I think it depends a lot on the kid and what they are doing. If they are active in two or three activities and taking an AP courseload, it isn’t reasonable to expect them to take a job - my daughter had a job under that sort of load and had to quit it - the job would schedule her for too many hours over finals, would schedule her over rehearsal, and then tell her that her first responsibility was to the job. Her first responsibility was the full college prep course load she had of three AP courses and one college class. Her second responsibility was to the leadership commitments she made that made a difference in getting into the college of her choice. Her third responsibility was to show up for rehearsal for a role she committed to, and THEN came the job. Her Summers were filled with more college coursework and volunteer work for Girl Scouts.
Now, my son almost always had two jobs - but he stopped playing baseball after his Sophomore year and didn’t take college prep coursework. He had plenty of time to work.
Yeah, I lived three miles from the nearest town that had more than a church, a bar and a gas station (it had a grocery store and a feed store - and more bars and churches and gas stations.) I got a drivers license at seventeen, but didn’t own a car until after I graduated from high school. There was zero opportunity for me to have a job that didn’t involve babysitting or mowing lawns (which I did some of - although that market was pretty saturated).
My kids shared a car through high school - so my daughter seldom had it when my son was working. And with no public transportation - the nearest employment being two miles away, and Minnesota Winters being a bear, she was limited to what other people could drive her to. Carpools for rehearsals were easy to set up - a job would have been difficult while her parents worked full time.
I had no way to get any money at all without working (never got an allowance, but still had to do a ton of chores). I started babysitting at 11 1/2 – with no childcare experience! – and did that until I got a job at the local library at 16. I did work at the concession stand when P.O.P. was auctioned off, but that was a one-off. I kept my library job through college and paid for college 100% myself. Fortunately, one of the Asst. Librarians was big on education, so I was able to work almost full-time in the summers.
I still had time to socialize, party, etc. I don’t feel I missed anything by working, but I gained a LOT.
I think that’s a personality issue rather a first job issue. As your brother-in-law is long past the first job culture shock, and he’s still pompous employee.
If they want to get a job, fine. It’ll be good for them. But don’t pressure them if they don’t want to. You don’t want to give them a reason to hate you when they find out how much working sucks.
My dad made more money in the first two weeks after college than he had in all his work before then. He thought you should put all your time into study. My mother worked as a waitress during college. She swore that no daughter of hers would have to put up with groping from the customers and heavy passes from the management.
I am a product of their effort. I think that they were wrong.
Yeah, I quit the first non-babysitting job that I had during the school year (Baskin-Robbins, one of the few places in town that would hire 16-year-olds) because I told the manager that I couldn’t work more than 2 - 3 hours on school nights, starting at 4 pm at the earliest, and he kept scheduling me from 3 - 10 plus cleanup (so a full-time work shift, which isn’t even legal for a 16-year-old, either in terms of number of hours worked or the time of day). That on top of 6 honors and AP classes, a couple of school music groups, and the occasional babysitting job just wasn’t going to work.
The last straw was when he was short-handed and scheduled me to work alone from 4 - 7 on a weeknight, and when my relief hadn’t shown up by 8, I called him and told him that I had a ton of homework to do and I was locking up the store and going home. He begged me to stay until he could get there, but that was going to be another hour and I had enough homework to keep me up well past midnight as it was. And it wasn’t the first time this had happened by a long shot.
If only I could go back in time and report him to the state labor department for all the other illegal stuff he did, like scheduling people to be “on call,” which meant that we were expected to hang around at home in case it got busy and we were needed. For free. In 1984, before cell phones.
Parents should be teaching kids that work is good but jobs are bad. They should be teaching kids that jobs are economic traps set by capitalists to ensare the fruits of their lifetime of labor and effort. They should be influencing their children to press for exploration for more sophisticated ways to organize an economy than the one in place which victimizes the majority to enrich a thin minority. Jobs are what they use to trap you for life.
