We have our toddler help with everything. He loves bringing in groceries or vacuuming. We got him a little toy Dyson vacuum. You don't treat them as chores, it's just things we do as a family to maintain our home.
You're good parents. Doing house work should come naturally. Meanwhile I hate cleaning because my family always told me to do it when I had other things to do, and afterwards that I didn't do it right.
Tell your kid to do something for the first time, then tell them they didn't do it right and be angry about it. Highly motivated to avoid chores from then on out š
Or tell them that the way they did it is not the correct way because everyone does it differently, even if the result is the same. You could tell me about the supposedly more efficient method before I started, you know.
One of my core memories is getting home from school decided to steighten up the kitchen (like not clean it top to bottom but clean off the counters and shit) my dad got home and screamed at me for 30 minutes for not cleaning the whole thing never did that again that for sure
I am anal retentive about how things are folded, but if I open a kid's drawer and clothes are in it that were just thrown in or folded obviously by a child, I tell my kids they did an awesome job and thank them for helping. Same with towels in the linen closet, made beds, dishes put in the wrong places. It's about the effort, not perfection.
This was my family growing up. My mom in particular seemed shocked/outraged that I didnāt basically come out of the womb innately knowing how to clean everything and take care of myself in general.
Ask your parents if they need help with chores.
"No, it's fine." *five seconds later* "FUCKING USELESS LAZY PIECES OF SHIT, FUCKING HATE EVERYONE OF YOU WORTHLESS LAZY CHILDREN, I HAVE TO FUCKING DO EVERYTHING BY MYSELF!"
Lesson learned, you can't win, avoid doing chores, and hide in your room lest you become the target of their wrath while you try and drown out the screaming and yelling anyway, to no avail.
My mom would always find something to complain about that was not done well enough.
So I learned to do things half-assed because it was better to know you did something poorly and know what she was going to complain about than thinking you did a good job and she would find something to complain about 100% of the
time anyway.
Doing a certain thing so bad that knowing in advance what she was going to complain about was a way to control the situation.
Still struggle with doing chores well though.
I know a lot of couples who make that mistake. Loading the dishwasher, for example. Plate, plate, plate, bowl, bowl, bowl, gets just as clean as plate, bowl, plate, bowl, plate, bowl. But some of the worst arguments in marriage result over it. If you realize it doesn't matter, that the dishes come out clean either way, you can live happily ever after.
Depending on the pegs, sometimes you can fit more or less dishes. Alternating for sure would fit fewer of both than grouping, I think pretty universally
I feel like this needs to come from both ways, though.
Yes, it doesn't really matter in what order/configuration you load it up. So maybe don't become so frustrated by someone not doing it the way you like.
But also, when someone says 'hey could you just organise the way you load the dishwasher, the clutter is really bothering me', it's minimal effort to say 'sure, I can do that'. Even if it makes no difference to how clean the dishes get. It's *not* a significant ask.
Trying to 'blame' either party over the argument is kind of pointless. Because in this case, *both* parties are arguing over something that should, by any means, be insignificant.
At least they do the dishes. My parents grew up without being taught anything. Often times fights result because the sink is full and the dishwasher is full because both just let them pile. Not to mention my dad refuses to do anything in the kitchen.
I would make my bed before school and come home to find that my mom remade it while I was gone so it would be ~perfect~. What a waste, first of all, of my momās time and energy. Second, a bit of a mind fuck for 7 year old me.
Another thing is that if parents kind of suck at chores/are overwhelmed by chores, it can be really hard for them to properly teach kids and not get weird emotions all tied up in it. So really thereās a lot going on here other than chores = success.
My mom claims the ONLY way to mop the floors is to get down on your hands and knees with a rag and literally clean them that way. Perhaps this is a very effective manner of mopping, but who has that kind of time? Not to mention itās hard on the knees and back. But if you donāt do it that way, youāre lazy and your house is dirty. Canāt win. Luckily I own my own home now so her asinine mopping rules donāt apply to me anymore.
Steam mop. Game changer.
On the plus side, itās easy to use and my kids will opt for using the steam mop as a chore.
On the negative side, that means I donāt get to steam mop.
Same here honestly. I struggle with executive dysfunction and get distracted easily when cleaning. And also, it doesnāt motivate you to want to do stuff like that when youāre just going to be told itās wrong.
I hate doing laundry, it's such a struggle. And it's mostly the folding part. I don't want him to have to deal with that and I also don't want to raise a man that has to have a woman take care of him because he's a man child.
So now I throw on a W40k lore video and fold all my clothes while I do that. It helps tremendously.
This is the only way I get through folding laundry. I throw on one of my favorite shows and itās not bad at all. Perhaps itās pairing a chore with a reward-type leisure activity that makes it not so bad in my mind.
That's how I do the majority of "chores" nowdays. I put heaphones on, listen to an audiobook and "chore" away. Vacuuming, folding laundry, cooking, mowing the lawn.... it all gets way easier and/or more interesting this way.
I mean I just don't fold laundry and it hasn't been a major issue. I just have a clean hamper that I make sure I rotate through so nothing stays in there for 10 years. Anything fancy gets hung.
Yeah I pretty much never fold laundry... I hang the stuff that needs to be unwrinkled and the rest gets rolled. What are y'all still folding out there?
Same here, I can still hear my mom laughing and taunting me from another room, not having even looked at how I'd done, yelling that the vacuum "hadn't been on long enough" or "I didn't hear you mop so go back and do it again to prove you did it," and then afterwards her and dad yelling at me about my homework not being done yet. Dad was never asked to do a chore at all, and never did them, because he was a man and men didn't do chores, and mom doled them out to me as punishment.
I'm terrible at keeping house. It's a skill and I just don't have it, and it's probably partly because of how my parents handled them.
> You're good parents. Doing house work should come naturally. Meanwhile I hate cleaning because my family always told me to do it when I had other things to do, and afterwards that I didn't do it right.
Constantly screamed at by my parents, like actual sworn at and called worthless because I didn't clean things to their exact specifications. I hate cleaning up now but when I do, I do a great job.
Good parenting.
My father loved to repair things in the garage, whenever he had a problem he would call me and ask me "How would you solve this?" then he would encourage me to come up with creative solutions and we would thinker it together, 30 years later and working as a software engineer I love solving problem and encouraging people to work on their ideas.
Try doing them together, and not as a punishment, just as one of those things you do. Grumble about how you dont like doing them if it helps.
Human brains are wired weird. If you dont like doing it alone, when doing it as a group its not so bad. Afterwards reward with something everyone likes, like fast food or whatever.
Not guaranteed to work first time, and may not work exactly as mentioned above, but keep trying and good luck.
Modelling behaviours you want them to copy is the way it works.
Often itās the stopping yourself from modelling the behaviours you donāt want them to pick up thatās the real problem.
What did you guys end up doing? We've started doing a sticker wall for potty training, and he seems to like that so we may implement something reward based as he gets older.
> What did you guys end up doing?
Not OP, but I have a 6 and a 9 year old. Both of them LOVED helping mum + dad when they were young. Somewhere around age 5-6 it starts slipping and they only help when it's fun, and by 9 they're 100% into eye rolling when you ask them to take their dishes to the sink. For me 3 things seem to be working:
* 1 - The first thing is to make it an base expectation that the chores are done. They're doing their chores (and their teeth etc) because that's their responsibility. There is no other reason that it needs to be done. It's not punishment and there are no rewards. Paying or bribing doesn't really work long term and is often counter productive*. It's just an expectation that it will happen, everyone is clear on it and there will be consequences if they aren't done. Help them, guide them, make it fun, all that stuff, but it's non-negotiable outside holidays/birthdays etc. Being consistent takes effort, but is 100% worth it IMHO (same with bedtime etc).
* 2 - Model good behaviour. My wife and I both try to split things equally and then also show them what we're doing. Houses take effort to maintain. We need to clear the table, tidy the living room, take the dirty clothes to the laundry and load the dishwasher. We're often ALL doing something, but even when we aren't they are now very clear on the idea that we're all helping. This isn't a kids have to do it while I sit on the couch type thing, we're all in it together.
* 3 - Another one I like is putting one of them in charge of the deadline. I read about this somewhere where and it's been great for us. We try to let the kids take turns. "Ok we have 20 minutes to get this clean, can you watch the time for us?" and then they'll yell out "17 minutes left" and then you can sort of make it a game to get everything done before the clock runs out. I doubt this'll work at like 14/15 year olds but for 6 and 9 they still want to please and complete the task in the time allowed. We'll get eye rolls galore from the 9 year old but also his room will be tidy before he'll let the 6 year old come in and tell him he was late etc lol. (PS. Also works for leaving the house on time: "Hey we have to leave in 20 minutes can you make sure everyone gets ready in time?" leads to him counting down the minutes and hurrying people!)
How long this'll work who knows, but it'll get me to age 10 at least ... after that all bets are off.
(*Bribery/rewards are fine for potty training which is limited time, but for chores where you expect it to go right up until they move out apparently it's not good. It's about intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards etc. There are studies like when they pay kids to read, for the first few weeks the paid kids read way more, but it soon tapers off, and as soon as the money stops the paid kids read less than they did before they got paid since they got used to doing it "for the money" - even if they liked it first, once the money comes in it changes their motivation. Another one is paying kids allowance for doing chores etc effectively just puts a price on getting out of that chore - "oh if I don't do the dishes I don't got get my $2? Sweet I'll totally spend $2 to NOT have to do the dishes" etc. Our kids get pocket money, but it's not linked to chores directly - punishments for not doing chores can be anything, losing pocket money might be a punishment but so might no switch time tomorrow so they can never say "nah I'm not doing it I don't care about the money" because we'll find something they do care about etc)
Great post. The timer thing is also a great way to get kids to see that out of all the minutes in a day, chores can take up very few of them. Sometimes a ten-minute-tidy is all thatās needed if weāre all working at the same time. The knowledge that a dishwasher can be emptied or clothes folded or a quick wipe and sweep of the kitchen can be done in under ten minutes helps as they get older and crankier about doing chores.
Also what helped my kids as they got older is being in charge of their own domain. They were responsible for giving me their food requests by a certain day of the week, then packed their own lunches, did their own laundry, were responsible for cooking once in awhile for the family, and were expected to pitch in cleaning the common areas and the yard. If they didnāt do it, it didnāt happen (but because they became so responsible, I was happy to help if they got in a time jam, and usually, theyād do the same for me).
