Will your kid call a plumber when the drain clogs? Would they know how to paint a room? Clean the carpet? Replace a furnace filter? Lube a garage door opener?
I don’t know how to do half those things. My husband does. If I lived by myself, I’d call a handyman.
My kids are the product of a talented craftsman, my husband, and someone with no skills and three left hands, me. My husband can do everything except complicated electrical work and I can barely change a light bulb. My daughter knows how to weld, paint, plaster and do car repair work, etc . The 4 boys have zero interest in any aspects of hands on work.
Both my son and daughter know how to operate a sewing machine and install tile and hardwood floors. Working at Scout camp they’ve fixed fences, built shelters, and dug ditches. They also know how to change car tires and jump start a dead battery. We do most home repairs ourselves, and have always included the kids in what we do.
Sure can…and everything you posted in the original post I could do too. I don’t like to pay other people for simple things i can do and my H has the same attitude so the kids grew up learning to do basic home maintenance. A penny saved is a penny earned 
My oldest has turned into quite a cook . . . imagine my surprise!
It remains to be seen with youngest. 
He does help me with lots of tech stuff so I can’t complain. 
My dad essentially taught me how to use the yellow pages. Father in law pretty much knows how to fix everything. My kids will be in the middle of that.
My father had no interest in doing anything beyond screwing in a lightbulb. He figured his energy was better spent making money so that other people, who enjoyed doing these things or were skilled at them, could be paid for doing so. He has no regrets.
If my kids take after their father, then they are in big trouble. He thinks that we have people for everything. He does not realize that those people cost money! I am the handy one!
I have zero ability at any of this so I was smart enough to marry a man who can fix/build almost anything (and cook!).
D has done a few things on her own - put together IKEA stuff, painted, etc. We’lll see with S…
Um, my kid fixed our trash compactor when DS left a small glass in it and it shattered. She watched a YouTube video, got Allen wrenches, fished out the glass shards, and “fixed it.” She programmed my car so that I can use the button on my mirror to open the garage door, and also programmed her cell phone so that she can use it as a tv remote. It’s kind of scary how she has no qualms about learning how to do anything. I think she got this from my husband, who was very much a tinkerer. I’m not handy at all, so I’ll glad she has this skill.
DH and I were discussing this just the other day. DS has had plenty of opportunities to work with and learn from his very handy father but almost always declines. He’s going to have a big wake-up call when he’s out on his own and has to pay others to do what he should have learned a long time ago.
My brother in law does all the handyman work, including plumbing. I asked him how he learned and he said his father did remodeling and construction work and he learn from him. I then asked BIL why his kids (and mine) weren’t being taught this stuff at his elbow.
Probably the same reason my kids can’t sew or iron ('cause it is easier and faster to do it myself)
@jeepgirl:
"If my kids take after their father, then they are in big trouble. He thinks that we have people for everything. "
Ditto that, jeepgirl.
My H is handy, but this isn’t always a good thing. We have a room in our house where the a/c isn’t flowing through. H has isolated it to a certain location. Now he wants to cut through a finished ceiling in our basement to get to it. It’s going to be a mess. I wish he’d just hire a HVAC guy already.
Student (grad-level) here.
My dad was a master plumber. I worked with him for many, many years. I do all the little plumbing jobs around the house. Just this weekend I had to fix my fridge that wasn’t giving us water or ice. Filter problem.
Clean the carpet? Repair minor electrical things? Install a toilet? No problem.
Work on ANYTHING involving a car? I’m useless. Can’t even change a tire. AAA and I are BFFs. (Actually, I can jump my car or use one of those electric things to restart a battery. I can install one, too. I had a bad battery on my last car so I did manage to figure out how to do that.)
Hard to say. Desperate time calls for desperate measures. One of my kids is in Africa, got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, at dusk, no internet connection.
Kiddo changed the flat, with a cellphone flashlight and manual located in the car.
I guarantee you, had that happened here, Dad would have been called.
There is a lot of resilience in kids.
Above poster, learninginprog, says it all…If you do not have the means to have someone else do the work, you become very resourceful. We live in a time where you can learn how to repair or replace anything on the internet. It simply depends on your willingness and your available funds.
I learned from watching my dad.
I learned that it’s usually a lot less expensive to hire a professional who knows what they are doing than to try to do it yourself and end up paying a lot more for them to come in later to fix everything you screwed up.
I still remember when he installed a new garage door opener. When he finished, he told me to hit the button to test it out. Instead of the door going up, it ripped out a hole in the garage wall where he attached it. LOL
I will say I have done some minor things (replace a vacuum cleaner hose etc) and the advent of YouTube videos makes it MUCH easier. Since I’m not handy, directions don’t work for me but videos do.