutritious, homemade meal
will inevitably be trumped by fish fingers and chips. Kids don't care about provenance or cooking effort. They
care about having something that they know, and having it now, or 5 minutes ago.
Food in the early stages of weaning also bears little resemblance to anything you might want to eat yourself. I
couldn’t believe it when our eldest actually liked Annabel Karmel’s misleadingly named ‘lovely lentils’ recipe.
There was little to love as far as I could see, but as he seemed to appreciate them, I cooked up a vat and froze
huge quantities for future meals. Job done! Except that as quickly as he’d taken to them, he went off them.
For dads who work unsociable hours, cooking is a great way to show that you know that family meals are important. Doing a bit of cooking can give your partner a break and brings you closer to your children. And if the
resulting mealtime is loud, chaotic and messy, who’d have it any other way?
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