Maybe I'm the only person wondering about this, but do children have any chores they are expected to do these days? The reason I'm wondering is because of a commercial I keep seeing for a grocery store chain that has online selection and pick up/delivery available. The woman in the commercial is extolling the virtues of being able to have someone else do her shopping for her, and all she has to do is pick up the bags of groceries and put them in her car on her way home from work. Later in the commercial, she is seen eating dinner with her husband and children, and mentions how the "grocery fairies" made her life so much easier. Then she says "If only there were dishwasher faires."
Ahem, dumbass - you have a husband and kids. Also, you have a DISHWASHER, which ostensibly means that none of those delicate flowers seated with you at the table would have to put their perfect hands into actual dishwater. Is your husband unable to determine the complicated configuration of a dishwasher? Are your children - who do not appear to be babies or toddlers - too precious for any type of household labor? Or, are you - and I know so many people like this - a victim of your own self, because no one else knows how to do it "the right way," so only you can get things accomplished?
I did a Google Images search for "children's chores" and hundreds of images resulted - from chore charts, to templates for said charts, and of course the ever popular clipart examples like below, which shows these poor enslaved young people happily doing their assigned chores. Clearly they have been brainwashed.
I mean, my parents were hardly strict at all, but we were expected to make our beds everyday, take turns washing the dishes (no dishwashers in our house until I was in high school!), and "other duties as assigned," so to speak when requested by my parents. As we got older, we were expected to help with laundry, cleaning the house, and even some of the outside chores.
Was it annoying? Yeah, sometimes. And of course, it NEVER seemed fair! I mean, there were my parents coming home from working all day, fixing food for us to eat, and they expected US to do work??
The Tim's background is pretty much the same. He comes from a family with 5 kids, who are all fairly close in age, so they were all expected to do their share as well.
Having said all of that, I did used to have a work colleague who came in one day and said she was really unpopular at home. She had decided that she'd had enough, so she set a schedule for the family where each night someone was responsible for dinner after getting home from work, school, whatever. Her kids were teenagers, and the rule was that if it was your turn to cook, you also did the cleaning up. She said she told them that no meal had to be elaborate - hot dogs, grilled cheese, soup, etc. were all options because she realized that they may not really know much about how to cook.
Fast forward to the second week. I asked her how it was going. She said, "Oh that's all done. They didn't know what to do, and ___ (husband) wasn't doing things like I wanted anyway. So it's back to just me cooking every day."
Well, you know what? She's the only one to blame in that situation.
What about you? Did you have chores/duties/jobs growing up? I'm curious if most people experienced what I did, or if they didn't have to do anything in particular until they lived on their own as adults.
12 comments:
I you are not mistaken. Chores for children seem to be a thing of the past. I made my kids, who are now in their 30s do chores— and I was the only parent who did so. There was a lot of complaining at the time but they are glad now. However, as a teacher I found that poor kids of color do a lot of chores. Affluence has its drawbacks.
I come from a family of 4 kids. None of us had chores per se. We all helped out around the house (and yard), but no one was responsible for A, B or C. Colin is our only child and he did not have chores that he had to do. But...he always pitched in and did stuff...and he still does when he comes over. We did not have a dishwasher growing up and I've never had one!
My DIL has a house cleaning service and my son has his yard work done by the gardening crew so no....I don't think my Grands lift a finger. What they do is go to way too many activities. Swimming, tennis, piano, Kumon, Chinese class and I'm probably missing some. Whenever we are there DIL spends all day rushing them around from one thing to another. I think it's awful but I bite my tongue. Their dad always helped around the house. He did all the cooking and clean up because I had a 2 hour commute and a full time job and if they wanted to eat they had to deal with it or wait until I fought the Capitol Beltway traffic and got home. They all did their own laundry too.
My kids (now in their 30s) were in the very distinct minority among their friends who had to clean their own rooms! They did their own laundry since age 8. They set and cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. I rarely had to carry groceries into the house. They had to pick up after themselves.
My son joined a family already in progress when he met my daughter-in-love. Her kids didn't have any responsibilities, and he was astonished. Now they all have individual chores as well as extras that earn them cash. They really didn't complain; they heard the explanation and saw the importance/logic behind it. It has helped in so many ways...for all of them.
I had chores to do and I grew up in the age where certain chores were "girl" chores and others were "boy" chores - like my brothers had to mow the lawn but my sister and I had to help with ironing, vacuuming, dusting, and dishes, etc. My teenage granddaughters have chores to do and they have been doing them for a while now - the take turns doing the dishes and they know how to do their own laundry. It is good to have chores and it makes them self-sufficient.
Both Dave and I have had this discussion before. We BOTH had chores. We didn't get allowance for it either (though I'm not opposed to that) - it was our duties for the household.
