I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Guessing it’s high income country, where I live eating out the most expensive option, but from what I gather about US for example there’s a big eating out culture there and cooking at home can be a pure hobby for most of them
I’m in the UK and in my mid 20s and I’d say anyone over 30 has learnt to cook at home to save money and 75% of eating out is due to just being out over mealtime or doing something specific like taking someone for dinner.
I’d say I’m not a great cook. I enjoy following recipies and the presentation of food but generally I’d avoid cooking for anyone but my partner and closest friends because I don’t feel good enough to cook for others. When I’m cooking for myself I generally make something quick and easy that would either impress nobody with its 2-3 ingredients or all comes from one packet, but that’s less because I can’t cook at all and more because we culturally don’t care about food enough here and I’m gonna enjoy that pack of instant noodles with old spring onions just as much as a homemade curry because it’s faster, I won’t inevitably get the measurements just a bit wrong and I have a weak British palette.
I’m from the US and moved to Germany. I’m still regularly surprised at how little Germans cook. Tbf, lunch is the big warm meal, so I get not cooking much during the week, but it’s very different from what I’m used to. Everyone seems to be surprised that Americans ime eat out less than Germans, so I don’t know if it’s just that I moved from a home cooking hotspot to a takeout hotspot.
German takeout doesn’t make me feel nearly as shit as American takeout though, so that might be the real answer