But when the art of cooking is replaced by meals warmed up in a microwave—something a five-year-old can do as well as a fifty-five-year-old—then children no longer see their mothers or fathers doing something challenging, fruitful, admirable, and ultimately enjoyable. Instead, the family’s life together is reduced to mere consumption, purchasing the results of others’ work or toil. No wonder children at the “peak leisure-home” stage of the 1960s and 1970s stopped admiring their parents.
