This thread contains some rather broad assumptions about family life and at least one shocking example of bad parenting, but makes me want to canvas the boards for opinions on a related issue.
Farmman and I have yet to reach consensus on whether children should be paid for work done around the house – as in a direct link between chores and allowance. He believes children will benefit from experiencing first hand the relationship between work and pay. I disagree strongly, and believe that household chores should be done simply because one is a member of the household and not for a paycheck. Allowances (if given) should be entirely separate from familial responsibility.
I feel that once you attach a tangible reward to tasks which should be completed for their intrinsic value (harmonious living in a relatively well-kept house) you nurture all sorts of nasty “what’s in it for me?” attitudes–attitudes which are hard enough to squelch in the teen years even if you hadn’t spent the past decade reinforcing them.
So, what’s your philosophy/experience with this, and how’d it work out for you?
I see both sides of this. I understand that we are a family unit and need to work together. I also understand that kids need to learn responsibilities and consequences–and if I give them an allowance then I don’t have to give them lunch money or money for this or that–it is their responsibility to figure out their budget and have the money they need on hand.
I have a 15 year old and a 21 year old.
We did/do the paid allowance thing. If they didn’t do all the chores, I took off some or all of the allowance.
We definitely went through a period with the older one when his room was just a pit, the trash wasn’t taken out, he didn’t get his allowance, and he simply did not care all that much. He especially didn’t care later when he began a part-time job during the summer and school holidays. I just closed the door to his room.
He’s a good kid now and voluntarily does all kinds of nice things around the house whenever he’s home.
The 15 year old is a bit better, but certainly not perfect, about chores. He does pitch in around the house without being told to.
Well, there is two conflicting problems here. One is the fact that rewards for a task removes the intrinsic motivation for that task. Human psycholgy links the task to a reward and if there is no reward then there is no longer a motivation to do a similar task. The kids may no longer be motivated to help with chores if there is no monetary reward.
The conflicting problem is that kids need money especially to learn how to handle money on their own. An allowance teaches kids how to budget and what the limit of their spending can be. This is an invaluable skill that many adults never learned and results in dire consequences. If money is not linked to chores, then what should it be linked to?
Personally, I believe that the latter is much more important in the long term and kids should be paid for doing chores. They need money just like anyone and it is much better than just doling it out when they beg for something.
They get now, and will continue to receive, as much of the household income as they need. Just as I do. Just as my husband does. We don’t divide our assets into ‘his’ and ‘mine’ and I see no reason to start dividing things up for the children.
There’ll be plenty of time for that when we’re both dead.’
I think it is good to have several basic chores or responsibilites that children are required to do without pay, and also a little spending money of their own that is theirs to spend as they wish. If they want something on top of that, they can do extra chores to earn money, that way they still learn the work for money or reward lesson.
Granted our child is not old enough to try this out yet, but I grew up with a small allowance and chores to do, both increased with age. Helping with dishes and picking up toys were expected to be done without pay, doing things like mowing the lawn or weeding the garden were paid.
I think you can find a compromise between pay for everything or nothing.
We agree that allowances are a good way to teach financial responsibility, and plan to dole them out. The question is under what kind of understanding will the kids get x amount of money.
FTR, I don’t earn outside the farm business, yet I don’t get or expect a set monetary reward for my (significant) labors.
I was in this situation as a child, and think it’s bull.
What basically happens is that the husband and wife have the ability to make direct decisions as to what to buy, while the children have to get approvial.
Now I’m not saying that you go out and buy a car w/o consulting your mate, but you may decide on your own to eat at McD’s w/o consulting him, however your kids must ask for that money in your line of thinking.
Lets say you are a stay at home mom. You don’t provide income to the house, yet are entitled to have some independent spending ability for your input as a contributing member of the household. The kids are no different, they help out and deserve a share.
Really what you need to decide does chores = allowance but the broader question of should allowance be used as a motivator.
One thing to remember is if you go the route of allowance is used for payment or consequences, that the rule doesn’t have to be the same for all 18 years of parenting. If when the kid is 10 and needs extra motivation for keeping his room clean, tie allowance to it then. If then at 15 they need an attitude adjustment tie allowance to that.
As for me, my kid is only 2 so I don’t have first-hand experience, except as the child in the senario. We plan to do largely what my parents did: My allowance was seperate from chores; I did chores because we all are part of living in the home and creating mess so we are all part of cleaning it up.
What it was tied to it for a time at least was attitude and behavior. So I didn’t have to like my siblings, but I wasn’t alowed to tease or hit them, and if I violated the family rules of civility I got dinged in my allowance. If I swore or was rude to my folks, I felt it in my allowance. It worked pretty well on me.
