I wrote not too long ago on the concept of children and chores. I got some wonderful comments back! However, it did bring up some more food for thought on my part. As Bailey had mentioned over at Craft Attic Resource and Sorting Through Life's Lessons, chores provide valuable life lessons for a child that they carry into their adult years. They're not being flung helplessly into the world with no understanding of what they need to do in order to have their needs met as adults. Chores shouldn't be thought of as a punishment. They should be thought of as life skills.
TheArtsyEclectic at Literary Magick and Otherwise Quite Good, as always, had some insight of her own as well. If you didn't catch the comment, she had always thought that children should do chores as able-bodied human beings, but they should get allowance "just because". She hadn't thought about the idea that in the real world people don't get paid, "just because". That very thought brought up a good deal of other thoughts to my mind regarding children, paying for chores and work done, and teaching good values.
It's all too easy for chores to become all about pay when you're using a reward-based method. This is one of the problems I've had with the idea of Chore Wars. It does inspire a pay-per-chore mentality. Each job is assigned gold and by completing the chores, you get a certain amount of gold. However, in chore wars, no matter who does the chore, the rewards are still the same, either a set value, or a variable amount of gold and "treasure" at the end of each "adventure". The idea is that you never know at the onset of an adventure how much gold there will be waiting at the end, only an idea of how much there could be. That's how real adventuring is, so this is how the game works. As a result, the set amount means you can do as little or as much as you want, but it's pretty well set.
The problem with kids and pay-per-chore routines is the ability to negotiate. Telling your child you'll pay them a quarter to keep their room clean, a dollar to take out the trash every day for a week, and everything is all good, but then they can easily get into the mentality of chores equating to payments. You ask them to unload the dishwasher to get the response "How much will you pay me to do it?" Everything becomes an opportunity to exploit for money, and that's not a good situation. On top of that, it teaches a child that everything comes with rewards, and the only ones worth doing are the ones you can reap benefits from.
I think my personal favorite way to look at allowance is from the stance of a job. Everyone in the family has a job, whether it's going out and earning the income, cooking and cleaning, or in the case of my kids, homeschooling and chores. Allowance is earned by doing your job. In other words, for my kids, as long as they're continuing with homeschooling (no matter how it's done) and they're doing their chores, they should be paid for doing their "job". They're not getting money "just because". Because they're being an active and helpful part of the family, the family is helping them out with a little bit of money to do something they want. It's the same sort of balance I have with my partner. More often than not, he's earning the income. I get child support for my older two, but that goes to taking care of their needs. I also get my dance income, but that goes back into my business. I haven't really turned a profit yet. However, because I clean, take care of the kids, do the grocery shopping, and cook, I should be able to get an allowance for doing my "job". I also find this assignment of "jobs" within the household to be useful. It shows that homemaking and raising the children is just as important and necessary of a job as the person who leaves the house for work to earn an honest wage. This helps create balance in a household, and also helps to demonstrate that every member of the family is vital to it's survival. The family succeeds at finding their own happiness through working together and doing their jobs to be sure everything gets done.
When you look at chores from the perspective of performing a job, you can look at allowance raises and increased responsibility as "promotions", in a way. "You're older now and we feel you're capable of having more responsibilities. Because you're taking on these additional chores (even if you're giving up a couple easier ones to the younger kids who are growing into them), we're going to give you a raise in your allowance." This also handles allowance increases for older kids. After all, my daughter, at seven, would only end up buying more toys to clutter her room or candy. We'd hopefully be able to convince her to put some away in savings too, but in reality, a seven year old doesn't need that much money. A teen, however, would want to be able to go to the movies with their friends, might want to buy their own clothes or music. They have a lot more ability and desire to spend than a younger kid would. A higher allowance reflects that, but pairing it with a "promotion" or increase of responsibility, or more adult responsibilities allows that to become something more than "just because". It also is an incredible mark of growth for a child, though they may not recognize it right away. It's recognition for the fact that they are becoming older and more mature, more capable of handling bigger or more complex tasks.
For my family, I think we're still going to use the Chore Wars approach. There's no ability to negotiate because every chore goes on the list as soon as it's seen as a need in the household. There are chores of such a variety that almost every member of the family can do, aside from the baby, of course! It's up to the family member how much or how little they want to take part in helping the family. It means with the spring birthdays coming up, my daughter can choose to do extra chores (because she's very insistent on buying presents for everyone in the family whenever a gift-giving opportunity arises). It allows her to think about things she wants, and make the choice to work towards them. My sister and I used this system with my mom for a while. We had the brilliant idea that we were going to save up to buy a horse some day, however, I was proud of myself when I could walk into the tack shop and buy my own riding boots (a pair I'd clipped an ad for and kept in the box where I kept all my savings) on sale even! I had enough left over to buy myself a set of brushes I could use at my lessons too! I learned to place a lot more value on each job that was needed in order to keep the household functioning, even though I often saw that those things didn't get done and couldn't get motivated to do them myself.
There are probably as many approaches to chores relating to allowance as there are families who use the system! However, I do feel that chores and allowance combined do teach a good deal to children. In this world very few people get paid to sit on their bottom and do nothing all day. Even welfare families who are living in state funded housing have a requirement to keep their homes clean as random inspections are often used, at least in Texas they frequently are. Even when it comes to non-monetary exchanges, it's rare that you get something for nothing. Yes, friends do often give gifts and donations to friends when they are in need, but often they come at the exchange of hours of good conversation and fun times together, and the expectation that it would be the same were the roles reversed. There are some wonderful people who give gifts freely to even strangers with no expectation of return, which is a beautiful and wonderful thing. However, even I know that as homemaker who homeschools and runs her own business, if I did nothing all day but sit around on my butt and work on my business, yes, I'd probably have a much more successfully marketed business and be turning a profit already, but the money my partner allows me to spend from his salary would be spent on paying someone else to do all the cleaning and to raise our kids.
It's also worth mentioning that money earned is valued far more than money that is just freely handed over. I remember as a child I would blow all the money I got for Christmas presents and the like almost immediately. It would go on frivolous things. When it came to my own hard-earned money, I valued it very differently. I had to seriously think about how much work it took to earn that $8 movie ticket, or that $20 dinner out at a nicer restaurant for my friend's birthday. As I said, I had carefully planned out how long it would take to earn my set of paddock boots (which I only ended up getting rid of a few years back because they were worn out! That was a good investment! They lasted ten years!) and because of it, saved carefully. This is also a huge financial lesson for the future about wise spending and hard-earned money. Even if you use Dave Ramsey's suggestions for big purchases, such as a car, and offer to match their savings however big or small, and that's what they have to make their purchase. In other words, if they only save $1000 by the time they need to buy a car, they're getting a beater, but if they somehow manage to save up $10,000, they're looking at a pretty nice car! Of course, you need to have the finances to match their savings to do that, but you get the idea. Even with offering to help your kids with purchases you see as valuable, you're still encouraging your children to spend their allowance (and any income from a job they might get) wisely, which is also a vital skill for their future adult life.
No matter how you look at it, throughout time everyone has had a job to do in their community, and everyone gets some kind of return on that job. In return for staying home and taking care of their children, preparing food, and clothing the family, many tribal mothers were rewarded with the meats and skins returned from a hunt, the harvest of whatever was grown in the fields, and whatever could be brought in from wild harvesting. Today is really no different. Everyone has a job to fill in society. In order to get some return on that job, be it money, housing, food, or whatever, they need to fill some role in society. I see the connection between allowance and chores being similar with kids. Chores are simply one part of their role in society, their society being primarily made up by the family. Allowance is one of the many returns they get for doing their job and doing it well.
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