Over the years, it has come to my attention that I started doing chores earlier than my acquaintances. So, I’d like to do some kind of unofficial survey here about if you were given chores, how old were you? What kind of chores? Also, did your allowance depend upon completing the chores? And as a side theory, what social class did you grow up in?
Here are my answers:
Chores: yes
Age: 10
Kind: dinner and dishes every other night, cleaning room, laundry, and various household dusting/vacuuming etc. No girl chores or boy chores.
Allowance? What the fuck’s that? I think I have read about it. :smack:
I started doing chores younger than you…but they were fairly minor ones. Being Indian, it’s expected that the girls do chores almost as soon as they can walk. After all, they’ll be doing them all their lives in their married houses or some such thing! But anyway, I think I started around 8 or 9, and it was smaller stuff than yours.
Cleaning room started right away - I always had to keep my room spotless. Around the same age as you I started vacuuming and some laundry, etc.
Please define your classes. Around here you’re “middle class” even if you have a million dollars, apparently.
Kind: setting and clearing the table, picking up, cleaning the bathroom–they evolved over the years.
Allowance: Absolutely not. My mom felt (feels) very strongly that chores are a responsibility to the household and that making it a commercial transaction cheapens something very precious: they were no more going to pay us to do our part than they were going to charge us for food or shelter. My allowance was pretty informal, as well: they paid for things they felt we should be able to do, including having a certain amount of “mad money”. There were attempts to formalize it ($X a week sort of thing), but they never really took.
Class: upper middle, but with 6 kids so money was often pretty tight.
I grew up in the 80’s and my dad was the sole breadwinner, as a professor. And I was told that we were middle class. If you need a salary breakdownhere. Also, remember to deflate dollars going back in time.
Setting the table was my & my brother’s chore since before I can remember - probably as soon as I could hold a fork without an accidental stabbing. I’d guess… 5ish? As I got a bit older, we also did dishes, except if you cooked dinner you didn’t do dishes too (my brother learned to cook because he hated dishes so much).
We also fed the cat/did litter. Made our own lunches from middle school on. Got send out on errands (walking distance from home). In high school I took the cat to the vet a few times on my own (walking or cab ride distance).
We got money from our parents, but not for chores. Chores were just 'cause members of the family chip in. Allowance was proportional to age/needs (in middle school it was probably about $5/week, by the end of high school I got $20/week, this was 1989).
Edited to add: parents were children of immigrants and graduate degree holders, but owned their own business so income was highly erratic throughout my childhood. Sometimes we were broke and my dad was working part time at a card store to make the mortgage, other times there was money for luxuries like international travel.
Age: I don’t know - I’ve always had them; probably 5 or 6
Kind: Wash and dry the dishes every night, take turns feeding & walking the dog with my sister, help clean around the house. When I was old enough, chores expanded to include cooking.
Allowance: $20 a week when I was in high school; before that, nothing. If I wanted to buy something, I had to tell mom what it was, why I wanted it (if it was not school-related) and she often went with me to get it. If I wanted money just to have it, I had to do extras, like cleaning the cars, weeding the entire garden and cleaning the garage, so I had money for stuff like candy at the gas station up the road.
I know I started doing chores at 6 or 7. Sometimes folding towels and wash cloths, sometimes cleaning the kitchen or the bathroom. It wasn’t a huge burden until my teen years, when I was expected to do pretty much everything.* :rolleyes:
No allowance, ever that I remember. Parents just gave us money when we needed it, and bought us stuff we wanted if it was reasonable.
And we were lower-middle class (blue-collar.)
*On the other hand, I moved out on my own knowing how to shop, cook, bake, sew, do laundry, clean…
Maybe 10, although it could have been a little later, maybe 12, but definitely not any younger. I had an allowance, but chores weren’t tied to the allowance, because my mom had this parenting theory that chores are more like … everyone is part of the family so everyone helps and no one gets “paid” for it. It was also a bit of a hedge because money was tight (it was the 1970s) so a reduction in allowance didn’t mean there was a reduction in chores. I should also add my chores were fairly light – dusting, sweeping, helping with the laundry.
However, I did have a little friend growing up who was doing heavy housework from the age of 5 or 6 or thereabouts, and I always helped her with her chores. This is actually where I learned to do things like iron and clean an oven.
We switched from being a blue collar family to white collar over the course of my childhood, both within the middle class.
Yes, I had chores from about 6 or 7 on. I learned to iron practicing on my dad’s handkerchiefs. I also had to help fold laundry, vacuum and dust and do dishes. We also bought a lakeside house that was pretty unfinished inside and my brother and I were recruited to help with panelling and painting, etc. There were also a lot of leaves to be raked there in the Fall.
I did get an allowance, until I started working at about 16.
I might have read that book too. Was it Judy Blume?
I don’t recall that my brother and I had standardized chores, but we certainly did what we were told to. At one point in our teens, we were the regular washers and driers of the dishes. (I remember that because we had to do it in shifts; if we went in there together, arguments ensued).
Very young (between 4 and 6): help to fold laundry, wipe table. Nothing else.
