The Patriot Post® · Make Kitchens Great Again
More than two weeks after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College, his remarks continue to create waves online. After the football player encouraged the 2024 male graduates of the Catholic college to embrace their masculinity while guessing that the female graduates were excited to be wives and mothers one day, conservatives poured out their support for his bold statements in favor of traditional roles. Meanwhile, angry feminists lost their minds, grossly misinterpreting and misrepresenting Butker’s promotion of traditional gender roles as tying the value of women entirely to aprons and dishes.
Those of us, particularly women on the Right, who have offered enthusiastic approval of Butker’s speech have, unsurprisingly, found ourselves the target of criticism and insults for allegedly wanting to take women out of the workforce and confine them to the kitchen like it’s 1950.
Though the accusation is patently false and an absurd interpretation of why so many women support Butker’s words, the reality is that there are significant benefits to being in the kitchen. In fact, we should all strive to spend more time there. For starters, several studies point to the advantages of cooking at home and the improved overall physical and mental well-being of children who eat meals with their parents and siblings.
According to one recent study and an article on a cooking-focused website, both discussing this important issue, an adverse consequence of spending less time in the kitchen enjoying homecooked meals with your family is the declining health status of many Americans. More families than ever are spending more than half of their food budgets on eating out rather than making their own meals, often meaning the nutritional needs of children are not being met. Within the last 50 years, as the habit of eating out has increased, the rate of obesity has also doubled.
The Family Dinner Project outlined several other mental and physical health benefits for kids who grow up in households where family dinners are habitual: “Over three decades of research have shown that regular family meals offer a wide variety of physical, social-emotional, and academic benefits. While some of these benefits can be gained through other activities, eating together is the only single activity that is known to provide all of them at the same time.” The list includes several advantages, from better academic performance, higher self-esteem, and lower risk of substance abuse to a greater vocabulary in preschoolers. The perks of participating in family meals also extend to adults and include better nutrition, increased self-esteem, and a lower risk of depression.
The kitchen has often been called “the heart of the home.” An article published by Study Finds supports this sentiment, describing the kitchen as a place that brings families together regardless of culture, ethnicity, income level, or family size. As the article states, “Americans spend over 400 hours in the kitchen each year,” while citing the average time spent per day as around 67 minutes. Furthermore, almost 80% of those who weighed in on the survey shared experiences from their own upbringing, pointing to cooking with their parents as among their fondest memories.
It is also a place where history is passed down, as many hold onto favorite family recipes from their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents and are proud of the opportunity to share their heritage with the newest generations. Favorite memories from many who offered their input on the subject also included hearing stories from their parents and their grandparents about their own life experiences.
The feminist use of the phrase “go back to the kitchen” is, of course, meant as an insult. The people who hurl it insist that traditional homemakers embrace the role of servants.
However, a large part of speaking out against the woke mob is to re-normalize traditional views and values and to restore the opportunity for happiness and fulfillment. This is especially true as more women than ever fail to understand the significance of what they are denying themselves. A 2023 poll indicated the current mindset of young women, showing that “only 24 percent of women under 30 believe that women who get married and have kids live fuller and happier lives than those who don’t.” This belief system is false, as countless studies over several decades have proven, time and time again, that married women with families are happier than those who remain single and child-free.
It has also become a viral trend on TikTok to “depict marriage as a fast track to domestic chores like washing dishes, caring for a newborn baby, and cleaning the house” while glamorizing a life free of burdensome children. To their detriment, most members of Gen Z seem to view a lifetime of serving oneself as more fulfilling than making sacrifices to find a spouse, create a family, and build a home.
Most people, though — even those who mock the pursuit of marriage and family — can likely say that their childhood memories of time spent with their family in the kitchen were primarily positive. There’s also a decent possibility that they can recall a specific time of learning to cook with their mother, and as adults, they now embrace her tips for meal spicing, baking times, and the like.
The kitchen is where we’re most likely to cross paths with those we love, even in passing and even in life’s busiest moments. It’s where we spend time eating a meal and discussing the day with our spouse, children, or friends. It’s where we gather for drinks or to play games. It’s where we bond, socialize, help the kids with homework, and improve our mental and physical well-being. Personally, being told to “go back to the kitchen” brings warmth to my heart, as I know there’s a good chance that those I love will be there to uplift my day.
But I imagine that joy would be mostly missing if the only things that awaited me in that space, day after day, were my cat and an endless feed of TikTok videos of others in their equally empty homes, spouting their unconvincing claims of being happier than those of us whose cluttered kitchens are filled with laughter and chaos, and who even find joy in the making of a sandwich for a spouse or child.
I wouldn’t want to “go back to the kitchen” either if it only reminded me of how sad and empty my life was.