My dad loved to cook and was quite a good "peasant" cook. My mother HATED cooking, and learned the bulk of her cooking skills in WWII England when food was heavily rationed. She was lucky in that her family kept chickens, so they had meat and eggs from then.
I started cooking very basic stuff like eggs, French toast, grilled cheese sandwiches when I could reach the stove standing on a milk crate. As I got taller, my dad taught me how to make soups, stews, chili, etc, and taught me how to cook out on a grill. He also taught me how to cook roasts and steaks and such in the oven, though those were a very rare thing a we were a low-income family.
I laugh now that shortribs, brisket, beef and lamb shanks, are all gourmet fare now (and priced like it) as I first as a child, and then as new wife, ate quite a bit of those as they were very cheap and very versatile.
I have NEVER told my mother or father that I hated their cooking. As an adult, I have gotten to the point where if I mother is cooking cut up chicken, to ask her to take my piece out of the oven 10 mins early as she likes her food way overcooked. When my dad was alive, I would ask him to let me add the hotsauce to my chili at the table, as if he added it to it in the pot, it would take the top of your head off.
I still make my chili according to dad's recipe, but I use real peppers instead of hotsauce.
I was always aware that my parents worked, in the case of my dad, 3 jobs, to support us kids and keep a roof over our head once we moved to the suburbs. Cooking after a long day/night at work, was a real effort. I was about 12 when I started cooking meals. No one told me too. I just dug around, found a roasting hen, some potatoes and carrots and turnips, salad fixings, and made a roast dinner with salad as the vegetable.
My parents were thrilled. I was until I realized WHY mom and dad always put foil in the roasting pan. Ugh...what a cleanup!
After that, I made dinner a couple of nights a week.