> There's something slightly pathetic about an adult who has forgotten how to cook, clean, fix things, get around, and do all the other basic trappings of living because someone else does it all for them.

I assume you feel the same way about hunting/growing your food, disposing of your human waste, constructing your own shelter, etc? No? There's something more-than-slightly pathetic about an adult who thinks that their point in history is somehow a special one, where all of the customs happen to be the "correct" ones in an ahistorical sense.

> If you use your time saved on laundry to learn how to paint or chart stars or build a house or a car, that's respectable. But how many of the new upper crust are using their saved time that way?

Right...this is exactly what my point was. RodericDay's assumption that this is a bad thing relies on being a certain type of person who already doesn't know what to do with the free time they have. For those of whose who don't have that issue, the idea that it's a moral failing to free up time for things you find less interesting is entirely unsupported.