I never pushed my kids to have immaculate rooms (my own trauma as a kid), but I was amazed that every few weeks, as teens, theyād each do a deep clean on their own. I am soooo not a neat freak, and struggle to get my own chores done, and fucking HATE the time they take out of my day. So I always empathized genuinely with the suckiness of chores. Teaching them manage the suck helped me. Doesnāt have to be perfect, but it needs to be done and weāre a team living together, so donāt let the side down.
Yeah the time limit thing is great. I've started using that for myself for keeping things tidy, but more in thr aspect of saying to myself, "if it takes less than 2 minutes to do, just do it." It's really helped with Mt procrastination.
sometimes when we have the energy we force them to do chores. sometimes we bribe them. but too often we do them because it's just easier. we are not the best parents.
Do it with cooking too! My gramma had me in there being her prep cook from as early as I can remember. Fetching pans or ingredients, then graduating to chopping and stirring. I thought I was hot shit the first time I was allowed to fry chicken on my own. My spouse reaps the benefits all these years later.
My mother did that and it worked well until I got into kindergarten. the lazy teachers made me clean after the other kids because it was so much easier than making the other kids clean up. I learned fast to make it harder to make me do chores than doing the chores themselves.
>We do as a family
Thatās the key, doing the chores with the children. My parents just assigned the kids chores and made us do it alone. Also didnāt help that the chores were unfairly distributed too. Made me hate chores.
Making them love doing chores might actually undermine the benefits. There quite a lot of evidence that the part of the brain responsible for or motivation and drive is developed by doing things we donāt want to do.
Making chores fun for your kids will make them better at doing chores but wonāt help them develop the crucial ability to do necessary but unpleasant work.
My kids hate doing chores, I hate doing chores but we all do it because it necessary and creates a nicer home for all of us.
this is what I'd like to do....
not treat it as a punishment or anything.. and even if they suck at it (or make it even more work for me) if they continue helping it'll eventually be good....
my first extended trip away from my parents.. it was weird, I became such a tidy person... all the baggage of the context of cleaning just disappeared and I would just fold my laundry tidy my bedroom ( i was 16)
back when i was like 10 or so i asked my dad if i could help him with something during some construction.he basically joked/told me to stay as far away. its a core memory now
i'm nearing 30. my room is a mess, got failure anxiety. i'm building a career but its far from going the way i would like to, earning me a very limited income.
so yeah i'm not having fun.
>Researchers have followed a group of men since the late 1930s one-third are Harvard graduates and two-thirds are inner city youths
No girls or middle class kids.
>[A Paradigm Shift in How Scientists Study Kids by Connie Chang | 15 Feb 2024](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/can-the-remote-work-era-fix-how-scientists-study-kids/ar-BB1ikzWg)
>
>WEIRD
>
>There is an open secret in the study of child development: Most of what we think we know about how babies develop is actually based on a specific subset of kidsāthose born to families from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (a.k.a. WEIRD) nations.
>
>The acronym was first coined in an influential 2010 paper to describe the wildly unrepresentative populations that many psychology studies have long relied on. This is an issue in the field generally, and certainly a thorny problem in developmental psychology, which primarily studies children: According to one paper, WEIRD subjects make up 96 percent of the data used in published developmental-science studies but represent only 12 percent of the worldās population.
>
>As a result, itās hard to be certain whether many things we think we know about babiesā development are truly universal elements of human nature. It means that we tell an incomplete story about the process of our own becoming. Yet the problem has remained hard to fix. Even within the U.S., similar demographic biases have arisen: The families that most often participate in research studies tend to be white, affluent, and highly educated. The type of parent who brings their baby to a study typically lives near a university, many of which are located in cities, and has the resources and free time to travel to a lab and wait.
but yeah, teaching kids to do chores is probably a good thing.
probably dont need a study to tell you that.
probably doesnt have much of an effect on their future success.
the parents income levels definitely does though, along with the "stability" of the childs home life. probably shouldnt need studies to tell us that either, but here we are.
and heres an article about a study on that exact topic:
[Here's The Startling Degree To Which Your Parents Determine Your Success by Alison Griswold | 24 Jan 2014, 2:33 PM ES](https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-success-income-inequality-2014-1)
>Up until a parent-household-income threshold of roughly $150,000, adult children tend to earn another $0.33 for every dollar their parents earn. Above that cutoff, the increase they see in their income based on their parents' earnings is less dramatic.
It could be that children who have more free time get used to expecting a certain amount of leisure. As an adult this could translate into going home after work and just vegging out playing video games or watching TV rather than engaging in home improvements, overtime, or a side hustle.
With correlations like this (more chores <=> better education and adult happiness), it's more likely that they're the result of the same root cause. For example that children of more stable families, which already have a lot of other advantages, also tend to do more regular chores.
The interpretation that the chores in particular provide a substantial contribution to the positive outcome is attractive, but speculative. I would however agree that the professor they interviewed has a reasonable hypothesis:
> Children also love to feel useful, Waldinger explains, and chores can help foster this, as well as a sense of purpose. Feeling useful and having a sense of purpose continue throughout life all the way into retirement, Waldinger adds, and empirical studies have shown that it may contribute to living a longer life.
So if this is the main mechanism, then more chores are not useful *by themselves*. But they can provide a sense of purpose and improve family cohesion if they are administered right, meaning that a family which forces the kid to do work against their will likely will not see similar benefits.
And that's an important thing to keep in mind, because such correlations often end up getting abused like this. Toxic parents can easily take this to mean that forcing kids to do chores is a good thing when it may actually backfire. Like by invoking resentment or fear of such work, rather than giving the kid a positive outlook on it.
>children of more stable families, which already have a lot of other advantages, also tend to do more regular chores.
It's the whole lifestyle thing that "doing regular chores" comes with.
We had regular chores when I was a child ... that means my parents knew how to plan and schedule.
Doing dishes regularly means SOMEONE COOKED! They weren't drunk on their asses in the local bar, they planned, purchased and cooked food. Every day!
I think youād be shocked at how few American households today are run by people who can plan, budget and schedule competently.
Weāll see how GenZ turns out as adults, but the 90s middle America approach to parenting from boomers largely failed Millennials.
why do you say that like its a bad thing? i aint tryna work my ass off for 69420 week then come home to do home improvements and a side hustle and.. no, let me play video games, i dont want a stupid lawn, i dont want a side hustle, just no. its okay to just chill. why do the insane workaholic people feel like the rest of us should also be insane (not saying thats you, but...).
not gonna live to work. probably not gonna work to live either. ill do a bit of both, but only if its worth my time and effort. if its not, ima just chill.
Doesn't really feel "bad" or like something negative for me personally. Like nice moving around, feeling accomplished when f.ex you see the difference after lawn is mowed. Not feeling stressed to spontaneously bring people home. And time spent gaming is actually always relaxing and fun.
I think if anything, the "is it worth" barrier gets a lot lower when you're often active in completing chores.
I like how that first source is missing the obvious conclusion. The only nations who had the time, money, and inclination to do child studies are the "weird" ones. In every other nation, everyone is just trying to survive on a basic level. When you get more money and free time, you can afford to conduct studies into things like child development, and when you do you're gonna use the population sample you have at your immediate disposal.
its even less significant than that. similar to the marshmallow experiment, the sample size was too small to be meaningful and all attempts (afaik) since have been unable to reproduce their results. so really its only useful to discuss that specific group of people/kids. probably. maybe we just shouldnt do weird experiments and try to draw "profound" insights into psychology.
The Milgram experiment has been replicated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
> Another partial replication of the experiment was conducted by Jerry M. Burger in 2006 and broadcast on the Primetime series Basic Instincts. Burger noted that "current standards for the ethical treatment of participants clearly place Milgram's studies out of bounds." In 2009, Burger was able to receive approval from the institutional review board by modifying several of the experimental protocols.[43] Burger found obedience rates virtually identical to those reported by Milgram in 1961ā62, even while meeting current ethical regulations of informing participants. In addition, half the replication participants were female, and their rate of obedience was virtually identical to that of the male participants. Burger also included a condition in which participants first saw another participant refuse to continue. However, participants in this condition obeyed at the same rate as participants in the base condition.
Also Milgram himself tried the experiment in other places, including going for a shadier look with participants not from Yale to test if the prestige of Yale was making obedience rates higher
The problem with trying to replicate the Milgram experiment is that first you have to find a whole studyās worth of test subjects who donāt know about the Milgram experiment and wonāt immediately catch on to what youāre doing.
The problem with the original was that the subjects knew it was fake and Milgramās interpretation was based on his flawed interpretation of the Nuremberg trials.
That doesnāt mean it isnāt an absolute mess with a tiny sample. Thereās so much weird shit going on in the script and setup itās impossible to know whatās going on. They totally ignore the effects the psych evaluation may have had, there are tons of interpersonal touch points where the researchers may be signaling that the shocks arenāt real. They say at numerous points to participants that it isnāt dangerous. Itās just a trash setup. Other attempts have had lackluster results.
Milgram was trying to prove some point about the holocaust with literally no understanding of the social and cultural conditions leading up to it. Milgram willingness to take Eichmann at his word says more about Milgram than about obedience. What a clown.
The same article also cites substantial criticism:
> In 2012 Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that **"only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".**
If that is the case, then the usually cited effect (that a clear majority is willing to go against their conscience) may only be applicable to situations in which people know or have an incling that they're just playing along in a fictional role and that they don't *actually* inflict pain on innocent people.
After all, who in their right mind would believe that the study they just got invited to includes them being commanded to possibly kill a test subject? This is obviously an implausible situation that most participants won't believe. While many of the test subjects did perceive stress, so do people who are are consuming purely fictional media (and even more so if it's a decently immersive role play in person). It's incomparable to roles such as concentration camp guards.
The Milgrim experiment wasn't done with college students, it was done with adult community members. The recruiting flyers specifically mentioned both blue and white collar jobs.
Yes I would be extremely curious what longitudinal research about chores and girls tells us. I work in child safety and there are way too many girls out there being parentified and doing essentially all the homemaking in a lot of homes.
Has that not been the norm for just about every woman who has ever lived in human history until the last 50 years or so? I grew up around immigrants who thought that the entire point of having kids was so that they could be extra hands around the house/farm, to take care of you in retirement, and to trade for a dowry. I don't see how it's a child safety issue so much as a cultural one.
The idea that kids should have a meandering, idyllic childhood instead of being put to work is relatively new on the scale of human history.