6-10: fold laundry, pick up after self, mind/entertain younger sibling with parents around, wipe dinner table, bring plates and dishes to sink
10+: all the previous stuff + help my dad mow the lawn + occasionally watch my sister
at the ages of 10 & 12 my sister and I helped our parents do most of the work in our new house that we had just moved into (that hadn’t been updated since 1972). This included ripping up carpet, peeling wallpaper, helping to paint and unpack our stuff. My parents refurbed most of the house themselves.
Allowance: NO.
Class: Upper middle
I actually think I had it easy street. My mom and dad expected us to be studious first and foremost so after school jobs were discouraged, and my dad made me quit my job at the library and limited my babysitting because he thought it was cutting into school.
My first job would have been the dishes. I don’t know how old, probably about 5or 6. I had to wash standing on a (not a little booster stool, a full size dining -) chair to reach the sink. Then, watering the house plants, ironing (like cher3, starting on dad’s hankies and moving on from there. Dusting.
Cleaning my room wasn’t housework - it was just expected.
Vacuuming didn’t start till I was about 11 y/o, because until then I couldn’t have carried the machine up the stairs.
There were some chores split, not so much by gender as height, my brother could reach the washing line before I could.
It varied, if mum was working we had more chores, if she was home, she did the housework.
We’d get pocket money regardless. 1970-80 would have ranged from $2 - $10. Enough to get to the movies once a week and have an ice cream. That was the standard - movies / bus fares or ice cream increased in price, so did the pocket money.
I got a part time job in 1980 so that was the end of pocket money, but I still did chores till I left home.
Age: can’t remember not having chores. This list about age 10.
Kind: Daily chores, set table, take dishes to dish washer, feed pets. As needed or weekly, clean bathroom, fold laundry, vacuum hallway near bedrooms, sweep porch and driveway.
More chores added as I got older. As a teenager I cleaned the kitchen, did all the laundry and some cooking.
Allowance: not chore dependant, but bonus money for special work was a possibility.
Class: middle-lower-middle according to the sociology class I took in college
I too started off with minor things like laying the table and doing the washing up, picking fruit etc, then mowing the lawn. I think my allowance in 1980 (aged 13) was at most 50p / week and probably very much less.
Chores: Not in the sense that setting the table or vacuuming the living room was an assigned task I was expected to do daily/weekly/whatever.
The kinds of things I remember doing when asked were (besides the two already mentioned): Keeping my bedroom picked up, putting away my laundry, washing or drying dishes, general tidying up, raking leaves.
Hey thanks! I took it down because my boyfriend said it looked “weird” for his faced to be painted out and it seemed to make him unhappy that it was open to anyone on Flickr.
Chores probably started around age 5. That was little stuff like helping set the table and feeding pets.
We all did dishes from the time we could reach the sink, so about 6 maybe, and were expected to help with the weekly general cleaning, which included dusting, vacuuming, cleaning our rooms, cleaning the bathroom. I think some of that developed over time, so we weren’t scrubbing the toilet at 6 or anything like that. The only gender division was that the boys did most of the lawn mowing and snow shoveling, and the girls did the ironing. We all put away laundry and made our own beds. In fact, I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to start school until I could make my own bed from scratch, which included hospital corners, since this was before fitted sheets were common. (That, and button my dresses up the back and tie my shoes.)
I got an allowance for a while, but it was never tied to chores. It was just money that we were given. It never amounted to much, but I never had much need for money, either. When I got old enough to start babysitting and earning some, the allowance went away.
I guess chores started with making the bed once we were sleeping in a regular bed. Dishes came later; we had a stool to stand on to do dishes and there was this kind of ladder thingy we used to put the dishes away. We used to haul the laundry up to the laundromat with our red wagon; I was about 5 or 6. I had to take out the trash and mow the lawn because I was the only boy, but I also got to do an equal share of the household chores. I was picked to iron Dad’s shirts because I was so good at it; I had to stand on the stool to do my ironing.* I was in 4th grade when the three oldest of us started making dinner one night a week each; we had to decide what to make and tell Mom what to get at the grocery store. If we forgot something, it was our problem to deal with when the time came. Dad also made a weekly schedule on a 3x5 index card with the daily chore assignments and there was an inspection when they got home from work.
We got a weekly allowance as soon as we could pass Dad’s allowance test. You had to tie your shoes and count a pocket full of change that he’d toss in front of you. Allowances went up slowly as we got older; then were discontinued when we reached high school.
Economically, it turned out we were poor, but I didn’t know it when I was a kid.
*Remember before steam irons, when you’d sprinkle the stuff with water as you ironed? We had this little rosette thing that you’d stuff into the top of a glass soda bottle full of water.
Chores: Yes - varied with age. Putting away cloths and putting away toys when young, through cooking dinner, cleaning up, mowing the lawn, shoveling, cleaning the house.
Allowance: yes - I remember 25¢ back when I was 10ish, and $1 in early teens
But they weren’t tied to each other. Chores are what you did because stuff needs to be done around a household.
Allowance was fun money, so I could get some things I wanted and learn about money. It went away in high school, when I got a job.