My wife can knit. My wife can bake her own bread. Most of the other young mothers her age that she knows can't do either and think that she is amazing because she can do things like that.

She can also sew, which is another skill that most others that would be considered her peers cannot do.

I hand sew (she can sew circles around me on the machine). People often go google eyed when they discover that me -- a man -- can sew!

Anyway, my point here is that these are pretty basic skills that you could generally expect someone in any given household to know how to do, not that long ago. These days, however, most of the people we know in our age group (30's) are doing good to even cook their own dinner and eat together at the dining room table. Most of them eat out or order in more often than they make their own meals. Not all of them, mind you. But a good number.

Baking bread, hand knitting, crocheting, and even being able to sew on button on a shirt are all very basic skills that most people my generation are sadly lacking.

The good news, though, is that I am also meeting more and more people my age and younger who are making a purposeful effort to learn these kinds of hand crafts and not let these old skills die. I work with college students part time, and many of them are very much interested in learning to bake, learning to sew, learning to knit, learning to quilt, learning to do for themselves. I think that's a good sign.

But, for now, the majority of people I meet don't have these skills, and are very much engrossed in a consumer mentality.