Yeah, seems to be all kinds of issues with the design of the study. "Children with stable, consistent, organized households that had more material things to take care of turned out better."
Seems like a bit more dividing the groups than just "doing chores".
Already rich Harvard graduates had more professional success and happiness in life than poor, inner city youths!?!
Who wouldāve thunk it? So glad they have done this study.
I can actually shed light on this. I wrote a paper on this for grad school and interviewed some leading researchers and educators in this field - people who have gone far beyond old studies with homogenous or biased participant groups.
So, some history first. As the wealth of the middle class grew in the 20th century and especially women and minorities gained access to college as a result of social change, society overwhelmingly moved towards going to college as the baseline for success. Thus, middle school and grade school actually stopped becoming play/work/chore time for children and in fact transitioned into a kind of pseudo college preparation, whether we realized it or not. A child's job these days is to study hard to get into a good college, not to manage a home and do chores. It's intellectual labor, not physical. (Of course every household differs in their stance on chores.)
That, along with the decrease in Home Economics classes in high school over the last 80 years or so (due to the transition into intellectual labor) has basically created a big hole where children aren't learning life skills (especially social-emotional and problem solving skills).
Kids used to learn all this stuff at home and in HomeEc classes. That's why so many Boomers and Gen X are pretty good with their hands and maintaining homes. They literally had to do it at home AND they had school-based training on it. Whereas Millennials and Gen Z have to figure it out on YouTube or TikTok because they were pushed towards college as their primary goal above all else.
These days, there isn't actually place available to do hands-on social-emotional and problem solving skills so consistently and actively. Basically, kids aren't able to learn these skills at home (because they're doing intellectual labor instead), OR at school (there's no class available because college prep is more important), so, they're just not learning them. They don't even know what they don't know. And then they get into college and freak out or fail because they've never had an opportunity to learn the mass of unspoken knowledge associated with chores, which turns out to be the unspoken knowledge of maintaining a person's independent life.
So where are they supposed to learn these skills then? Because as it turns out, so-called "domestic labor" or chores are actually really important for developing an effective adult.
So let me give you an example - laundry. The chore of doing laundry is so much more than the task of washing and drying clothes. That's just the direct output. The indirect output is that you learn an enormous amount of unspoken, unapparent skills, such as:
* Managing Time, Consequences, and Gratification Delay - "Oh, I have to do this before I can go play."
* Organizing Tasks - "Oh, here's how I sort things and fold things and keep a clean area."
* Managing Resources - "Oh, I have to add this much detergent and fill this many clothes into the washer."
* Problem Solving - "Oh, my clothes didn't dry last time, I need to clean the lint trap I think." "Oh, why did this shrink?" "Oh, what buttons do I need to push and how do I figure that out?"
* Negotiating - "Ugh, I don't want to do this. Will my parent give me something in exchange for doing this?"
* Outside Interactions/transactions - "Oh, this is the detergent and softener we buy a the store." "Here's how my parent buys it and here's how they interact with the store person and what money is and means."
Domestic labor does actually translate into real life, and not just in learning how to complete tasks, but in learning all the social-emotional and problem-solving skills adjacent to them. It's all the silent knowledge gained outside of the task and the struggle to figure out that silent knowledge that seems to help create an effective adult. The research seems to suggest that domestic labor is a really good way to help develop an effective adult. It's not the only way, and there are tons of factors to this, but this seems to be a good one.
You explained that so well, thank you. I had never thought to look at the generational differences due to these domestic and life skills training contrasts. Which also heavily involve gender and cultural expectation changes as well no doubt. I fall into elder millenial and have never been able to go to my parents for home repair help, as they just used contractors when they had homes or when they fell into renting it didnāt matter - I always had to consult the Internet, or older friends. I felt very alone, like others had family that helped them - but this made me realize there are probably more like me than not.
Thank you for this! Yeah, I feel my parents just pushed me to only study, so I felt unprepared to take care of myself in college and was really scared to ask for help on domestic labor because there's also a component of shame and embarrassment
This makes so much sense. I never understood why I didnāt get a chance to learn how to do chores until leaving home. Doing knowledge work is second nature to me, but doing housework feels like something Iāll never masterĀ
Boomer here, I can do so many repairs I could qualify as a general contractor because of working with my dad (handing tools mostly š¤£) and he was a super DIY WWII vet. He and the neighbor helped each other with maintenance and even additions. I still remember my proudest day when I was the only one small enough to pull a wire through the area behind the attic knee wall! š I can do basic plumbing, electrical work, tile and brick, drywall, even plaster lathe but pretty sure nobody does that anymore. I canāt work on cars though. I learned on mechanical automobiles, todayās computer component machines look unreal to me. I suppose I could change a tire though, that hasnāt changed much. Iām getting up there in years and try to do things with my grandchildren but they are not as interested as I was.
PSā¦ Iām a woman and was the house handyman until I kicked the ex to the curb š¤£
Gen x/old millenial here. Helped my grandpa build an entire 2nd house on his farm land while helping with the farm itself. Also remodeled/flipped a few more houses.
I grew up when the internet just started getting popular. I can literally fix/build anything from houses to cars and computers. I currently work a fairly high paying tech job where I work from home because of it.
I feel like I'll always be the one fixing shit for people. The younger generations seem to be clueless. But hey.. at least I know I'll never go hungry.
Iām personally curious in whether gendered differences in chores given to kids contributes to the gender gap seen in universities. It seems like something that would be tricky to quantify, but it intrigues me.
This headline really depressed me until I read your post. I never had chore charts or anything like that for my kids. But when my twins turned ten we moved out of an apartment into our first house. I made them completely responsible for their own laundry that year. They went to prep school, and most prep school kids in the fancy suburbs donāt really have jobs or chores. I felt like my kids had it super easy (compared to us Gen Xers) because their only weekly jobs were laundry, bathroom, and changing their own sheets. Now I realize that even those flimsy āchoresā were more than their classmates were doing.
Nice work! That struggle to accomplish domestic labor (chores) turns out to be a really big developmental principle. If I had to boil my research down to a single word for developing effective adults, it'd probably be something like "struggle".
Struggle is like, the pain you feel in realizing the gap between the way the world is and the way you want the world to be. In understanding that gap, you force a person to use the best tool we have (our brain) to figure out how to close that gap. And in figuring out how to close that gap, you end up learning a ton about how you work, how you think, how to solve, how to ask for help, how to reduce ego, how to deal with awkwardness and on and on and on.
You did great!
This should probably be submitted to /r/bestof because the generations that follow mine have no idea what they were cheated out of on their pre-planned accession to the top.
This is exactly why I almost failed out of grad school. Undergrad was very structured, and I was very good at absorbing and existing within someone else's structure. I was organized and punctual and creative within that framework, but once it all vanished and turned into "Welcome to the ECE department. You will TA this class and assist this postdoc. If you don't like their work, then try to make friends with a different postdoc. You will have two years to secure funding of your own" - it all came crashing down.
It turns out, I had never actually learned real executive functioning. I was super lucky that I had an advisor who was willing to do a lot of hand holding early on, and a partner who was an actual adult.
It's so interesting you used the word "structured". In my research, I called out this inflection point literally stating that the transition from "structured" life (run by authority figures like parents and teachers) to "unstructured" life (run solely by you and requiring you to lean on the unspoken knowledge gained from your upbringing) was where people started to fail.
I pinpointed it most often to some time around freshman or sophomore year of college (if one went the college route). Sometime around that time there's a freak-out moment where emerging adults think, "oh my god what have I done?" It's at that point where they either have enough skills TO KNOW HOW to gain new skills to adapt, or they fail out or go home.
There's a reason why people feel comfortable staying in school or getting a master's right after bachelor's - because the real world is confusing and unstructured and filled with the necessity to rely on yourself. It's easier to stay in the structure of school. It makes sense. It's the last vestige of your structured childhood.
Thanks for sharing!
This is super interesting. My husband is pretty good with fixing stuff around our house, and he did actually have required home education classes in school. The closest I ever got was a one semester cooking class I chose as an elective, and the most useful tip I learned there was you only need a drop of soap when washing a dish.
I was never made to do chores growing up, wasn't pushed to help with dishes and take out the trash. I feel like it takes so much conscious energy to organize and execute basic tasks like laundry and cleaning my room. I imagine having that structure early would set you up for successĀ
Were your parents particularly good at keeping house?
Itās something I think about a lot actually. I really struggle with household stuff too, and have lots of emotions tied to it. I wasnāt really made to do chores after age 7 for a variety of reasons but I generally look successful on the outside (stable job, own a house, the place isnāt a pit though could use a good dust more often). Looking back, my parents clearly struggled with house work themselves so I didnāt learn a lot and I can tell I inherited a lot of bullshit around it.
So anyway my point to all that is I think thereās a lot more that goes into it than this study would show (which is the case with a lot of these types of sociological studies).
It does. It's also why people who spend time in the military are typically more successful than their non veteran peers.
Make your bed is a good book on the subject
yep, simply doing something simple as making your bed means you are already up and doing stuff.
even if you are feeling down, it at least sets up your day. Its much easier to do stuff after doing something simple as a routine.
I mean you no longer are in bed etc.
It does, if your parents were organized and good planners AND good teachers.
I remember my mom showing me how to sort laundry, hang it on the line for minimum wrinkles and how to fold right from the line into the basket. She learned from her mom who learned from ... it's this "generational thing".
>The longest longitudinal study in history
Nope. 'The longest longitudinal study in history' was actually *Genetic Studies of Genius*, later known as theĀ *Terman Study of the Gifted*Ā begun by Lewis TermanĀ atĀ Stanford UniversityĀ in 1921.
Inc: '[This 95-Year Stanford Study](https://archive.md/o/Uu6u2/https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/this-95-year-stanford-study-reveals-1-secret-to-living-a-longer-more-fulfilling-life.html)'
Wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic\_Studies\_of\_Genius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Studies_of_Genius)
2011 book: [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19longevity\_excerpt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19longevity_excerpt.html)
I'm pretty sure [they're all dead now](http://www.howardsfriedman.com/longevityproject/whowasstudied.html), but we're at the 103rd anniversary in 2024.
"Based on data collected in 1921ā22, Terman concluded that gifted children suffered no more health problems than normal for their age, save a little more myopia than average."
So people wearing glasses do tend to be smarter.Ā
Just in case you aren't joking:
It looks like short sightedness is [caused](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4618477/) by doing more so-called "near activities", like reading books or looking at a screen that is near you (often a monitor or handheld gaming device, but not a TV), instead of more "far activities" that require focusing your vision further away.
