October 13th Class

“Children’s Share in Household Tasks” by Frances K. Goldschneider and Linda J. Waite

This reading talks about family dynamics and how it impacts how children participate in household chores and work around the house. The breakdown that occurs as to how parents dictate who does what around the house ends up being dependent on the age of their children as well as the gender. For example, “Girls tend to spend about twice as much time on housework as their brothers, mirroring the different levels of contribution by their mothers and father.” (p. 809) That is to say that, age and sex dictate who does what around the house whether parents realize it or not or whether they are trying to raise their children in an egalitarian environment or not.

The trend generally is: “As children get older, they clearly become more involved in household chores, indoors and outdoors.” (p. 812) The assumption behind this is that with age comes more experience and knowledge and thus, children can be more useful and helpful around the home environment. It is clear that the teenage girls do more around the house than their male counterparts, but I found this particularly interesting. “[…Y]oung adult males contribute no more to housework than do preteen children, and substantially less than their sisters of the same age.” (p. 813) This must definitely add to the amount of work that those same males will do in their future households. Whether parents realize it or not, they are gearing their children to an unequal future with regards to sharing the housework. “This childhood socialization helps to reproduce the sex segregation of household labor found among husbands and wives. The family is a “gender factory.” (p. 813)

The type of family that we come from also has a correlation to how much work we do around the home. For example, mother-only families “share more overall and the they share more in every single task.” (p. 814) That is to say that children with families headed by a single mother figure do more around the house than families with two parental figures. Not only this but, “[Teenage boys do about twice as much yard work and home maintenance in families headed by their mother only than they do in two-parent families, they also do more grocery shopping, more cooking and more cleaning…” (p. 815) Not only this, but “young women take twice as much responsibility for housework…” (p. 816) The pressures of having a single mother who heads the family clearly puts more pressure on the children to do more work around the house to make up for whatever that paternal figure was going to assume had he been there.

Stepparent families are different as well. “[T]he increased involvement the children are likely to have experiences before the remarriage does not carry over[…]; perhaps the stepfather takes over many of their chores.” (p. 816) These children, though they do not do as much as their counterparts in families headed by just a mother figure, they still do a lot around the house. “Not only do stepfathers create “Cindarellas,” they seem to increase the household contribution of stepsons as well, so that both are involved in the “extra” work.” (p. 816) That is to say that both genders are more heavily involved in household tasks when a stepfather is concerned.

I believe that children should be involved in tasks around the house for the sheer fact that it is everyone’s responsibility to help around the house and be a productive member of a family. Not necessarily for character building, but just for the fact that someone else should not have to do everything to clean up after you or cook for you, etc. It is up to you to do whatever you can to the best of your ability. I find it particularly shocking though that parents tend to perpetuate the fact that women do more around the house by indoctrinating their children to do so. Whether they realize it or not, as a generation who will one day start families, I suppose that we must keep this in mind if anyone can hope to reach equality in its entirety.

“Children’s Perspectives of Employed Mothers and Fathers: Closing the Gap Between Public Debates and Research Findings” by Ellen Galinsky

This reading is based off of the survey that the author conducted called the “Ask the Children study.” This study interviewed children in their classrooms from the ages of 8-18 and came up with certain findings on parenthood and childhood.

Some interesting statistics came out of this study. For example, “Overall, 47.5% agree with the statement, “Mothers who really don’t need to earn money shouldn’t work,” compared with 97% who agree with that “it is OK for mothers to work if they really need the money.”” (p. 221) That is to say that almost half of parents think that mothers should only work if a second income is necessary. But this takes a step back to before the time women entered the labor force. Parents are fitting into the ideas of the traditional family model where a woman is obligated to stay home and rear the children and men are meant to leave the home in order to provide for that same family. But after asking the children themselves, the study came up with “what matters most is how children are mothered, particularly whether mothers are warm and responsive, firm yet caring, and whether the children are priorities in their mothers’ lives.” (p. 223)

There is an interesting relationship between mothers and fathers employment and their effect on their children. “Although mothers’ employment is seen as potentially harmful to children because it takes them away from their children, fathers’ employment is typically not questioned. In fact, it is fathers’ unemployment that is depicted as potentially harmful[…]” (p. 223) In addition to this children seem to want to have more time with their fathers than their mothers. “This study found that children are more likely to say that they have too little time with their fathers (35%) than their mothers (28%).” (p. 224)

Another interesting thing is that, “The majority of mothers and fathers in the Ask the Children study (53%) feel that they have too little time with their children.” (p. 227) The demands of work and working outside the home has begun to spill over into the home, but parents are spending just as much time comparatively with their children as parents of past generations. But this feeling stems from the idea that “the pace of work has quickened and become more demanding and this pressure spills over into home life.” (p. 229)

The study also came up with a number of surprising opinions from the children that participated in the study. Children are concerned about their parents’ stress,” “Children are worried about their parents,” “Children do not think that their parents like their jobs as much as parents do,” and “a number of children do not know too much about their parents’ – especially their Fathers’ – Jobs.” (pp. 232-233) That is to say that parents do not ask their children and do not realize that their children can worry about things like this as well. That is why the author asserts that parents should ask their children more about what they are feeling and thinking. “According to a 12-year-old-child: Listen. Listen to what your kids say, because you know, sometimes it’s very important. And sometimes a kids can have a great idea and it could even affect you. Because, you know, kids are people.” (p. 235)

In my opinion, I think asking your children what they think is important. As a child, I always had opinions on things or ideas but my parents would listen but would most likely blow it off. It is important because I feel like kids are getting smarter as the generations go on. There is more technology that gives children access to a wider range of information. So why not listen to your children? They might surprise you or even help you out. But I also feel that it is important to a child’s development to spend time with their parents so, this would help also to form a bond between parent and child.