My kids have regular chores they have to do, because they are part of this household, and have to contribute. They also get allowances, because they need to learn to handle money. We require them to buy their own books and toys from this allowance money, so that they learn budgeting and saving. We buy them toys only at Christmas and their birthdays.
kids–our job was to be good students
father–worked outside the home
mother–worked in the home
The only work we had to do was bring our laundry downstairs to be washed and back upstairs when it was done, and occasionally clean up our rooms. Also, make up our beds with the clean linens. No other housework; that was Mom’s job.
Allowance was once a week and increased over the years; started at <25 cents maxed out at $5/week when I was 16 and got a summer job. Any other money we needed (for clothes, etc.) we took out of the money gifts we had received over the years. Entertainment came out of our allowance.
I really didn’t learn much about money management. Not to say I got into any trouble later but I did fritter away money without thinking about its value. Of course I still do that so I guess I still haven’t learned.
Stick the word “adult” somewhere in that statement, and you’re right again. I know too much about child development to make the mistake of thinking child=small adult. They are not and shouldn’t be treated as such. You also simplify the dynamic of our household (any household) when you assume that zero earnings = zero gains. In the 4 years we have been running this experiment, my husband has been able to gracefully fly through training and certifications with the same ease and speed as his much younger peers in a field that is decidedly youth-favoring (IT). He never has to leave work early to pick up a sick child from daycare, he gives no thought to laundry, yardwork, meals, or general maintenance of the house, and he has been able to drive himself for the sole purpose of staying ahead in a breakneck career (One he loves btw) This wouldn’t be possible if I was earning. He would have to shoulder half the responsibility and his earnings, and all our happiness, would suffer.
See above why the kids are, indeed, different.
They will receive an allowance with which they can make all sorts of independent spending decisions. I simply don’t like the idea of paying a kid for things they should be doing just because.
My dad had the attitude of “No. I won’t pay you to do that. You should be doing it anyway. You’re a member of this household…”
I did some chores, like doing the dishes etc. And got an allowance too, but the too weren’t related.
My mum didn’t share my dad’s attitude, and when I got older would sometimes offer me money to do extra stuff. I usually turned it down though. It depended on how much she was willing to pay.
The are, indeed. It is paid to them in the form of food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc.
In our house we use a Velma-type plan (how do you like being an adjective, Velma?). There is a set of chores that each child is expected to perform because they are a part of the household. Once those are completed there is a second set of chores that each can perform to earn spending money. Chores from both lists are age appropriate. This, IMHO, most closely approximates real life. There is a certain level of work one must do in order to provide the basics. Work beyond that minimum is rewarded with disposable income.
We were expected to do several chores, because we lived in the house and should help (plus the learning experience thing).
We were given an allowance that was tied directly to schoolwork. Our parents considered school as our ‘job’ in the same way that they had their jobs that they were paid for. Raises were given based on age and performance/achievement at school.
Allowances could be ‘docked’ for misbehaviour, bad school results or not doing chores.
That’s kind of how we did it. We had chores that just had to be done. No pay–they were our responsibility as members of the family. We also got a regular allowance (that could be withheld if we were really bad, though that rarely happened). Then we had the opportunity to get additional money through work.
The only problem came when I realized my parents would pay me a certain amount for doing all the yard work, and I would then turn around and pay my youngest brother to do it for half that amount (he was kind of gullible). I think my dad was actually a bit impressed though he tried not to let on. Mom, however, was not amused.
I say this a girlfriend that has to hound and bribe her boyfriend to do anything around the house. He never learned that chores are things that just have to get done. Instead, in his mind housework is tied to rewards and it’s pointless to do them if you don’t get one. I think having unrewarded chores foster an attitude of “you gotta do what you gotta do” which is invaluable for school, work, and future relationships.
Kids should get paid when they do something the parents ought to be doing themselves and just don’t want to. Like washing the family car.
Kids should have regular chores that they do because they live there, they’re part of the household and everyone’s gotta contribute.
Then there’s the other chores that they could do if they want money.
As far as allowances go, I think I lean more towards tying that in with school because a kid’s “job” is to go to school and you want to instill in them that work=money.
I’m going to throw a hook in here and ask what is meant by chores, given that the setting is apparently a farm.
I grew up on a farm myself, and while I don’t believe it’s a good idea to tie household chores, i.e., dishes, cleaning the bedroom, vacuuming, etc to allowances, I think the situation is rather different if kids are helping out with farm chores in any substantial way. When I was a kid, I would be given the responsibility of, say, taking care of the chickens that were being raised for consumption by our family and various relatives. When the time came, I got the proceeds of selling those birds that went to grandparents, etc (but nothing for those that we kept for ourselves). As I got older, the scale of such ventures increased somewhat. This income was always over and above my allowance, but my allowance was rather small compared to that of my peers.