Women Used to Do All the Cooking. Some Men Are Flipping the Script.

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There are certain chores around the household that—as a boyfriend, fiancé, and now a husband—have always been my responsibility. They typically amount to vile sanitation management; the gross stuff that my wife doesn’t want to touch. I take out the trash, scoop the litter box, and extract the grime from the dishwasher filter. When mold sprouts in the shower, I eradicate it. When detritus accumulates in the kitchen sink, I grind it to a pulp with pulses of the garbage disposal. In turn, my wife handles the big-picture infrastructural concerns in our apartment. She vacuums far more than I do, and she is a genius with a bottle of Fantastik.

In that sense, we fit our stereotypical gender roles perfectly—a Leave It to Beaver–esque arrangement transferred to modern times. But there is one job I did not expect to inherit as I slowly receded into domestic life. One that makes me an outlier from my parents, grandparents, and, I have to assume, any of the other men further up the family tree: I do all of the cooking, and I have for years.

I do not admit this with any resentment. Not even close. I have taken on the mantle of the designated cook in my marriage with gusto. Yesterday I braised a pot roast, rich with the woody tang of fresh rosemary, all afternoon long. Last week I brought a brothy pot of chicken and rice to unctuous life in the oven. Other recent highlights include an early-a.m.
steak and eggs, an orzo-and-feta stovetop situation, and a Japanese curry studded with peas and fried ginger. All of these culinary adventures were embarked upon solo. My wife is my only diner, and she never comes around the other side of the counter to sous-chef—mincing garlic or measuring out tablespoons of cornstarch—nor have I ever asked her to.

I am not telling you all of this to brag about my selflessness as a partner, or to demonstrate my epicurean range. I’m saying this because, as I’ve gotten older, I have come to realize that my wife’s and my heterodox dinnertime routine is standard for anyone in our precise station of life. Basically all of the men in my dudes-only group chat—composed of fellow thirtysomethings—cook for their wives far more frequently than the other way around. Often the first serious date they had with their future brides coincided with them preparing a humble, homemade meal. In fact, I would argue that most of the millennial men I know—urban-dwelling, enmeshed in a long-term relationship, in possession of a cushy email job—handle the bulk of the cooking labor in their personal lives. It’s one of the great societal inversions of the 21^st century. At long last, the kitchen is the husband’s domain.

Let’s get a few caveats out of the way. Yes, I know your dad cooked. My dad cooked, too. But I think it’s fair to say on those rare evenings when our fathers stepped up to the hearth, it was usually buoyed by a sense of occasion—grilling burgers on the Fourth of July, smoking a pork shoulder on Super Bowl Sunday, consecrating their fading virility with blood-red tomahawk steaks—rather than the workaday routines of our mothers. (When I was growing up my dad never packed my lunch bags.) Furthermore, I am aware of the existence of Marco Pierre White, Anthony Bourdain, Heston Blumenthal, and the zillions of other male celebrity chefs who cultivated an air of bad-boy machismo in food culture during the 1990s. This, too, is not really my focus. Those men are students of fine-dining society, and have centered their careers on highfalutin gastronomical artistry—how long one must massage a bushel of langoustines before poaching, and other questions that you and I have never needed to answer. No, I am talking about the men who prepare meals purely for the subsistence of their families; who skulk around their New York Times recipe box on vacant Thursdays; who have hewn dinners out of mostly empty refrigerators; and who, data shows, are walking this earth in higher numbers than ever before.

Last year, Laina Ewoldt, a doctoral candidate studying nutrition at the University of North Carolina, published a report surveying the demographic makeup of home cooks over the course of two decades—from 2003 to 2023. Two of her observations stand out. Across that 20-year period, the number of men who’ve turned themselves into home cooks has spiked dramatically, from 36 percent to 52 percent. What’s behind that growth? Well, Ewoldt identified that, specifically, college-educated men are busier in the kitchen than ever, representing, in the words of her report, the “largest increase” in the percentages—a bounce of 18 points. (On average, women still cook more than men, but the numbers are more static: 69 percent in 2003, and 72 percent in 2023.) Again, this lines up with my own experience. I am surrounded by men who cook—who have no emasculatory fears about embracing that duty in the context of a relationship—and, yes, tend to be yuppie, white-collar individuals in aesthetic, if not always in paycheck.

When I asked Ewoldt about her findings, she didn’t feel comfortable drawing any big-picture conclusions about why men—specifically college-educated men—are more comfortable in the kitchen than they used to be. I wasn’t surprised. The dataset she was working with is broadly categorized, and there are no subdivisions for the multitude of different ways someone can be a home cook, from microwaving a burrito to the aforementioned langoustine-massaging. Ewoldt does speculate that the coronavirus lockdowns might have kickstarted the boom, mostly because with so many working from home, some men surely had closer proximity to the kitchen than they did previously. “There was a major hypothesis that people were spending more time at home cooking,” she said. “And the trends we have seen since have held steady.” (Similarly, since the pandemic, men have been contributing more to household chores writ large.) But as far as how all that interplays with long-standing gender dynamics? I was on my own. So I canvassed my direct radius of friends, colleagues, and associates—who, yes, mostly live and work in New York City—about what they make of this new status quo. A single unified conclusion didn’t surface, but a lot of people floated their theories.