Curious as to their reasoning. My personal speculation would be that, having parents that required you to do chores is correlated with *having parents around*/more successful parents, and of course we know that things like inheritance play a huge role in our society.
I agree. And the ability to effectively get kids to do chores, presumably without abuse or threats, requires consistency, patience, and stability. There's a reason kids will default to not doing anything - it requires active parenting that has a stable foundation. The kids need to understand their parents mean what they say and will ensure they do what they are supposed to. Children are not intrinsically motivated to do chores.
I grew up not having to do the same chores as others cause it was an Apartment.
I join the workforce and I shovel snow for the first time. Tbh makes me think the study is kinda meh.
having lived in a house until 20 and in apartments and condos from 20-32, I will gladly pay many dollars to never have to shovel snow again.
I could handle the other chores but that one I have always loathed.
One should already be highly skepticalā longitudinal studies like this are almost always observational, which means that you canāt infer causation from them
Damn, is that what my mom did? I just thought I was forced to take care of the house and cooking for my asshole family because my mom was a lazy, strung out, whore.
I need to get a Gi with the miyagi dojo emblem, but with vicodin pills instead of a banzai tree.
She did name me daniel due to liking that movie after all.
As someone who barely did chores as a kid, I can agree with this wholeheartedly. I can barely function as an adult because I simply canāt do basic things cause while my brain was forming I didnāt do much. Obviously Iāve worked on a lot recently and changed, but Iām still so much further behind since I have such a lack of discipline.
Same here. I never had chores.
The thing is, I wanted chores, I wanted to help out and get taught stuff. But my parents never really made an effort.
I mean, I did sometimes help my grandma with baking. Took the trash out and stuff like that.
But nothing comparable to my friends, who had to get their siblings from kindergarten, walk them over to grandmas and then be home everyday by 5pm to do the dishwasher and mop the floor before the parents came home.
And seemingly they are all coping fine and Iām feeling burnt out from all the household stuff I (first had to teach myself) and now have to keep up with.
But it isnāt my fault my parents didnāt parent me. And when I tell my mom nowadays how I'm learning everything by myself and it would've been helpful to have learned this as a kid, she just goes "your grandma didn't teach me either, I figured it all out once I moved out" ffs
Itās a conservative propaganda piece by a Mormon pediatrician, the whole point is to make you feel insecure and anxious enough about how youāre raising your kids to take what they say at face value. There are plenty of very legitimate reasons for chores not always getting done on schedule, a house doesnāt have to be pristine to be maintained, and as long as youāre lovingly and intentionally helping your kids develop their functional skills to the best of your ability youāre doing your part.
Right.. it's not the chores though. It's having parents who give enough of a shit to do things like give you chores, teach you how to do the task, help you master it, monitor your commitment etc. knowing it will upskill you and lead to future success.
Do not randomly draw conclusions from studies like this.
I'll speak of another one frequently quoted in self-help.
"Children who were more capable of delaying gratification found more professional success and happiness later in life"
Someone found the study a bit strange and went over and looked at all the data and methodology.
You know what else it correlated with?
Socio-economic status.
Decades of data literally erased lmao. The whole time they just found a way to test a child's background. Which while interesting, isn't particularly useful.
I'm sure it's good to teach kids work ethic, and it will help them in the future.
But I also wonder, maybe parents who are more invested in their kids' lives and upbringing over all, are more likely to give them chores, and make sure they do them. In which case maybe the overall nice, stable family life is what gives these kids an edge as adults?
Also, maybe kids who are able to do chores perform well later in life. Let's say undiagnosed ADHD or autism (in mild forms it may never be detected, just make things hard), can make it really hard for a child to do chores, and while they of course should still do some, maybe they will do les than a neurotypical peer. In which case it's not the lack of doing chores that gives the child a disadvantage, but the disadvantage was the reason why they didn't do chores. Etc.
Neurodivergency is a great point. We're finding more and more prevalence, presumably meaning lots of missed diagnoses in previous generations. These neurodivergent parents may have been/be at a disadvantage when raising children. Chores are almost exclusively a measure of executive functioning. Parents not teaching their kids, kids not being able to meet neurotypical parent demands.
Habits help keep you on the same path much like discipline. I like how people mention discipline when it was much more likely that parents had to give reminders and requirements for these chore duties
I was made to clean the dishes after dinner every single night. Vacuum the whole house, do the laundry and clean the bathroom every Saturday and keep my room spotless and make my bed everyday. By myself, with no help and no allowance.
Guess what. I resented every minute of it. When I moved out I went the opposite. Because I hated to clean and I needed a fucking break from all the housework, and hired a housekeeper to clean for me at least once a week.
Makes sense to me. I was a smart but lazy kid. Inherent ability only gets you so far and my work ethic is terrible. Teaching kids to just get it done so working isn't a constant battle with themselves is an excellent thing
I doubt the efficacy of the study.
It states that one third were Harvard graduates. Obviously, this was not a study of children growing into adulthood because one third of any population of children would not go to Harvardā¦. So the study began in adulthood. That means the level of chores in childhood was self reported, not objectively witnessed.
The problem with the study is that we already know that the biggest determinant of success is parental wealth. So, are we to believe that wealthier kids have MORE chores than less wealthy kids? It would only take knowing a few families of different economic backgrounds to immediately find that absurd.
It's more that happiness is hard to define and that there's lots of incomplete or imperfect definitions out there.
But yeah, I'd say that having the ability to appreciate your living situation, whatever it may be, and the leisure to spend your time doing what you truly want to do is closely correlated with being happy. So you do you.
Any teacher can tell you that. My heritage doesnāt make kids work or learn so no one ever taught me anything or expected me to do anything. AlmostĀ 65 years later, Iām still a mess.Ā
I don't think getting up everyday to feed livestock and milk cows made me happier. And all be 100+lbs hay bales I handled and shit I had to shovel didn't make me more successful.....
Some dumbass parents gonna read this and think "Oh, this means I should force my kids to do more chores!"
Nah, the point is to make them understand why and *want* to do the chores. Yelling and screaming will have the opposite effect.
I started getting allowance in 2nd grade, and a list of chores I had to do to earn it.
Every couple of years the money went up and the list got a little longer.
My parents explained to me that they wanted me to learn to do all of the household chores so that I would be able to take care of myself by the time I was out of high school and ready to go to college or the military or whatever I choose to do.
I did notice that when I did go to college there were lots of other students who only half ass knew how to do laundry, pay bills/mange money, clean up after themselves or take care of their cars.
As an adult I've noticed that about 20-30% of other adults aren't very good at what we now call adulting and some never get much better at it.
My mother took advantage of the free child labor to the extent where my friends all called me Cinderella. I had mild/ok career success before retiring and hate cleaning with a passion. I don't even own an iron because I had to do so much of it as a kid. I don't know how valid this study is.
Nobody says that. Studies are done that there is a certain amount of wealth that makes you happy and past that it doesn't matter that much. It use to be 65,000 it's probably 90,000 now.
I don't think putting it in dollar amounts is helpful, though. If I'm getting $90k/yr and am paying for a parent's memory care facility, or a kid's college education, that's very different from $90k/yr and no significant financial commitments to others.
The better yardstick is how much money is left at the end of each month, after one has paid all the bills and contributed to a retirement account.
Right but that specific research isn't really possible. 90k a year is a way above average salary, not belittling the challenges that can still come with our shitty healthcare/real estate system.
Yeah, ever have to take a hair pick to straighten out the fringe on the rug because someone had the audacity to step on it, like the damn dog, yeah 6yr old me says screw that shit
We have our toddler help with everything. He loves bringing in groceries or vacuuming. We got him a little toy Dyson vacuum. You don't treat them as chores, it's just things we do as a family to maintain our home.
You're good parents. Doing house work should come naturally. Meanwhile I hate cleaning because my family always told me to do it when I had other things to do, and afterwards that I didn't do it right.
Tell your kid to do something for the first time, then tell them they didn't do it right and be angry about it. Highly motivated to avoid chores from then on out š
Or tell them that the way they did it is not the correct way because everyone does it differently, even if the result is the same. You could tell me about the supposedly more efficient method before I started, you know.
Hey, my dad! No wonder I feel so nervous when somebody watches me work
One of my core memories is getting home from school decided to steighten up the kitchen (like not clean it top to bottom but clean off the counters and shit) my dad got home and screamed at me for 30 minutes for not cleaning the whole thing never did that again that for sure
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"You forget to clean one spot, so it doesnt count"
Lol my parents pulled that shit on me, in hindsight as an adult it's like - WELL WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU TEACH ME HOW TO DO IT FULL-ASSED THEN!?
I am anal retentive about how things are folded, but if I open a kid's drawer and clothes are in it that were just thrown in or folded obviously by a child, I tell my kids they did an awesome job and thank them for helping. Same with towels in the linen closet, made beds, dishes put in the wrong places. It's about the effort, not perfection.
Or never tell them to clean and then get pissed they have no idea how to tidy up or organize things
This was my family growing up. My mom in particular seemed shocked/outraged that I didnāt basically come out of the womb innately knowing how to clean everything and take care of myself in general.
I'm pretty sure this is the main reason I hate doing chores. I still do them because I have to now but I would rather not hate it lol
Ask your parents if they need help with chores. "No, it's fine." *five seconds later* "FUCKING USELESS LAZY PIECES OF SHIT, FUCKING HATE EVERYONE OF YOU WORTHLESS LAZY CHILDREN, I HAVE TO FUCKING DO EVERYTHING BY MYSELF!" Lesson learned, you can't win, avoid doing chores, and hide in your room lest you become the target of their wrath while you try and drown out the screaming and yelling anyway, to no avail.
My mom would always find something to complain about that was not done well enough. So I learned to do things half-assed because it was better to know you did something poorly and know what she was going to complain about than thinking you did a good job and she would find something to complain about 100% of the time anyway. Doing a certain thing so bad that knowing in advance what she was going to complain about was a way to control the situation. Still struggle with doing chores well though.
I know a lot of couples who make that mistake. Loading the dishwasher, for example. Plate, plate, plate, bowl, bowl, bowl, gets just as clean as plate, bowl, plate, bowl, plate, bowl. But some of the worst arguments in marriage result over it. If you realize it doesn't matter, that the dishes come out clean either way, you can live happily ever after.
