I'm early Gen X with a bunch of much older boomer siblings. By the time I came along my mom was too frazzled to teach me "women's work" of cooking and cleaning. I relied on prepackaged, frozen, and just a couple basic recipes to get me through.

By the time I was 27-28 I started having kids. I took the opportunity to basically watch 24/7 food network (before all the competitions and game shows) and learned to cook. My sons? I started teaching them to cook as soon as I could get them to participate without hurting themselves.

But that's me. I enjoy cooking, so I went for it. Some people don't even like cooking, or enjoy food enough to care beyond eating as unavoidable body maintenance.