My eldest was a greeter in a restaurant on weekends for about 6 months. It was more a favor to a friend of the family that needed help. That said, I think it’s pretty valuable for everyone to have had a food service job for a few months. Also, it can help teach kids the value of money that nothing else will. Caveat, I started as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant at 15, and gradually worked my way up the food chain until finally landing a professional entry level investment banker job after getting an MBA (to then compete with 22 year old silver spoon prep school kids for the next rung up the ladder).
The amount of income my kid earned was trivial, and I wasn’t about to let it get in the way of the HUGE upper middle class investment I’ve made in paving the way for her success in life, but I do think it was a really good life experience.
From what I’ve seen its basically “ask your dad”. Again, just from personal experience, I would say that the kids in those families aren’t discouraged from employment; more that they aren’t encouraged. So you cadge a few bucks for smokes, pocket some change from a trip to the store for the movies. Or skim a fiver off the dresser if it sits too long. Use your allowance, if you have one, to cover your vices. Kids will find a way.
Hmmm, working a joe job versus doing a hardcore SAT summer course, acing the SAT, getting an SAT scholarship and into a great school of choice. Spending the summer working on the college essays and being ready to apply for early admission ahead of the herd just making the January deadlines. Not to mention, potentially getting admitted to your choice school before Christmas and not having to sweat it out until May. Versus saving a $1000?
Maybe your kid can do it all. For my kids, their primary goal is an education and getting into the choice school. Ideally, they can also get a taste of part time employment to pick up the learnings that can offer, but getting their AP classes done so they don’t have to waste college years (and tuition on entry level classes), and getting into their school of choice is a lot more valuable IMHO. Of course, YMMV.
If I’d stayed and had kids in the US, I might never have thought of telling my kids to get jobs, as that’s not something most kids in Spain do. I didn’t; Littlebro didn’t; Middlebro did because he decided it would piss Dad off (Dad raised an eyebrow and said “ok”). But if we’d been part of a large Hispanic group (which would have been likely to happen, specially if I’d stayed in Miami), those same kids would have been working their asses off between school, housework (it’s everybody’s house, every-fucking-body cooks and tidies and cleans) and the favor economy. From what I saw, this was true for many second-generation Hispanics.
I never held a job as a babysitter. But I got invited to every birthday party to which my brothers were invited, between the ages of 9 and fuck-you-all (15 IIRC; one of the mothers made the mistake of pissing me off). It was favor economy, not money economy, but it certainly involved hard work in dangerous conditions (there was a pair of brothers called “Barn” who kicked like mules).
Nearly everyone I knew in college did just that- we worked summer jobs, we got scholarships (many Natl. Merit), and into the schools of our choice, and applied early in the first semester of our senior years. BFD. That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do.
The whole point of getting “real” summer jobs as teenagers is really twofold. One, you either learn what shit jobs are like, so you’re that much more motivated NOT to have one for a living. Two, it’s because it’s really the first time in most teenagers’ lives when they can earn real money for themselves- not money that mom and dad gave them, and that they retain some degree of control over.
I really think the second one is the bigger one- the first one is more of a middle class trope of what will happen if you don’t go to college, while the second is really more important to anyone. I mean, I learned more about how to actually save and spend money properly from my high school and college summer jobs than from anywhere else.
The arguments presented in the first 40-some posts [I stopped after the redundancy wore me out] in this thread for pushing teenagers are:
[ul]
[li]Learn how to apply for a job[/li][li]Learn how to sit through an interview[/li][li]Learn how to endure bullshit[/li][li]Demystification of the job-getting process[/li][li]“good life experience”[/li][li]Avoiding “culture shock”[/li][li]Character-building[/li][li]“valuable life lessons”, e.g. the boss isn’t always right, but is always the boss; responsible habits re: money; the importance of adhering to a schedule; having not-wonderful jobs shows the importance of positioning to get better work[/li][li]avoiding prolonged infantilization[/li][li]Learn what it is to earn money[/li][li]“valuable life lesson”[/li][li]Being aware of the effort that went into getting money[/li][li]Learn responsibility[/li][li]Learn the value of money[/li][/ul]
All in all pretty weak. The above can be accomplished by actually parenting, through non-job experience, or in the first 5 minutes of a later job. No mcjob required. Maybe it’s better than staying home playing video games all day. But of course working can also have the added risk of injury and decreased school performance, and a correlation with problem behaviors like substance abuse (although I suspect much of this is selection bias).
