What are 10 things a woman should know how to do, or know about, by the time she is 25?

Father of teenaged girl here. I came in to say this. My exact working would’ve been “Know how to say no with absolutely zero guilt.”

I’ve just got three and they apply to men just as much:

  1. Know that you are the sole owner and occupant of your body. Do as you please with it. Learn how it works, and how to recognize problems. No one can obligate you to do something with or to it that you do not want to do. If they try, say no, however you have to.
  2. Humanity is not black and white. Understand that people are complicated and in a million shades of gray. Motives are not always clear. Reactions are not what you may expect. That’s life.
  3. Learn how to clean. Know how to clean yourself, your surroundings, and your clothing. Seriously. I’m in the military and it was amazing the number of kids in Basic who’d never swept or mopped or done laundry before.

That’s ridiculous, there can’t be much more than a hundred or so such people in the US. I think there are only about a dozen left in the UK, though I’ve never met one.

Yeah man. Chicks never seem to use duct tape on the goddamn ducts.

NinjaChick’s back! And she’s in the Army!

in rough order:

-read and write on a 12th grade level (without a grading curve)
-communicate well with others
-put out a fire
-swim
-create and follow a budget
-balance a checkbook
-cook
-recognize and be able to handle basic tools safely
-drive a stick shift
-earn a living

The list above are tools that allow any person to survive in society and are transportable from place to place.

Why is swimming on the list? If a person is around large bodies of water, I can see needing to know how to swim. But I’m 54 years old, and never really learned how to swim, and I can get along fine without this knowledge. If I need to be on a boat, then I insist on wearing a life jacket. I don’t NEED to swim in order to survive in society. I can get in a pool and do water exercises just fine without swimming.

Generally most people live near a river or lake. Many drownings occur to people who didn’t willingly enter the water. It’s always been considered a basic skill in my family. One of the things taught to a child at a young age.

There are a lot of things people keep naming (like reproductive stuff) that aren’t 100% essential to survival. But I agree that they are pretty handy to know.

Swimming is in this boat, IMHO. It goes in the same box as “basic first aid”. I know people who refuse to get in water, even wadable water, because they can’t swim. Or they are afraid of going on a cruise. Yes, it is relatively easy to avoid these things, but why should one limit themselves in this way?

Swimming is also good exercise, and it is a handy skill to be able to pass down to children. I’d say riding a bike is another skill that someone should have down by 25, for the same reasons.

Being independent, in general, is something someone should be able to do by the time they are 25. This encompasses a lot of things. Being able to clean a house, cook a meal (even if it’s just one meal), make money, and pay bills on time are the essential ingredients of adulthood. Also, being emotionally equipped to live alone is also something people should have under their belt by 25. Many people hate living alone and have never done it before, but they should at least be able to handle it if they found themselves in such a situation for an extended period of time. People who are desperate for companionship don’t tend to be very discriminating, and this is bad.

I just thought of another: Being able to handle an emergency without losing your mind. Like, if you’re driving out of town and your car breaks down. Even if it’s dark, even if your cell phone is not working…you should be able to think through what you’re going to do without completely flipping out. I remember when I encountered my first emergency like this where I didn’t immediately burst into tears. I was quite proud of myself.

I would amend my list to combine budgeting and balancing a check book and add basic first aid.

  • How to hunt and kill, armed only with a pointy stick, a woolly mammoth. While on rollerskates, and wearing white leggings when the painters are in.

You’ve obviously never seen 2 women fight in a bar. They already have that skill.

I knew a guy in his 40’s who had that exact same rationale for not knowing how to swim. A couple of years back, he was visiting a friend with an in ground pool. He got up at night and went out for a smoke. By the pool. They found his body the next morning.

It’s a skill that can be learned very quickly. At the very least, knowing how to tread water and float will buy you some time to be rescued should you ever accidentally end up in water.

I had a really irregular period for a long time, so I was aware that I needed to be extra careful about not getting pregnant. Still can’t tell you without double-checking when my fertile days are, but I’m aware of approximately when they should fall.

Black isn’t necessary, but a dress that’s well-made, looks great on you and is suitable for multiple occasions is a good investment. I’ve got one sheath dress that fits the bill (also work appropriate if I put a tank top underneath to the the cleavage), and a light gold dress that I tend to wear to more formal occasions.

