The girls' guide to plumbing and fixing: why the latest women's lit will also appeal to men

Washington Monthly, May, 2003 by Stephanie Mencimer

After doing a couple of projects, I had to wonder how I could be so entirely ignorant of the workings of my domestic environment. I knew it wasn't a feminist thing--the "man" keeping us down by making dryer-duct cleaning seem like a mysterious art form. I know plenty of men, particularly in Washington, who don't know the right end of a drill bit. The problem, I've deduced, is the changing nature of how this kind of information is transmitted from one generation to the next. Most people I know who are handy learned it from their fathers. My husband, for instance, changes the oil in his car himself, a habit he inherited from his father, who didn't believe in paying someone else to do it. Glakas-Tenet says her father gave her a toolbox when she was just an adolescent.

My own father taught me how to shoot pheasant, build model airplanes, and distill alcohol, but he really didn't know how to fix much around the house. If he'd known how to fix a toilet, I'm sure he would have shown me so he could make me do it the next time it broke down. Without that education at home, I wasn't likely to learn how to wield a reciprocating saw--or even identify one--anywhere else. Judging from the response to Dare to Repair--and my own experiments with it--I'm afraid my experience is becoming much more the norm.

To be sure, the crowds at Home Depot--not to mention the cult status of HGTV, the Home and Garden cable channel--give the impression that Americans are rediscovering their inner handyman. But the purchase of a nail gun is not necessarily proof that Americans know how to use one. In fact, the recent rush to Home Depot may actually have revealed just how degraded our collective repair skills have become. In 2002, a record number of homeowners sustained more than 300,000 injuries trying to putter around the house, largely because of unfamiliarity with the tools they were using. The simple screwdriver now sends 10,000 people a year to the emergency room--a sign that some folks may be taking up the mantle of DIY, but that they really have no idea what they're doing.

Maybe today there's simply too much information for parents to pass on, so they have to be more selective in what they force their kids to learn. Defragmenting the hard drive takes precedence over unsticking the deadbolt. Or maybe parents' desire to give their kids a better life means freeing them from such tedium as raingutter evacuation. Obviously, technology has made being handy more difficult, as electronic controls and other "upgrades" virtually rule out any do-it-yourselfing on broken cars and appliances today.

Affluence, too, plays a role by providing the opportunity to hire someone to do your dirty work. (For creative types, this provides the best of both worlds, allowing office-park dads to pat themselves on the back for spending a weekend planking a deck--after a day laborer did a week's worth of backbreaking work digging holes for the footings.) Affluence also means that when something breaks, it's often easier to simply replace it. The shift from a manufacturing-based to a service economy probably has much to do with our lost skills, as power tools were not foreign objects to the guys who built cars for GM. Now, though, if a Web tech wants to get his hands dirty at something manly, he has to make a conscious effort to do it--and take a class at Home Depot first.