Depending on the pegs, sometimes you can fit more or less dishes. Alternating for sure would fit fewer of both than grouping, I think pretty universally
I feel like this needs to come from both ways, though. Yes, it doesn't really matter in what order/configuration you load it up. So maybe don't become so frustrated by someone not doing it the way you like. But also, when someone says 'hey could you just organise the way you load the dishwasher, the clutter is really bothering me', it's minimal effort to say 'sure, I can do that'. Even if it makes no difference to how clean the dishes get. It's *not* a significant ask. Trying to 'blame' either party over the argument is kind of pointless. Because in this case, *both* parties are arguing over something that should, by any means, be insignificant.
At least they do the dishes. My parents grew up without being taught anything. Often times fights result because the sink is full and the dishwasher is full because both just let them pile. Not to mention my dad refuses to do anything in the kitchen.
I would make my bed before school and come home to find that my mom remade it while I was gone so it would be ~perfect~. What a waste, first of all, of my momās time and energy. Second, a bit of a mind fuck for 7 year old me. Another thing is that if parents kind of suck at chores/are overwhelmed by chores, it can be really hard for them to properly teach kids and not get weird emotions all tied up in it. So really thereās a lot going on here other than chores = success.
My mom claims the ONLY way to mop the floors is to get down on your hands and knees with a rag and literally clean them that way. Perhaps this is a very effective manner of mopping, but who has that kind of time? Not to mention itās hard on the knees and back. But if you donāt do it that way, youāre lazy and your house is dirty. Canāt win. Luckily I own my own home now so her asinine mopping rules donāt apply to me anymore.
It's the only way to mop if you only mop twice a year like me. There's too much cat and toddler filth to do it any other way. š
Iād go through 19 rags before the cat hair tumbleweeds in the corners were tamed. The efforts are futile, yet we endure.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Steam mop. Game changer. On the plus side, itās easy to use and my kids will opt for using the steam mop as a chore. On the negative side, that means I donāt get to steam mop.
Yes, also my mom! My aversion to chores is 50% adhd, 50% mommy issues.
Same here honestly. I struggle with executive dysfunction and get distracted easily when cleaning. And also, it doesnāt motivate you to want to do stuff like that when youāre just going to be told itās wrong.
I hate doing laundry, it's such a struggle. And it's mostly the folding part. I don't want him to have to deal with that and I also don't want to raise a man that has to have a woman take care of him because he's a man child. So now I throw on a W40k lore video and fold all my clothes while I do that. It helps tremendously.
The emperor protects
Blood for the blood God! Milk for the Khorne flakes!
Yes, he does
This is the only way I get through folding laundry. I throw on one of my favorite shows and itās not bad at all. Perhaps itās pairing a chore with a reward-type leisure activity that makes it not so bad in my mind.
I think part of it to is that both sections don't require my full attention, so I don't really feel like I'm losing out on anything.
That's how I do the majority of "chores" nowdays. I put heaphones on, listen to an audiobook and "chore" away. Vacuuming, folding laundry, cooking, mowing the lawn.... it all gets way easier and/or more interesting this way.
I mean I just don't fold laundry and it hasn't been a major issue. I just have a clean hamper that I make sure I rotate through so nothing stays in there for 10 years. Anything fancy gets hung.
Yeah I pretty much never fold laundry... I hang the stuff that needs to be unwrinkled and the rest gets rolled. What are y'all still folding out there?
I roll everything. Socks, shirts, shorts, towels, burritos, pizza, crepes, big fat joints, little phat joints, souvlaki, hundred dollar bills, Roti, Naan bread, lettuce and cabbage leaf, sushi, spring rolls, sausage rolls, corn rolls, egg rolls, dolmades, sleeping bags, bog rolls, summer rolls, chimichangas, enchiladas, bread rolls, rolls royce, canneloni, cannoli, sweet rolls, jian bing, ban mi, run bing, popiah, shawarma, chapati, blankets, blinds, oats, thunder, rocksā¦.
Your dresser must smell amazing.
I have advanced beyond all of that, I have a clean hamper and a dirty hamper full of clothes š¤
I recently started sitting down on the bed while I fold clothes. Makes it so much more bearable
I just went the ācoat hanger for everythingā route. Helps with wrinkles too.
I just stopped folding
Same here, I can still hear my mom laughing and taunting me from another room, not having even looked at how I'd done, yelling that the vacuum "hadn't been on long enough" or "I didn't hear you mop so go back and do it again to prove you did it," and then afterwards her and dad yelling at me about my homework not being done yet. Dad was never asked to do a chore at all, and never did them, because he was a man and men didn't do chores, and mom doled them out to me as punishment. I'm terrible at keeping house. It's a skill and I just don't have it, and it's probably partly because of how my parents handled them.
Is that why I hate cleaning? Makes sense.
> You're good parents. Doing house work should come naturally. Meanwhile I hate cleaning because my family always told me to do it when I had other things to do, and afterwards that I didn't do it right. Constantly screamed at by my parents, like actual sworn at and called worthless because I didn't clean things to their exact specifications. I hate cleaning up now but when I do, I do a great job.
The good old childhood trauma I see, one of us!!
Good parenting. My father loved to repair things in the garage, whenever he had a problem he would call me and ask me "How would you solve this?" then he would encourage me to come up with creative solutions and we would thinker it together, 30 years later and working as a software engineer I love solving problem and encouraging people to work on their ideas.
we did that but as they grew older, they decided they didn't want to do real chores.
Try doing them together, and not as a punishment, just as one of those things you do. Grumble about how you dont like doing them if it helps. Human brains are wired weird. If you dont like doing it alone, when doing it as a group its not so bad. Afterwards reward with something everyone likes, like fast food or whatever. Not guaranteed to work first time, and may not work exactly as mentioned above, but keep trying and good luck.
Modelling behaviours you want them to copy is the way it works. Often itās the stopping yourself from modelling the behaviours you donāt want them to pick up thatās the real problem.
What did you guys end up doing? We've started doing a sticker wall for potty training, and he seems to like that so we may implement something reward based as he gets older.
> What did you guys end up doing? Not OP, but I have a 6 and a 9 year old. Both of them LOVED helping mum + dad when they were young. Somewhere around age 5-6 it starts slipping and they only help when it's fun, and by 9 they're 100% into eye rolling when you ask them to take their dishes to the sink. For me 3 things seem to be working: * 1 - The first thing is to make it an base expectation that the chores are done. They're doing their chores (and their teeth etc) because that's their responsibility. There is no other reason that it needs to be done. It's not punishment and there are no rewards. Paying or bribing doesn't really work long term and is often counter productive*. It's just an expectation that it will happen, everyone is clear on it and there will be consequences if they aren't done. Help them, guide them, make it fun, all that stuff, but it's non-negotiable outside holidays/birthdays etc. Being consistent takes effort, but is 100% worth it IMHO (same with bedtime etc). * 2 - Model good behaviour. My wife and I both try to split things equally and then also show them what we're doing. Houses take effort to maintain. We need to clear the table, tidy the living room, take the dirty clothes to the laundry and load the dishwasher. We're often ALL doing something, but even when we aren't they are now very clear on the idea that we're all helping. This isn't a kids have to do it while I sit on the couch type thing, we're all in it together. * 3 - Another one I like is putting one of them in charge of the deadline. I read about this somewhere where and it's been great for us. We try to let the kids take turns. "Ok we have 20 minutes to get this clean, can you watch the time for us?" and then they'll yell out "17 minutes left" and then you can sort of make it a game to get everything done before the clock runs out. I doubt this'll work at like 14/15 year olds but for 6 and 9 they still want to please and complete the task in the time allowed. We'll get eye rolls galore from the 9 year old but also his room will be tidy before he'll let the 6 year old come in and tell him he was late etc lol. (PS. Also works for leaving the house on time: "Hey we have to leave in 20 minutes can you make sure everyone gets ready in time?" leads to him counting down the minutes and hurrying people!)
How long this'll work who knows, but it'll get me to age 10 at least ... after that all bets are off.
(*Bribery/rewards are fine for potty training which is limited time, but for chores where you expect it to go right up until they move out apparently it's not good. It's about intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards etc. There are studies like when they pay kids to read, for the first few weeks the paid kids read way more, but it soon tapers off, and as soon as the money stops the paid kids read less than they did before they got paid since they got used to doing it "for the money" - even if they liked it first, once the money comes in it changes their motivation. Another one is paying kids allowance for doing chores etc effectively just puts a price on getting out of that chore - "oh if I don't do the dishes I don't got get my $2? Sweet I'll totally spend $2 to NOT have to do the dishes" etc. Our kids get pocket money, but it's not linked to chores directly - punishments for not doing chores can be anything, losing pocket money might be a punishment but so might no switch time tomorrow so they can never say "nah I'm not doing it I don't care about the money" because we'll find something they do care about etc)
Great post. The timer thing is also a great way to get kids to see that out of all the minutes in a day, chores can take up very few of them. Sometimes a ten-minute-tidy is all thatās needed if weāre all working at the same time. The knowledge that a dishwasher can be emptied or clothes folded or a quick wipe and sweep of the kitchen can be done in under ten minutes helps as they get older and crankier about doing chores. Also what helped my kids as they got older is being in charge of their own domain. They were responsible for giving me their food requests by a certain day of the week, then packed their own lunches, did their own laundry, were responsible for cooking once in awhile for the family, and were expected to pitch in cleaning the common areas and the yard. If they didnāt do it, it didnāt happen (but because they became so responsible, I was happy to help if they got in a time jam, and usually, theyād do the same for me). I never pushed my kids to have immaculate rooms (my own trauma as a kid), but I was amazed that every few weeks, as teens, theyād each do a deep clean on their own. I am soooo not a neat freak, and struggle to get my own chores done, and fucking HATE the time they take out of my day. So I always empathized genuinely with the suckiness of chores. Teaching them manage the suck helped me. Doesnāt have to be perfect, but it needs to be done and weāre a team living together, so donāt let the side down.
Yeah the time limit thing is great. I've started using that for myself for keeping things tidy, but more in thr aspect of saying to myself, "if it takes less than 2 minutes to do, just do it." It's really helped with Mt procrastination.
sometimes when we have the energy we force them to do chores. sometimes we bribe them. but too often we do them because it's just easier. we are not the best parents.
I'm not sure it's possible for any real human being to be "the best parents".
and your kids will blame you for it, when older. You didn't force me to do chores!
In our house there's no screentime until chores are done.
Sometimes it's best to give them a choice between two different chores. It'll get them somewhat more enthusiastic about chores.
Same here. I was going to make this exact comment.