“How to Succeed in Childhood” by Judith Rich Harris

This article was very interesting to me because it goes behind the idea that “parent’s don’t matter.” (p. 1) It also discusses how parenting has changed over time from the idea of “Too much attention and affection [that] were though to be bad for kids.
[But i]n those days, spanking was considered not just the parents’ right bit their duty.” (p. 1)

“According to Freudian theory, children learn right from wrong – that is, they learn to behave in ways their parents and their society deem acceptably – by identifying with their parents.” (p. 2) But according to the reading, this can be a confusing time for a child. They try to do things that their parents do or they try to imitate their parents but get in trouble for it. The example the author used was of Julia, a girl a little over two years of age, who tried to make scrambled eggs like her mother had done and imitated her mother reprimanding her while she made mistakes. The author then notes, Sure, children sometimes pretend to be adults. They also pretend to be horses and monsters and babies, but that doesn’t mean they aspire to be horses or monsters or babies[…] a child’s goal is to be a successful child.” (p. 2)

So what does it take to be a successful child according to the author? According to the author, a child has a couple of jobs. The first job is to “learn how to get along with her parents and siblings and to do the things that are expected of her at home.” (p. 2) But this can be hard because sometimes children have to balance an outside world that is very different than their home. For example, families of immigrants that move here have to be able to juggle the expectations of both cultures. Or something that their parents laugh about at home might not be accepted in the school setting.

In all cultures, children learn to associate with the group. For example, children up until the age of three in hunter and gatherer societies were coddled by their mother. Once the next child came along, that child was put in a group setting where the older children taught them the rules of the society. Another example of belonging to a group would be the Robber’s Cave Study. There were two groups of boys who were split up into “Rattlers” and “Eagles” and put on the same campgrounds unbeknownst to the other group. A certain group pride was formed when individuals from one group found out about the presence of the other. “Before long, the two groups were raiding each other’s cabins and filling socks with stones in preparation for retaliatory raids.” (p. 5) This sense of group identity happens amongst all age groups as well. Teenagers, for example, who resist adult rules, “develop a sense of community and group identity.” (p. 6)

Another point in the reading was the fact that in past cultures like that of the hunter-gatherer type, individuals were exposed to everything that was going on. “There was no privacy: everybody knew what everybody else was doing. Nowadays children can’t ordinarily watch their neighbors making love, having babies, fighting and dying, but they can watch these things happening on the television screen. Television has become their window on society…” (p. 7) That is to say that the media has helped to shape our perceptions of the society that we live in and how it should be.

I agree with the idea that the group dynamic is very important to the child. Everyone wants to be part of a group whether that is certain cliques on the playground or people you associate yourself with outside of the school setting. Even as adults, I think it is easier to get along with people that make you comfortable, most often people like yourself or from a similar background. For example, many of my friends at Boston College do not come from very wealthy families, and do not necessarily have a lot of money. This is similar to the situation that I grew up in and it make not be purposeful but that just may be the type of people that attract me, people similar to myself.

“From Useful to Useless and Back to Useful? Emerging Patterns in the Valuation of Children” by Viviana Zelizer

During the 1800s, the child was seen as someone that could produce something economically to help support the family. But since, there was been a change to the “twentieth-century economically useless but emotionally priceless child[…]” (p. 209) “The cultural legitimacy of the useful child was dominant in the nineteenth century while in the twentieth, the priceless child became the conventional norm.” (p. 214) That is to say that when labor laws came out and the idea that the child was being exploited along with the idea of having an actual childhood rather than working outside of the home came about, the child was deemed as useless for the job market.

“The labor market for most children, regardless of social class, is restricted to low-paying household chores, newspaper delivery, and occasional employment by neighbors to mow the lawn, shovel snow, or baby-sit.” (p. 215) Nowadays children cannot work except for the occasional task such as these.

A lot of controversy over whether a child should work comes from separating them from the adult world. According to Germaine Greer, “‘interpenetration between the worlds of the child and the adult’ as evidence of our profound antipathy to children: “At the heart of our insistence upon the child’s parasitic role in the family lurks the conviction that children must be banished from adult society. Babies ought not to be born before they have rooms of their own.” (p. 218) That is to say that children feed off of their parents and are not expected to give back.

“Most studies find, for instance, that despite the growing number of mothers in the labor force, and the increasing ideological approval of women’s market work, the household division of labor remains largely unchanged – traditionally age and sex-typed. Children and their fathers may “help out,” but for the most part, home duties remain a woman’s job.” (p. 224) That is to say that women take on most of the responsibility for jobs, in addition to growing percentages of women working outside of the home. These women are taking on a lot more by taking care of children as well as the house and a husband while juggling a paid job. So what do many parents do? They pay their children to do work around the house. “There is some indication that children themselves find a symbolic allowance too cheap for an inflationary economy.” (p. 226)

Ms. Berman said, “No child should expect monetary rewards for fulfilling his day-to-day obligations to his home and family.” (p. 227) I agree with this statement. There should be no incentive to do it for monetary reasons, but rather children should do it for the benefit of the whole family.

In my opinion, it is a child’s obligation to complete tasks around the house. I was expected to do it, and my sister was too. My parents never used the reasoning “Because it helps build character” or “Just because I said so,” it was just understood that everyone needed to do their part. It was also split very evenly between my sister and myself. She would wash the dishes one night and the same night I would dry them and put them away. Or she would do the sweep the floors and vacuum and I would clean the bathroom, then the next week we would switch. It was not something that we did for money, but our parents did a lot for us, so we knew it was the least we could do.