In most Pakistani homes, the kitchen is still seen as training for daughters, not sons. But when families decide to teach their boys how to cook, a basic life skill starts to change ideas about independence, respect, and shared responsibility.
Consider a typical evening in a Pakistani household: the mother is busy near the stove, the daughter is called to make the roti, and the son waits in the adjacent room for his plate to be served. This arrangement is not written down anywhere, yet everyone observes it. Cooking is rarely treated as a gender-neutral life skill like cleaning or reading — it is treated as a duty that belongs almost exclusively to women.
The Unspoken Division of Domestic Labour
This division starts very early. We create two separate lists of responsibilities for children without ever stating it aloud. Girls are pushed towards domestic tasks — helping in the kitchen, washing dishes, and serving food. Boys are directed towards external errands — purchasing groceries, managing utility bills, or focusing on their studies.
If a young woman does not know how to cook, society warns that “she will face problems after marriage.” But if a young man cannot cook, no one asks him that question. We assume his mother, his sister, and later his wife will always cook for him.
First-Hand Perspectives from Rawalpindi
I spoke with two individuals in Rawalpindi who grew up under different household dynamics:
The first is a 22-year-old university student from Islamabad in his final year, who lives in a hostel. His mother began teaching him how to prepare chai and omelettes when he was fourteen.
“At first I felt shy. My friends would laugh and say this is not your work. But when I came to the hostel, it helped me a lot. Other boys would order expensive food or eat biscuits at night. I could make my own dal chawal and anda paratha.”
He added that learning to cook altered his perspective: “Before, I would always complain about food. Now I understand how difficult it is to stand near the hot stove in summer and cook for everyone.”
The second is a mother in Satellite Town with two sons and one daughter, who decided that all three children would learn to cook. She explained:
“After my own marriage, I had to do all the kitchen work alone because my husband did not know anything. I did not want my sons to be dependent like that, and I did not want my future daughter-in-law to carry all the burden alone.”
Initially, relatives questioned her approach, claiming she was spoiling her sons by putting them in the kitchen. Today, those same relatives ask her for advice on how she trained them. Her elder son, who now works in Lahore, cooks for his roommates three times a week.
Three Key Shifts When Boys Learn to Cook
When boys learn to cook, three small but important changes occur:
- Independence: A young man who knows how to cook can live independently. Whether he moves to another city for employment, lives in a hostel, or travels abroad for studies, he does not have to rely on others for basic nutrition. He can take care of himself.
- Respect: In Pakistan, unpaid household work performed by women is often undervalued. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey demonstrates that women spend significantly more hours on cooking and care work than men. When a boy spends an hour chopping vegetables and standing near a hot stove, he realises that cooking demands time, effort, and patience.
- Equality in Future Households: When both partners know how to cook, the kitchen ceases to be one person’s sole responsibility; it becomes a shared space. While it does not resolve every marital challenge, it eliminates the excuse: “I don’t know how to cook, so I cannot help.”
Re-Evaluating Basic Life Skills
The fundamental question is not why boys should learn to cook, but why we prevented them from learning it in the first place. Culinary competence is not a gendered trait — it is a basic human life skill, no different from laundering one’s own clothes or cleaning one’s room.
As more young men relocate for education and employment, withholding this skill does not preserve their masculinity — it only renders them helpless. Teaching sons how to cook takes nothing away from daughters; it simply equips young men with a skill that serves them for a lifetime, both inside and outside the kitchen.
Sources
- Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Time Use Survey 2020–21. Government of Pakistan.
- UN Women Pakistan. (2023). Status of Unpaid Care Work in Pakistan. Policy Report Series.
- Field Interviews. Conducted in Rawalpindi, October 2026.