It’s not fully necessary, but having an outfit that works for somewhat formal occasions and can be worn in a variety of situations (funeral, wedding, interview, etc.) is very handy as an adult. I didn’t have much that was spot-on for wearing to a funeral the second to last time I was at one (over a year ago, and had gotten too big for my usual funeral attire), and was trying to hide my embarrassment at having to cobble together an outfit at the last minute.

I hadn’t had the experience of living with nobody else in the house until just before I got married, as Acid Lamp was gone for weeks at a time due to his job. The first week was weird, but then I was fine with handling the whole household while he was gone. It was just initially strange to come home and know that nobody else would be coming home that day.

My thoughts exactly. Being able to tread water/doggy paddle and float are easy to learn and is useful for anyone to know. Having grown up in an area where there’s waterways everywhere, it was strange meeting folks who didn’t know how to swim; most of us had learned the skill before the age of six, and I learned swimming basics before I learned how to walk.

I can tread water and float. I can’t really swim. Even if I COULD actually swim, I am so blind without my glasses that I can’t tell where the shore/pool edge is, and my glasses have always promptly fallen off my face when I tried to learn to swim. I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to learn to swim, with different teachers. I don’t live near a river or lake. Well, if I want to travel about an hour, I could get to one, but really, how many people DO live near a water’s edge? I can and do go wading, but only when there are other people around. And I really don’t want to go on a cruise. My father had a sailboat when I was growing up, and I got along just fine by wearing a life vest, as is recommended for EVERYONE, swimmers and non-swimmers. And Daddy had us all get in the water while wearing the life vests, so that we could learn how to sort of relax and let the vests do the work of floating us. I actually rather enjoyed this.

Seriously, though, I seem to have made it through life for over half a century without needing to know how to swim. And while I’ve been known to do some stupid things, I wouldn’t go out next to a pool at night, with no one around, in order to do something outside unless I was wearing a life vest. I also wouldn’t go into a tiger cage and pet the pretty striped kitties without precautions.

Really, there are a ton of people who have made it to their 50s without doing something that they probably should know how to do. There will always be someone around to ferry around someone who is too afraid to drive. Restaurants exists to help those who don’t or can’t cook. People can hire a maid if they are unable or unwilling to clean. You don’t have to have a nice dress to go to a wedding if you don’t care about following societal conventions. AAA will come to your rescue if you don’t know how to change a tire. Abortion clinics soften the blow of any miscalculations of fertility. Etc, etc.

Thing is, just because one can get away without knowing how to do basic things in modern society doesn’t take away the fact that such a person can be stunted/miss out/make life harder for themselves by not learning these things. Perhaps swimming isn’t one of those things (plenty of people don’t know how), but it’s damn tragic when you find yourself in a situation where knowing would save your life and you don’t know how. You really can’t say that for most of the things people are coming up with in this thread.

I really don’t think that this situation comes up that often, though. I mean, knowing how to fly a plane might save my life, and I do occasionally travel by air. However, the chances that I’ll actually NEED to be able to fly a plane are very low. And the chances that I’ll actually NEED to be able to swim (as opposed to treading water and floating) are probably even lower. If I fished, or if I liked to go boating, then yeah, I’d make more of an effort to try to learn. But I don’t. And I feel that I’ve given my best shot at learning to swim. I have no interest in spending another six months in swimming classes. I don’t think that it’s a critical adult skill, unless that adult is around water a lot. And by “around water a lot” I mean that the adult has a pool at his/her house, or is on a lakeside property, or something like that.

I have never curtailed my DESIRED activities because I can’t swim. I don’t regard it as a necessity for every adult.

Robert Heinlein had a list of things that he said that every competent adult human should be able to do. Some of them were sensible. But others were on the order of being able to pilot a ship. Now, in his experience, maybe needing to pilot a ship happens often enough to be a required skill. And in someone else’s experience, maybe being able to perform an emergency tracheotomy is a valuable skill. But I feel no need to learn to pilot a ship, or perform an emergency tracheotomy, or swim, because the chances of my NEEDING to know how to do those things is so low that it’s not worth it, to me. Sure, there’s a very low chance that I’d need that skill someday. But I’d rather spend my time learning stuff that I’m more likely to use.

There’s the quote. I think that some of those skills are unnecessary for EVERYONE to know. When’s the last time you had to butcher a hog, for instance?

I’ve never died gallantly. How do you practice that?

Lynn, what do you think someone should know how to do by the time they are 25? Pretty much everything I can think of is something I can pay someone else to do for me, or I can avoid doing it all together.

(And I don’t think anyone equates knowing how to swim with anything other than how to keep your head above water. So floating and treading water counts as “swimming”.)