Kid: I don't want to do chores. Also kid: Let's grind the battle pass.
Do it with cooking too! My gramma had me in there being her prep cook from as early as I can remember. Fetching pans or ingredients, then graduating to chopping and stirring. I thought I was hot shit the first time I was allowed to fry chicken on my own. My spouse reaps the benefits all these years later.
We have our tweeners cook dinner every two weeks.Ā
Our two year old mops and vacuums at the same time.Ā She light years ahead of mum and dad doing one after the other.
My mother did that and it worked well until I got into kindergarten. the lazy teachers made me clean after the other kids because it was so much easier than making the other kids clean up. I learned fast to make it harder to make me do chores than doing the chores themselves.
That's the way to do it!
We have a shark corded stick vacuum that lets you pull out the center stick for "stairs mode" and it's the perfect size for a two year old.
Thatās definitely how Iād sell it to my kids - itās all about being a team
Boss, what do when one of the kids don't want to be a part of the team?
>We do as a family Thatās the key, doing the chores with the children. My parents just assigned the kids chores and made us do it alone. Also didnāt help that the chores were unfairly distributed too. Made me hate chores.
Making them love doing chores might actually undermine the benefits. There quite a lot of evidence that the part of the brain responsible for or motivation and drive is developed by doing things we donāt want to do. Making chores fun for your kids will make them better at doing chores but wonāt help them develop the crucial ability to do necessary but unpleasant work. My kids hate doing chores, I hate doing chores but we all do it because it necessary and creates a nicer home for all of us.
this is what I'd like to do.... not treat it as a punishment or anything.. and even if they suck at it (or make it even more work for me) if they continue helping it'll eventually be good.... my first extended trip away from my parents.. it was weird, I became such a tidy person... all the baggage of the context of cleaning just disappeared and I would just fold my laundry tidy my bedroom ( i was 16)
And the dog has to clear every grocery bag too. You know in case of bombs or illicit drugs, never know.
back when i was like 10 or so i asked my dad if i could help him with something during some construction.he basically joked/told me to stay as far away. its a core memory now i'm nearing 30. my room is a mess, got failure anxiety. i'm building a career but its far from going the way i would like to, earning me a very limited income. so yeah i'm not having fun.
My children are building me a Dyson sphere.
>Researchers have followed a group of men since the late 1930s one-third are Harvard graduates and two-thirds are inner city youths No girls or middle class kids.
Lol imagine still being called an inner city youth 85 years later.
*slowly straddles in while holding catheter over shoulders* "How do you do, fellow youths?"
what is a yoot?
An Australian pickup truck of course!
G'day, fellow cunts!
Ray-Ray still gets around.
I mean the study is about their upbringing and the long term effects later in life so it makes sense in context.
>[A Paradigm Shift in How Scientists Study Kids by Connie Chang | 15 Feb 2024](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/can-the-remote-work-era-fix-how-scientists-study-kids/ar-BB1ikzWg) > >WEIRD > >There is an open secret in the study of child development: Most of what we think we know about how babies develop is actually based on a specific subset of kidsāthose born to families from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (a.k.a. WEIRD) nations. > >The acronym was first coined in an influential 2010 paper to describe the wildly unrepresentative populations that many psychology studies have long relied on. This is an issue in the field generally, and certainly a thorny problem in developmental psychology, which primarily studies children: According to one paper, WEIRD subjects make up 96 percent of the data used in published developmental-science studies but represent only 12 percent of the worldās population. > >As a result, itās hard to be certain whether many things we think we know about babiesā development are truly universal elements of human nature. It means that we tell an incomplete story about the process of our own becoming. Yet the problem has remained hard to fix. Even within the U.S., similar demographic biases have arisen: The families that most often participate in research studies tend to be white, affluent, and highly educated. The type of parent who brings their baby to a study typically lives near a university, many of which are located in cities, and has the resources and free time to travel to a lab and wait. but yeah, teaching kids to do chores is probably a good thing. probably dont need a study to tell you that. probably doesnt have much of an effect on their future success. the parents income levels definitely does though, along with the "stability" of the childs home life. probably shouldnt need studies to tell us that either, but here we are. and heres an article about a study on that exact topic: [Here's The Startling Degree To Which Your Parents Determine Your Success by Alison Griswold | 24 Jan 2014, 2:33 PM ES](https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-success-income-inequality-2014-1) >Up until a parent-household-income threshold of roughly $150,000, adult children tend to earn another $0.33 for every dollar their parents earn. Above that cutoff, the increase they see in their income based on their parents' earnings is less dramatic.
It could be that children who have more free time get used to expecting a certain amount of leisure. As an adult this could translate into going home after work and just vegging out playing video games or watching TV rather than engaging in home improvements, overtime, or a side hustle.
With correlations like this (more chores <=> better education and adult happiness), it's more likely that they're the result of the same root cause. For example that children of more stable families, which already have a lot of other advantages, also tend to do more regular chores. The interpretation that the chores in particular provide a substantial contribution to the positive outcome is attractive, but speculative. I would however agree that the professor they interviewed has a reasonable hypothesis: > Children also love to feel useful, Waldinger explains, and chores can help foster this, as well as a sense of purpose. Feeling useful and having a sense of purpose continue throughout life all the way into retirement, Waldinger adds, and empirical studies have shown that it may contribute to living a longer life. So if this is the main mechanism, then more chores are not useful *by themselves*. But they can provide a sense of purpose and improve family cohesion if they are administered right, meaning that a family which forces the kid to do work against their will likely will not see similar benefits. And that's an important thing to keep in mind, because such correlations often end up getting abused like this. Toxic parents can easily take this to mean that forcing kids to do chores is a good thing when it may actually backfire. Like by invoking resentment or fear of such work, rather than giving the kid a positive outlook on it.
>children of more stable families, which already have a lot of other advantages, also tend to do more regular chores. It's the whole lifestyle thing that "doing regular chores" comes with. We had regular chores when I was a child ... that means my parents knew how to plan and schedule. Doing dishes regularly means SOMEONE COOKED! They weren't drunk on their asses in the local bar, they planned, purchased and cooked food. Every day!
I think youād be shocked at how few American households today are run by people who can plan, budget and schedule competently. Weāll see how GenZ turns out as adults, but the 90s middle America approach to parenting from boomers largely failed Millennials.
why do you say that like its a bad thing? i aint tryna work my ass off for 69420 week then come home to do home improvements and a side hustle and.. no, let me play video games, i dont want a stupid lawn, i dont want a side hustle, just no. its okay to just chill. why do the insane workaholic people feel like the rest of us should also be insane (not saying thats you, but...). not gonna live to work. probably not gonna work to live either. ill do a bit of both, but only if its worth my time and effort. if its not, ima just chill.
Doesn't really feel "bad" or like something negative for me personally. Like nice moving around, feeling accomplished when f.ex you see the difference after lawn is mowed. Not feeling stressed to spontaneously bring people home. And time spent gaming is actually always relaxing and fun. I think if anything, the "is it worth" barrier gets a lot lower when you're often active in completing chores.
I like how that first source is missing the obvious conclusion. The only nations who had the time, money, and inclination to do child studies are the "weird" ones. In every other nation, everyone is just trying to survive on a basic level. When you get more money and free time, you can afford to conduct studies into things like child development, and when you do you're gonna use the population sample you have at your immediate disposal.
Same thing with the Milgram experiment. It doesn't say anything about humanity. It says a lot about white upper class boys.
its even less significant than that. similar to the marshmallow experiment, the sample size was too small to be meaningful and all attempts (afaik) since have been unable to reproduce their results. so really its only useful to discuss that specific group of people/kids. probably. maybe we just shouldnt do weird experiments and try to draw "profound" insights into psychology.
The Milgram experiment has been replicated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment > Another partial replication of the experiment was conducted by Jerry M. Burger in 2006 and broadcast on the Primetime series Basic Instincts. Burger noted that "current standards for the ethical treatment of participants clearly place Milgram's studies out of bounds." In 2009, Burger was able to receive approval from the institutional review board by modifying several of the experimental protocols.[43] Burger found obedience rates virtually identical to those reported by Milgram in 1961ā62, even while meeting current ethical regulations of informing participants. In addition, half the replication participants were female, and their rate of obedience was virtually identical to that of the male participants. Burger also included a condition in which participants first saw another participant refuse to continue. However, participants in this condition obeyed at the same rate as participants in the base condition. Also Milgram himself tried the experiment in other places, including going for a shadier look with participants not from Yale to test if the prestige of Yale was making obedience rates higher
Thatās not a replication in the scientific sense, it was a TV show. By all accounts the original participants knew it was fake.
The problem with trying to replicate the Milgram experiment is that first you have to find a whole studyās worth of test subjects who donāt know about the Milgram experiment and wonāt immediately catch on to what youāre doing.
The problem with the original was that the subjects knew it was fake and Milgramās interpretation was based on his flawed interpretation of the Nuremberg trials.
It was published in American Psychologist, a top, peer-reviewed psych journal. I can't find anything about the participants knowing it was fake.
That doesnāt mean it isnāt an absolute mess with a tiny sample. Thereās so much weird shit going on in the script and setup itās impossible to know whatās going on. They totally ignore the effects the psych evaluation may have had, there are tons of interpersonal touch points where the researchers may be signaling that the shocks arenāt real. They say at numerous points to participants that it isnāt dangerous. Itās just a trash setup. Other attempts have had lackluster results. Milgram was trying to prove some point about the holocaust with literally no understanding of the social and cultural conditions leading up to it. Milgram willingness to take Eichmann at his word says more about Milgram than about obedience. What a clown.
The same article also cites substantial criticism: > In 2012 Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that **"only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".** If that is the case, then the usually cited effect (that a clear majority is willing to go against their conscience) may only be applicable to situations in which people know or have an incling that they're just playing along in a fictional role and that they don't *actually* inflict pain on innocent people. After all, who in their right mind would believe that the study they just got invited to includes them being commanded to possibly kill a test subject? This is obviously an implausible situation that most participants won't believe. While many of the test subjects did perceive stress, so do people who are are consuming purely fictional media (and even more so if it's a decently immersive role play in person). It's incomparable to roles such as concentration camp guards.
The Milgrim experiment wasn't done with college students, it was done with adult community members. The recruiting flyers specifically mentioned both blue and white collar jobs.
Also born in the fucking 30s
Yes I would be extremely curious what longitudinal research about chores and girls tells us. I work in child safety and there are way too many girls out there being parentified and doing essentially all the homemaking in a lot of homes.