First and foremost, we cannot ignore the influence of the previously noted fleet of macho chefs who helped establish the archetype of the tall, dark, and handsome cook—and moreover, inculcated the idea that the words “good cook” looked stylish on a Hinge profile. My friend Kyle, who splits kitchen duties with his fiancée, specifically mentioned the advent of The Bon Appétit Test Kitchen—the hugely popular and ultimately ill-fated YouTube brand that featured a ton of good-natured millennial bros yukking it up around their chicken Milaneses. The vibe in the Test Kitchen, and the various copycats it spawned, was considerably breezier than, say, the vindictive fury of the average Gordon Ramsay reality series. It also seemed to be easily replicable in domestic life; a model for being useful in the kitchen without necessitating any self-flagellating perfectionism. “For me personally, those videos supercharged a latent culinary interest that indirectly led to the current state of things in my relationship,” said Kyle.

Kyle is also one of the best chefs I know, and as it tends to go with these things, he has outfitted his kitchen with the highly specialized gadgets of a dyed-in-the-wool gastronomical hobbyist. I have watched Kyle take a miniature blowtorch to a crème brûlée fresh out of the oven, incinerating the sugar to a dark, amber glow. That gets to the next theory I heard from my sources. There is a sense that millennial men have taken the reins of household cooking labor because, by and large, they approach the job with the auspices of a dilettante—eager to strut and swagger, for themselves and also their loved ones. I see this in my own marriage all the time. If I weren’t around, I’m sure my wife would be happy to feast on Greek yogurt, spaghetti Bolognese, and hastily assembled salads for essentially every meal. I, on the other hand, absolutely relish the opportunity to attempt a farro stew or a tonkotsu ramen. I routinely dispatch to the grocery store in order to purchase a laundry list of eccentricities—white miso, quail egg, Shaoxing cooking wine—to re-create whatever has just captivated me on Instagram. It reminds me of something my friend Karis, who is an avowed “terrible cook,” said. With the recession of 20^th-century gender roles, when a lot of Americans do most of their work on their laptops—often while sitting on their couches rather than in an office—the task of cooking is deferred to simply whoever enjoys it more, rather than a dedicated homemaker.

“I think men like to take care of their partners, and are realizing that can look different for everyone,” said Karis. “It’s going to feel like there’s more men in the kitchen than we saw growing up.”

Another friend, named Taylor, put it more directly: “I don’t like cooking, nor do I put my heart in it. I like less mess, less stress, and less time. My husband is more thoughtful. If I’ve started cooking and he comes home, 99 percent of the time he’ll take over and finish.”

Of course, this gets us to the pitfall of this evolution, and perhaps the ultimate proof that no matter the inroads we’ve made, in the kitchen or elsewhere, the imbalances of domestic duties will continue apace. Because there is no doubt in my mind that compared to everything else that needs to get done around the house, cooking is—for the lack of a better term—the “fun chore.” I enjoy my meditative late afternoons on the cutting board, chopping up onions and carrots. You know what is less enjoyable? The dishes, the laundry, the speckles of toothpaste that need to be purged from the counter, a zillion other tiny problems steadily compounding all over the living space, which, to be clear, often falls upon the shoulders of the women. Making dinner earns one all of the adulation for one’s creativity and good taste—and, crucially, it removes one from the burden of more tedious household maintenance. Yes, it is nice that I do all of the cooking, but I know my wife would also like me to vacuum a lot more than I currently do.

“Cooking gets far more praise than mopping the floors does. No one walks on freshly mopped floors and goes, ‘Oh my god, wow, these floors are incredible,’ ” said my brother Mitchell, who—you guessed it—cooks most of the meals for his wife. “No one is saying, ‘How did you mop this?’ or ‘I’m an awful mopper,’ or ‘These floors are better than my mom’s mopped floors!’ “

Mitchell is being a little facetious. Everyone understands that the vexations of domestic labor will not be solved by this generation or any other. The adage best prescribed for this problem mirrors the same one that we’ve been dispensing for centuries. (Communicate, be respectful, and maybe clean up the kitchen after you’re done using it.) With that said, the fact that it has become so normal for men to cook for their girlfriends, fiancées, and wives does offer me some hope that young people are finding exciting new ways to love one another—in ways better than our parents did.

One of the last interviews I conducted for this story was with Magdalene Taylor, a writer and an old colleague of mine who has lately been branding herself as a “hetero-optimist.” Taylor has kept the faith that strong, mutually beneficial romantic partnerships are out there.
That they do exist, and can be found—despite the ongoing backslide of gender relations. (Fewer young people are dating, having sex, leaving the house, and so on.) Naturally, Taylor is also recently married, and her husband, Zane, is the chef in their apartment. Taylor describes this as the core component undergirding her belief in the future of men and women; more than any of the other wonderful perks of holy matrimony, the best thing a marriage can do is make our spouse’s life easier.

“This is the foundation of why I feel healthy heterosexual relationships are beneficial to women. Not just in the way my husband makes me feel happy, or romantically fulfilled. But in the way he allows me to be a career woman, to not worry about domestic duties so much. So I can focus my energies elsewhere,” said Taylor. “I think a lot of women are asking themselves if a relationship can actually improve their life beyond romance. And I think that they can, and that’s because I know men like Zane exist.”

I will keep that in mind as I head back to the kitchen tonight and attempt to concoct a meal out of whatever I can find in our refrigerator, which is in desperate need of restocking. A Spanish onion, a moldering clove of garlic, a can of cannellini beans, a cup and a half of basmati rice. Maybe a soup? Some sort of risotto? Who’s to say? I’ll figure it out. Let all of us husbands be solutions, rather than problems. Let us make breakfast, lunch, and dinner after that.