6 Important Life Skills People Raised By Single Moms Can't Believe Other Adults Never Learned
Why are you 45 and don't know how to iron a shirt?!
fizkes | Shutterstock Kids raised by a single mom are often acquainted with struggles that a lot of kids never experience. But once you get out into the real world on your own, those struggles result in strengths, especially when your grown friends start calling you to ask how to do basic things. It makes you wonder how they've even kept themselves alive all these years!
It's about time for kids to start going off to college, and as many parents can tell you, a lot of kids nowadays show up to the ol' university not knowing how to do … well, anything, really. That's become something of a common experience highlighted all over social media. But for those of us who grew up with a single mom who had neither the time nor the resources to just let us be kids 100% of the time, this stuff can seem a bit mystifying.
When I arrived at college, I quickly realized that my single mom, by necessity, had taught me a level of self-sufficiency that was shockingly lacking in my classmates and roommates — and in some cases still is to this day, when we're on the dark side of 40!
In discussing this with my colleague who grew up in similar ways, I found that I am definitely not alone in this experience. Here are six things people raised in more traditional households never seemed to learn that leave us single-mom kids yelling, "Goodness, who raised you?!"
Here are 6 basic life skills people raised by single moms can't believe other adults never learned:
1. Basic cooking skills
I'm not talking about being able to follow a recipe or, nowadays, a cooking tutorial on TikTok. I'm talking about being able to go to the kitchen and put a meal together — the skills you learn by doing.
When I was about 12, my mom came home from work one day and said, "I am exhausted to the very marrow of my bones in a way I hope and pray you never comprehend, and if you do not start cooking dinner, at least twice a week I will burn this house down with both of us in it." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.
After a crash course in stove and oven operation and a rundown of the basic mainstays she'd made me watch her cook over the years — easy things like scrambled eggs, sloppy joes, and tacos — she turned me loose, and I learned the rest by trial and error.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I got to college, and—I swear this is not a bit, despite it being a well-worn cliché — my dorm mates knew neither how to boil water for their mac-and-cheese nor which of the pans in the dormitory kitchen they should use to boil it. (Yes, one of them once chose a skillet.)
Or when, years later, around 30, my best friend asked how I'd cooked the vegetables in the dinner I made, and when I said I'd just sauteed them, she replied, "Like in water, or?" No, beloved, THAT'S BOILIING! YOU ARE 30 YEARS OF AGE WITH A MORTGAGE AND A CAR NOTE AND THAT'S BOILING!!! (She still can't cook at 45, by the way, but don't tell her I said so.)
2. How to stretch a grocery budget
Grocery prices are obscene nowadays; we all know this. But some of you are really telling on the people who raised you when you complain about it. There are basic skills to stretching a food dollar that anyone who wasn't raised in a frugal-by-necessity house just never learned.
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The best example of this is bread. Every few months on Twitter, people start complaining about how sick they are of having to buy an entire loaf of bread they know is going to mold before they can finish it.
Respectfully, this makes me feel insane. Do you all not know that your refrigerator has a freezer?! A slice of bread thaws in about five minutes max on the countertop! Put the dang bread in the dang freezer and grow up!
Here's another hot tip: You can put ALL KINDS of things in the freezer! You can divvy up a package of meat into servings and freeze them! You can package up your leftovers and freeze them! Why, you can even cook a little extra during a week when you're flush with cash and — say it with me — freeze them! Freezers exist! Use them!
3. Expiration dates are basically not real
And speaking of stretching your food dollar, it's called a "sell by" date for a reason. It's the date by which the food must be sold, not eaten!
Another hot tip? When food is rotten, you can usually tell because it stinks or has mold on it! Granted, I was raised by a mom who would have "JUST CUT THE MOLD OFF THE CHEESE AND EAT IT; IT'S FINE" etched on her gravestone as an epitaph, which I realize is extreme (and also correct).
But if I have to listen to one more person complain about how "everything I buy I end up having to throw away because it's expired" one more time, I will lose my mind. If it's actually bad, you'll know.
4. How to save money on utilities
Did you know that when you turn lights off in rooms you're not using, it saves electricity? Being raised by a single mom I sure as heck do! But not a single person I know who grew up in a home with a solid income and two parents does! Every time I roll up to one of their homes there are so many lights on it looks like the interior of their house is on fire.
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Did you also know that in the winter, you can save money by turning your heat down below 70 because things like sweaters, socks, slippers, and blankets exist?! Did you know that for CENTURIES human persons lived in UNHEATED HUTS wrapped in ANIMAL PELTS for MONTHS ON END and survived long enough to keep our species going? Wow!
I have now lost track of the number of grown men and women I know who think their house should be warm enough to wear a bikini in front of the television while grilling hamburgers on the hardwood in the middle of January and then lament about how they can't afford their utility bills.
My mom kept our thermostat at 64 degrees in the dead of winter in Michigan, and if she sensed you were so much as THINKING about touching it she would immediately run you over with her car. You can set yours to 68 and put on a sweater. You'll be fine!
5. How to clean… well, basically anything
One of my colleagues once had a roommate who cleaned the floors of their apartment by dumping an entire bottle of Fabuloso on them and pushing it around with a Swiffer — with no actual Swiffer on it.
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I once had a friend who spent hundreds of dollars every month dry cleaning every article of clothing he owned, including his jeans, because "I can't have wrinkly clothes at my job." Sir. SIR! Are you familiar with THE IRON?
Not only was he emphatically not familiar with the iron, but he also did not know how to operate a washing machine. He treated it with the kind of "I wouldn't even know where to begin" anxiety most of us reserve for when we're asked to, say, wire a five-story building for electrical service or build a car from scratch.
That's the kind of thing that simply does not fly — because it cannot — in a single-parent household.
6. How to fix things yourself
When you're a cash-strapped single mom, unless it's something like the roof caving in or the whole house falling into a sinkhole, you're gonna give a DIY repair the old college try. And unless you're uniquely incompetent, you'll probably be fine!
By the time I went to college, my mom could more or less build an entire McMansion from scratch with a hammer and a length of twine because she had no choice but to learn.
But when you grow up with the money to outsource every single inconvenience? Well, to put it bluntly, you often end up the type of person who just shrugs and buys a new lamp instead of changing the dang light bulb.
Of course, you also end up the type of person who is emotionally well-adjusted from not having been parentified at a young age, so there's that.
See, we all have our strengths! And that's the beauty of our diverse experiences, isn't it? Now go put your bread in the freezer and turn the thermostat down; you're not made of money!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.