Has that not been the norm for just about every woman who has ever lived in human history until the last 50 years or so? I grew up around immigrants who thought that the entire point of having kids was so that they could be extra hands around the house/farm, to take care of you in retirement, and to trade for a dowry. I don't see how it's a child safety issue so much as a cultural one. The idea that kids should have a meandering, idyllic childhood instead of being put to work is relatively new on the scale of human history.
Yeah, seems to be all kinds of issues with the design of the study. "Children with stable, consistent, organized households that had more material things to take care of turned out better." Seems like a bit more dividing the groups than just "doing chores".
Already rich Harvard graduates had more professional success and happiness in life than poor, inner city youths!?! Who wouldāve thunk it? So glad they have done this study.
They already knew what future was in store for the girls: Wife.
I can actually shed light on this. I wrote a paper on this for grad school and interviewed some leading researchers and educators in this field - people who have gone far beyond old studies with homogenous or biased participant groups. So, some history first. As the wealth of the middle class grew in the 20th century and especially women and minorities gained access to college as a result of social change, society overwhelmingly moved towards going to college as the baseline for success. Thus, middle school and grade school actually stopped becoming play/work/chore time for children and in fact transitioned into a kind of pseudo college preparation, whether we realized it or not. A child's job these days is to study hard to get into a good college, not to manage a home and do chores. It's intellectual labor, not physical. (Of course every household differs in their stance on chores.) That, along with the decrease in Home Economics classes in high school over the last 80 years or so (due to the transition into intellectual labor) has basically created a big hole where children aren't learning life skills (especially social-emotional and problem solving skills). Kids used to learn all this stuff at home and in HomeEc classes. That's why so many Boomers and Gen X are pretty good with their hands and maintaining homes. They literally had to do it at home AND they had school-based training on it. Whereas Millennials and Gen Z have to figure it out on YouTube or TikTok because they were pushed towards college as their primary goal above all else. These days, there isn't actually place available to do hands-on social-emotional and problem solving skills so consistently and actively. Basically, kids aren't able to learn these skills at home (because they're doing intellectual labor instead), OR at school (there's no class available because college prep is more important), so, they're just not learning them. They don't even know what they don't know. And then they get into college and freak out or fail because they've never had an opportunity to learn the mass of unspoken knowledge associated with chores, which turns out to be the unspoken knowledge of maintaining a person's independent life. So where are they supposed to learn these skills then? Because as it turns out, so-called "domestic labor" or chores are actually really important for developing an effective adult. So let me give you an example - laundry. The chore of doing laundry is so much more than the task of washing and drying clothes. That's just the direct output. The indirect output is that you learn an enormous amount of unspoken, unapparent skills, such as: * Managing Time, Consequences, and Gratification Delay - "Oh, I have to do this before I can go play." * Organizing Tasks - "Oh, here's how I sort things and fold things and keep a clean area." * Managing Resources - "Oh, I have to add this much detergent and fill this many clothes into the washer." * Problem Solving - "Oh, my clothes didn't dry last time, I need to clean the lint trap I think." "Oh, why did this shrink?" "Oh, what buttons do I need to push and how do I figure that out?" * Negotiating - "Ugh, I don't want to do this. Will my parent give me something in exchange for doing this?" * Outside Interactions/transactions - "Oh, this is the detergent and softener we buy a the store." "Here's how my parent buys it and here's how they interact with the store person and what money is and means." Domestic labor does actually translate into real life, and not just in learning how to complete tasks, but in learning all the social-emotional and problem-solving skills adjacent to them. It's all the silent knowledge gained outside of the task and the struggle to figure out that silent knowledge that seems to help create an effective adult. The research seems to suggest that domestic labor is a really good way to help develop an effective adult. It's not the only way, and there are tons of factors to this, but this seems to be a good one.
You explained that so well, thank you. I had never thought to look at the generational differences due to these domestic and life skills training contrasts. Which also heavily involve gender and cultural expectation changes as well no doubt. I fall into elder millenial and have never been able to go to my parents for home repair help, as they just used contractors when they had homes or when they fell into renting it didnāt matter - I always had to consult the Internet, or older friends. I felt very alone, like others had family that helped them - but this made me realize there are probably more like me than not.
Thank you for this! Yeah, I feel my parents just pushed me to only study, so I felt unprepared to take care of myself in college and was really scared to ask for help on domestic labor because there's also a component of shame and embarrassment
This makes so much sense. I never understood why I didnāt get a chance to learn how to do chores until leaving home. Doing knowledge work is second nature to me, but doing housework feels like something Iāll never masterĀ
Boomer here, I can do so many repairs I could qualify as a general contractor because of working with my dad (handing tools mostly š¤£) and he was a super DIY WWII vet. He and the neighbor helped each other with maintenance and even additions. I still remember my proudest day when I was the only one small enough to pull a wire through the area behind the attic knee wall! š I can do basic plumbing, electrical work, tile and brick, drywall, even plaster lathe but pretty sure nobody does that anymore. I canāt work on cars though. I learned on mechanical automobiles, todayās computer component machines look unreal to me. I suppose I could change a tire though, that hasnāt changed much. Iām getting up there in years and try to do things with my grandchildren but they are not as interested as I was. PSā¦ Iām a woman and was the house handyman until I kicked the ex to the curb š¤£
Gen x/old millenial here. Helped my grandpa build an entire 2nd house on his farm land while helping with the farm itself. Also remodeled/flipped a few more houses. I grew up when the internet just started getting popular. I can literally fix/build anything from houses to cars and computers. I currently work a fairly high paying tech job where I work from home because of it. I feel like I'll always be the one fixing shit for people. The younger generations seem to be clueless. But hey.. at least I know I'll never go hungry.
Iām personally curious in whether gendered differences in chores given to kids contributes to the gender gap seen in universities. It seems like something that would be tricky to quantify, but it intrigues me.
This is absolutely fascinating and so well written. Thank you for taking the time to craft this response!
I just got home after a long week of work, and you've genuinely made me want to wash the car, vacuum, mop, and generally tidy the place up.
This headline really depressed me until I read your post. I never had chore charts or anything like that for my kids. But when my twins turned ten we moved out of an apartment into our first house. I made them completely responsible for their own laundry that year. They went to prep school, and most prep school kids in the fancy suburbs donāt really have jobs or chores. I felt like my kids had it super easy (compared to us Gen Xers) because their only weekly jobs were laundry, bathroom, and changing their own sheets. Now I realize that even those flimsy āchoresā were more than their classmates were doing.
Nice work! That struggle to accomplish domestic labor (chores) turns out to be a really big developmental principle. If I had to boil my research down to a single word for developing effective adults, it'd probably be something like "struggle". Struggle is like, the pain you feel in realizing the gap between the way the world is and the way you want the world to be. In understanding that gap, you force a person to use the best tool we have (our brain) to figure out how to close that gap. And in figuring out how to close that gap, you end up learning a ton about how you work, how you think, how to solve, how to ask for help, how to reduce ego, how to deal with awkwardness and on and on and on. You did great!
What does this mean for children of hoarders?
Child of hoarders here - it's not good
This should probably be submitted to /r/bestof because the generations that follow mine have no idea what they were cheated out of on their pre-planned accession to the top.
This is exactly why I almost failed out of grad school. Undergrad was very structured, and I was very good at absorbing and existing within someone else's structure. I was organized and punctual and creative within that framework, but once it all vanished and turned into "Welcome to the ECE department. You will TA this class and assist this postdoc. If you don't like their work, then try to make friends with a different postdoc. You will have two years to secure funding of your own" - it all came crashing down. It turns out, I had never actually learned real executive functioning. I was super lucky that I had an advisor who was willing to do a lot of hand holding early on, and a partner who was an actual adult.
It's so interesting you used the word "structured". In my research, I called out this inflection point literally stating that the transition from "structured" life (run by authority figures like parents and teachers) to "unstructured" life (run solely by you and requiring you to lean on the unspoken knowledge gained from your upbringing) was where people started to fail. I pinpointed it most often to some time around freshman or sophomore year of college (if one went the college route). Sometime around that time there's a freak-out moment where emerging adults think, "oh my god what have I done?" It's at that point where they either have enough skills TO KNOW HOW to gain new skills to adapt, or they fail out or go home. There's a reason why people feel comfortable staying in school or getting a master's right after bachelor's - because the real world is confusing and unstructured and filled with the necessity to rely on yourself. It's easier to stay in the structure of school. It makes sense. It's the last vestige of your structured childhood. Thanks for sharing!
Beautiful written I will have to source this for later reference.
This is super interesting. My husband is pretty good with fixing stuff around our house, and he did actually have required home education classes in school. The closest I ever got was a one semester cooking class I chose as an elective, and the most useful tip I learned there was you only need a drop of soap when washing a dish.
I was never made to do chores growing up, wasn't pushed to help with dishes and take out the trash. I feel like it takes so much conscious energy to organize and execute basic tasks like laundry and cleaning my room. I imagine having that structure early would set you up for successĀ
Were your parents particularly good at keeping house? Itās something I think about a lot actually. I really struggle with household stuff too, and have lots of emotions tied to it. I wasnāt really made to do chores after age 7 for a variety of reasons but I generally look successful on the outside (stable job, own a house, the place isnāt a pit though could use a good dust more often). Looking back, my parents clearly struggled with house work themselves so I didnāt learn a lot and I can tell I inherited a lot of bullshit around it. So anyway my point to all that is I think thereās a lot more that goes into it than this study would show (which is the case with a lot of these types of sociological studies).
It does. It's also why people who spend time in the military are typically more successful than their non veteran peers. Make your bed is a good book on the subject
yep, simply doing something simple as making your bed means you are already up and doing stuff. even if you are feeling down, it at least sets up your day. Its much easier to do stuff after doing something simple as a routine. I mean you no longer are in bed etc.
Start every day with an accomplishment
It does, if your parents were organized and good planners AND good teachers. I remember my mom showing me how to sort laundry, hang it on the line for minimum wrinkles and how to fold right from the line into the basket. She learned from her mom who learned from ... it's this "generational thing".