We didn't have a dishwasher, so Mom washed (we never did it good enough for her) but dishes (with the exception of glasses) we not allowed to sit there and dry. My brother and I were tasked with drying and putting them away as Mom washed them. My brother liked to cook, so he often helped Mom cook dinner.
As soon as we were tall enough to reach the knobs on the washer,(I was about seven) our laundry was our own responsibility. And if it was nice out, you weren't using the dryer and wasting electricity - you hung it on the line.
In addition to this, I was responsible for cleaning the cat litter (my brother had to scoop the dog poops). Whoever got up first fed them. We also had chickens and rabbits and I had to help Dad clean the hutch and coop. Every few months the dog houses needed the straw pulled out, and replaced with clean, fresh straw - since I was the smallest and could fit in the dog houses, that was my job.
I also had to water the plants once a week, and dust. And of course, keep my own room clean, which I NEVER did. We also cleaned the bathroom, swept, vacuumed and mopped as needed.
My brother helped cut the lawn (it was HUGE so he and Mom did it in shifts - Dad worked a couple of jobs, so Mom was on yard maintenance). He also took the garbage out.
We BOTH had to help stack wood at the beginning of autumn when the frehs load was delivered to get us through winter (We had a furnace, but the kitchen was an addition and was heated with wood - dad also had a woodstove in the garage).
I wouldn't say we were perfect at it, and we'd slack off every chance we got. But we were NEVER allowed to get away with it!
That said, when I moved out on my own, I realized just HOW much my Mom still did. Windows, they just don't stay clean...? What do you mean this floor has to be swept more than once??? Why is my microwave so gross? How did all these grease build up on the stove????
But sadly, it's not abnormal for kids not to have ANY expectations. I worked with one woman who's boys were in their early 20s. They had finished post-secondary, but still lived at home.(they did work) That's no big deal nowadays... but their Mom STILL cooked everything, made their lunches, did their laundry, and did ALL the housework. Oh - and they didn't even contribute financially. Her reasoning was she wanted them to focus on their school (while they were in it) then advancing their careers. The financial part - she wanted them to save their money so they could by houses instead of renting... and if she's financially sound, that's fine, I get that... but was she planning on having to clean those houses too???? Because those boys didn't even know how to use a washing machine.
Another instance...my ex from high school...if his Mom could have still wiped his but she would have. He went away to college, and she would cook a months worth of meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), freeze them, drive three hours there to deliver them, then three hours home. She would do this EVERY single month. When he came back from college he got a place of his own (he didn't get along with his step-father), and I literally had to teach him how to make his bed, how to use a vacuum, how to scrub a bathroom. He literally had no clue. She still brought him meals... and when she didn't - he ordered out.
He also had no idea how to fix anything.. he wasn't crafty, wasn't handy, knew nothing about cars or computers. If he needed anything done, he had to pay someone to do it. One day I realized he was the most useless human being I'd ever known.
My brother and I both had to do chores growing up. Some were seasonal (garden, yard) and others were daily or weekly chores that had been assigned. I still remember my Mother making me go back and redust because I did not dust the chair rungs. My daughter had assigned chores and even bought the groceries at one time. My grandchildren also have chores and they have had to start doing their own laundry when they become thirteen.
I did a lot of chores (or so it seems now, looking back. . . ) when I was a child. My kids had regular chores to do, as well, although not as many as I did. I found it extremely tedious to nag at my kids to get them to DO their chores. It was absolutely draining to be the Chore Cop, and I hated every minute of that . . . chore.
No dishwasher in my house until after I graduated from college, so my big chore was to either wash or dry dishes. Plus make bed, clean my room, put laundered clothes away, empty the trashcan. Walk the dog. I remember that my brother did not have to do dishes except on Christmas eve (because we always had people over, and my mother wanted to use paper plates and my brother thought that was tacky).
That was a walk down memory lane!
I don't have kids but friends with kids don't seem to impose a lot of chores.
I never had set chores, but if I was asked (told?) to do something, the expectation was that it would get done post-haste.
My children were responsible for their own things. The rule: If I had to pick it up, I got to decide what happened to it.
Also, I never got an allowance. Neither did my two.
I did not have chores to do. We had a housekeeper. I wasn't allowed in my Mom's kitchen because "I would make a mess". I had a LOT to learn when I got married and had to work AND take care of the house.
Our son did have chores to do. Sadly, they were mostly along gender lines. He did mowing and weeding. He had to keep his room reasonably tidy and his bathroom clean as it was the guest bathroom as well.
He, however, did not move into his own place knowing how to keep a kitchen clean or, for the most part, to cook.
He is still alive, so I guess he learned.
We had chores growing up. We would start out great guns and then sick off. Then My father would give us aII a TaIk about heaping our mother and we' would start doing them again. Chores are part of my adult days. My kids had to do aII their own Laundry by ten years of age. I heard that Martha Beck said she had her son doing a chore the moment he was abIe. He had Down Syndrome. I was Iike an aha moment for me.
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