Now granted I did have a job in high school, but it was a particularly unique experience that served more as a college admissions booster than for providing any value from the above list or the $26/hour it paid.
I am both suitably chastened that my lifes experiences are now invalidated as well as secretly mad jealous of Rukin making $26 an hour in his spare time while in high school. I just wish I could be more like other people!
Kids are capable of doing well academically and having summer jobs (and non-summer jobs too). Just like kids are capable of doing well academically and being active in extracurriculars. If we were talking about club participation or civic activities, would it occur to you make this dichotomy?
Obviously it’s not a good idea to stretch your kid so thin they can’t dedicate enough time to studies, and some kids need more time for that than others. For the average case, though? There are more upsides than downsides to a job when they otherwise might be idle. Money is only a small part of it. During my senior year of HS, I worked evenings at a drug store just so that I could stay productively busy outside of school. Seasonal depression gets to me the most when I don’t feel challenged or active; having a job kept my mental health up so that I could stay motivated at school, believe it or not.
If there was ever a chance that work would’ve prevented me from getting into a good undergrad and then later, professional school, I wouldn’t have worked. I think it’s a mistake to see these two things as competing interests.
While I don’t have children, I am in charge of training the new cashiers at work. People who have had previous jobs know the routine, know how the work world works, and chance on quicker. The first time workers either try to do it their way (I can have my device at the register) or try to be know-it-alls, afraid to ask a question. I never put anyone on the register until they ask questions.
When my nephew came home from college and announced he wasn’t going back and didn’t have to work because his family had money, his parents made him get a job and go to school part-time, or they would put him out of their house.
Somehow I was able to juggle hardcore SAT classes (which were incredibly boring and did not help me one bit, but whatevs) and a “joe” job. Somehow I was able to juggle college applications, coursework, extracurriculars, violin lessons, volunteer work, church, a weekend over-the-table job, AND a side hustle (performing at weddings).
Now granted, I did not have parents riding my ass about getting into the BEST colleges and making the BEST grades. I rode my own ass in these areas so they did not have to. My parents were pretty hands-off; they probably would have been okay with me winding up with a “joe” job in adulthood as long as I was self-supporting law-abiding Christian. They cared about my education, but they were of the mind that education is a lot more than school performance and test scores. I understand that not all parents have this attitude, but I can’t say I see much fault with it.
There is an opportunity cost baked into everything we do since we can’t do everthing. I spent a shitload of time and money studying for the SAT and the end result were unimpressive scores. I probably would have been better off using those resources to learn stress management techiques so that I wouldn’t have sabotaged myself on test day with anxiety. I wish someone would have told me as a teenager me not to stress so much over the SAT and just have more fun.
Parents are perfectly able to instill these “life lessons” well before kids turn 16 and after by parenting and through other activities. You aren’t sure what kids would be doing all summer if they weren’t working. Just like kids can be “required” to get a job, kids can be required to do other constructive activities. Or parents can instill a desire to want to spend time on wonderfully creative and charitable activities. Or on taking a math class to skip ahead next year. Sports. Music. Scouting. Leadership workshops. Knocking out intro college credits. Visiting potential colleges. Service trips. Internships. It’s not like the options are job vs sleep all day.
The OP asks if parents who don’t push their teenagers to get jobs are “doing bad by them”. The “yes” reasons given thus far can all be accomplished with parenting and a bit of creativity. I’m still :smack:ing at the “I’m not sure what they kids would be doing all summer.” Parents may be “doing bad by them” if their kids just vegetate, but that’s not by any means the sole alternative to getting a job, nor is getting a job necessarily the most valuable option, given the bountiful opportunities out there.
Again, just from personal experience, I would say that the kids in those families aren’t discouraged from employment; more that they aren’t encouraged. So you cadge a few bucks for smokes, pocket some change from a trip to the store for the movies. Or skim a fiver off the dresser if it sits too long. Use your allowance, if you have one, to cover your vices. Kids will find a way.