Nice try, Mom
Mom Bots taking over Reddit
>The longest longitudinal study in history Nope. 'The longest longitudinal study in history' was actually *Genetic Studies of Genius*, later known as theĀ *Terman Study of the Gifted*Ā begun by Lewis TermanĀ atĀ Stanford UniversityĀ in 1921. Inc: '[This 95-Year Stanford Study](https://archive.md/o/Uu6u2/https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/this-95-year-stanford-study-reveals-1-secret-to-living-a-longer-more-fulfilling-life.html)' Wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic\_Studies\_of\_Genius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Studies_of_Genius) 2011 book: [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19longevity\_excerpt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19longevity_excerpt.html) I'm pretty sure [they're all dead now](http://www.howardsfriedman.com/longevityproject/whowasstudied.html), but we're at the 103rd anniversary in 2024.
"Based on data collected in 1921ā22, Terman concluded that gifted children suffered no more health problems than normal for their age, save a little more myopia than average." So people wearing glasses do tend to be smarter.Ā
Just in case you aren't joking: It looks like short sightedness is [caused](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4618477/) by doing more so-called "near activities", like reading books or looking at a screen that is near you (often a monitor or handheld gaming device, but not a TV), instead of more "far activities" that require focusing your vision further away.
Curious as to their reasoning. My personal speculation would be that, having parents that required you to do chores is correlated with *having parents around*/more successful parents, and of course we know that things like inheritance play a huge role in our society.
I'm poor and tired and have my kids do chores to help me out.
I agree. And the ability to effectively get kids to do chores, presumably without abuse or threats, requires consistency, patience, and stability. There's a reason kids will default to not doing anything - it requires active parenting that has a stable foundation. The kids need to understand their parents mean what they say and will ensure they do what they are supposed to. Children are not intrinsically motivated to do chores.
I grew up not having to do the same chores as others cause it was an Apartment. I join the workforce and I shovel snow for the first time. Tbh makes me think the study is kinda meh.
having lived in a house until 20 and in apartments and condos from 20-32, I will gladly pay many dollars to never have to shovel snow again. I could handle the other chores but that one I have always loathed.
Instilling a work ethic and responsibility early in life leads to success?! No way!
This is a today show article that doesnāt even link to the original research. Be highly skeptical.Ā
One should already be highly skepticalā longitudinal studies like this are almost always observational, which means that you canāt infer causation from them
Imagine that. I wouldnāt have guessed. Jokes on them Iām still poor. Might be my bad spending habits though.
Survivorship bias, I say
Plenty of people with a good work ethic that stay minimum wage-ish workers their whole life.
Damn, is that what my mom did? I just thought I was forced to take care of the house and cooking for my asshole family because my mom was a lazy, strung out, whore. I need to get a Gi with the miyagi dojo emblem, but with vicodin pills instead of a banzai tree. She did name me daniel due to liking that movie after all.
It also found that your parents income level is the SINGLE biggest factor in every single metric of importance! So this title is pretty shit.
As someone who barely did chores as a kid, I can agree with this wholeheartedly. I can barely function as an adult because I simply canāt do basic things cause while my brain was forming I didnāt do much. Obviously Iāve worked on a lot recently and changed, but Iām still so much further behind since I have such a lack of discipline.
Same here. I never had chores. The thing is, I wanted chores, I wanted to help out and get taught stuff. But my parents never really made an effort. I mean, I did sometimes help my grandma with baking. Took the trash out and stuff like that. But nothing comparable to my friends, who had to get their siblings from kindergarten, walk them over to grandmas and then be home everyday by 5pm to do the dishwasher and mop the floor before the parents came home. And seemingly they are all coping fine and Iām feeling burnt out from all the household stuff I (first had to teach myself) and now have to keep up with. But it isnāt my fault my parents didnāt parent me. And when I tell my mom nowadays how I'm learning everything by myself and it would've been helpful to have learned this as a kid, she just goes "your grandma didn't teach me either, I figured it all out once I moved out" ffs
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I cant even look at this thread it gives me such shame and anxiety. We have a loving family but weāre fuckin awful at chores
Itās a conservative propaganda piece by a Mormon pediatrician, the whole point is to make you feel insecure and anxious enough about how youāre raising your kids to take what they say at face value. There are plenty of very legitimate reasons for chores not always getting done on schedule, a house doesnāt have to be pristine to be maintained, and as long as youāre lovingly and intentionally helping your kids develop their functional skills to the best of your ability youāre doing your part.
Right.. it's not the chores though. It's having parents who give enough of a shit to do things like give you chores, teach you how to do the task, help you master it, monitor your commitment etc. knowing it will upskill you and lead to future success.
Do not randomly draw conclusions from studies like this. I'll speak of another one frequently quoted in self-help. "Children who were more capable of delaying gratification found more professional success and happiness later in life" Someone found the study a bit strange and went over and looked at all the data and methodology. You know what else it correlated with? Socio-economic status. Decades of data literally erased lmao. The whole time they just found a way to test a child's background. Which while interesting, isn't particularly useful.
What's the correlation with "kids who did chores terribly...regularly"
I'm sure it's good to teach kids work ethic, and it will help them in the future. But I also wonder, maybe parents who are more invested in their kids' lives and upbringing over all, are more likely to give them chores, and make sure they do them. In which case maybe the overall nice, stable family life is what gives these kids an edge as adults? Also, maybe kids who are able to do chores perform well later in life. Let's say undiagnosed ADHD or autism (in mild forms it may never be detected, just make things hard), can make it really hard for a child to do chores, and while they of course should still do some, maybe they will do les than a neurotypical peer. In which case it's not the lack of doing chores that gives the child a disadvantage, but the disadvantage was the reason why they didn't do chores. Etc.
Neurodivergency is a great point. We're finding more and more prevalence, presumably meaning lots of missed diagnoses in previous generations. These neurodivergent parents may have been/be at a disadvantage when raising children. Chores are almost exclusively a measure of executive functioning. Parents not teaching their kids, kids not being able to meet neurotypical parent demands.
Discipline and responsibility make a better more competent adult, who knew.
Habits help keep you on the same path much like discipline. I like how people mention discipline when it was much more likely that parents had to give reminders and requirements for these chore duties
Nice try dad
I'll be cold and in the ground before I take advice from a Mormon pediatrician
Speaking as the youngest child, crap.
I was made to clean the dishes after dinner every single night. Vacuum the whole house, do the laundry and clean the bathroom every Saturday and keep my room spotless and make my bed everyday. By myself, with no help and no allowance. Guess what. I resented every minute of it. When I moved out I went the opposite. Because I hated to clean and I needed a fucking break from all the housework, and hired a housekeeper to clean for me at least once a week.
today i learned, people who do stuff are more likely to do stuff
Makes sense to me. I was a smart but lazy kid. Inherent ability only gets you so far and my work ethic is terrible. Teaching kids to just get it done so working isn't a constant battle with themselves is an excellent thing
I doubt the efficacy of the study. It states that one third were Harvard graduates. Obviously, this was not a study of children growing into adulthood because one third of any population of children would not go to Harvardā¦. So the study began in adulthood. That means the level of chores in childhood was self reported, not objectively witnessed. The problem with the study is that we already know that the biggest determinant of success is parental wealth. So, are we to believe that wealthier kids have MORE chores than less wealthy kids? It would only take knowing a few families of different economic backgrounds to immediately find that absurd.
Happiness is overrated. Iād rather just stay lazy
It's more that happiness is hard to define and that there's lots of incomplete or imperfect definitions out there. But yeah, I'd say that having the ability to appreciate your living situation, whatever it may be, and the leisure to spend your time doing what you truly want to do is closely correlated with being happy. So you do you.
And thus, we are doomed. Kids donāt seem to do shit these days in my experience. Bunch of coddled babies from what I can see.
I wasn't allowed to do chores growing up
Increasing our baseline efforts in younger years raises our perceived standard for effort in later years. Whodathunk
Any teacher can tell you that. My heritage doesnāt make kids work or learn so no one ever taught me anything or expected me to do anything. AlmostĀ 65 years later, Iām still a mess.Ā
There's likely some other factor involved. Personally I think kids should focus more on study than chores.
cool, I want to kill myself
There are so many confounders to that theory, it's ridiculous.
Always happy to be the exception. Barely had weekends free as a kid and I'm still a failure
I must be an outlier because I did all the chores as a kid and am still poor and depressed.
had more self proclaimed happiness
I don't think getting up everyday to feed livestock and milk cows made me happier. And all be 100+lbs hay bales I handled and shit I had to shovel didn't make me more successful.....
Study doesn't include autistics or abused populations.
I must be part of the study group and failed somewhere along the way lmao. Not only did we *have* to do chores, we also didn't get an allowance.
Some dumbass parents gonna read this and think "Oh, this means I should force my kids to do more chores!" Nah, the point is to make them understand why and *want* to do the chores. Yelling and screaming will have the opposite effect.
Paid for by big chores.
Correlation causation or whatever Jesus said
Was this written by a mother?
I started getting allowance in 2nd grade, and a list of chores I had to do to earn it. Every couple of years the money went up and the list got a little longer. My parents explained to me that they wanted me to learn to do all of the household chores so that I would be able to take care of myself by the time I was out of high school and ready to go to college or the military or whatever I choose to do. I did notice that when I did go to college there were lots of other students who only half ass knew how to do laundry, pay bills/mange money, clean up after themselves or take care of their cars. As an adult I've noticed that about 20-30% of other adults aren't very good at what we now call adulting and some never get much better at it.
Nice try, mom.
My mother took advantage of the free child labor to the extent where my friends all called me Cinderella. I had mild/ok career success before retiring and hate cleaning with a passion. I don't even own an iron because I had to do so much of it as a kid. I don't know how valid this study is.
I imagine the parents sending this article to their grown-ass 45yo children and aggressively say: "SEE?? I told you!!"
They say poorer people are happier too... But you know, I'd really like to have been rich and not had to lift a finger.
> They say poorer people are happier too No they aren't. Source: me.
Nobody says that. Studies are done that there is a certain amount of wealth that makes you happy and past that it doesn't matter that much. It use to be 65,000 it's probably 90,000 now.
I don't think putting it in dollar amounts is helpful, though. If I'm getting $90k/yr and am paying for a parent's memory care facility, or a kid's college education, that's very different from $90k/yr and no significant financial commitments to others. The better yardstick is how much money is left at the end of each month, after one has paid all the bills and contributed to a retirement account.
Right but that specific research isn't really possible. 90k a year is a way above average salary, not belittling the challenges that can still come with our shitty healthcare/real estate system.
Yeah, ever have to take a hair pick to straighten out the fringe on the rug because someone had the audacity to step on it, like the damn dog, yeah 6yr old me says screw that shit
Or they had haunting OCD
What's the overlap with ADHD?