Parents used to be the source of "life skills" (I don't like that phrase myself), but it seems to have stopped for reasons unknown to me. Schools, or rather the education system, seem to be struggling with the very basics so I'm not sure they'd cope with it.
I suspect I'm one of the last of those 'prior generations' who learned 'life skills' from my parents who in turn were taught by their parents. Not that I didn't try very hard with my own children but they just weren't 'interested'. As a lad in short trews, my lad would always be happy to 'pass tools to Daddy' if I was putting up shelves or rewiring the living room, but now he and his girlfriend are busy, high-flying go-getters he'd rather pay someone £25 to put a shelf up or get a tradesman in to fix a loose cabinet door in his kitchen. A couple of times when I happened to be visiting I'd get a "While you're here Dad, any chance you could...(insert routine DIY task here)". Usually something trivial to me but a complete mystery to him. So, happy to do it (he's family after all), I'd ask him to grab me a screwdriver or a pair of pliers and I'd get a blank look and "I haven't got any tools.". He's got any number of qualifications and certificates in computer-related stuff, but he couldn't fit a replacement 13A plug (or know he needs to change the fuse to 3A) on a table-lamp if someone held a gun to his head.
Me being me, I never go anywhere without a full set of tools in the back of the car. I'd grab the necessary, do the five-minute job, and he'd tell me that if I hadn't been there, he would have Googled a local handyman and paid them to do it. Not 'Googled how to do it himself'.
My mother taught me the 'basics' of cooking before I went to uni. Just enough that I could fend for myself out in the 'big wide world'. If I could rustle up a spaghetti Bolognese or plate of beans on toast, I wouldn't starve. My son? He hasn't even got a cooker or a microwave in his flat. Neither he or his other half can cook so they live off ready-to-eat cold food, or get takeaways. He can't even boil an egg. And yet, his mother was a cook in a restaurant most of her working life but he never picked up even a hint.
Schools are happy to teach coding and a modern version of 'Craft, Design and Technology' or 'Food Science' but whatever happened to Woodwork and Metalwork or Home Economics? All on the curriculum when I was in secondary school and, when I left at 16, I could sew a button on a shirt, turn up a pair of trousers, weld a patch on my Mum's Renault 5 or make a tenon and mortice joint with just a handsaw, mallet and chisel.
Half the reason they don't teach this stuff anymore is because the 'kids' today would rather order Deliveroo, get a tradesman in to assemble a flat-pack bookcase, or persuade Mummy and Daddy to up-front for a newer car than drag themselves away from their devices and actually try to do anything 'practical' for themselves.
