Chores Teach Children, It's Not All About You

Sue Shellenbarger wrote an important piece in the Wall Street Journal on children and chores a while back. 

How much time each day, on average, does a 6 to 12 year old spend on household chores?

"If you guessed more than a half-hour, you're wrong. Children are spending a mere 24 minutes a day doing cleaning, laundry and other housework -- a 12% decline since 1997 and a 25% drop from 1981 levels, says Sandra Hofferth, director of the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland.

While most parents today focus mostly on teaching kids self-reliance -- keeping themselves clean, fed and botulism-free -- the benefits of learning housework run deeper. For example: After controlling for other factors, U.S. marriages tend to be more stable when men participate more in domestic tasks, says a study of 506 U.S. couples published in 2006 in the American Journal of Sociology.

Housework has unique value in instilling a habit of serving others. Analyzing data on more than 3,000 adults, Alice Rossi, a professor emerita of sociology at University of Massachusetts Amherst, found doing household chores as a child was a major, independent predictor of whether a person chose to do volunteer or other community work as an adult. Thus for parents who value service, housework is an important teaching tool.

David Jackson has consistently required his twins, 16, to help around the house, starting as toddlers when they began picking up their toys and adding harder chores, such as stocking bathrooms or mowing the lawn, at each new stage. He sees the chores as a way of teaching empathy and "stewardship -- taking care of the community assets," says the Tulsa, Okla., father. "It helps them realize the world is not all about them."

Recessions's Silver Lining May be: Solidifying the Marital Bond

The Recession and Families: Post 2 of 4

“Judging by recent press reports,” writes Bradford Wilcox in the Wall Street Journal, “the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe.” According to Money & Marriage, a report released recently by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. “This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.”

According to Wilcox, “There may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. To be sure, some couples have simply postponed a divorce until the economy rebounds, when they expect to have a better shot at starting new lives.” And anecdotal evidence suggests that a number of couples have responded to the recession by rededicating themselves to their marriages.

"Perhaps more important, the Great Recession is leading some spouses to develop a renewed appreciation for the social and economic solidarity engendered by marriage and family life. While it is true that the recession has been a source of harmful stress for many couples and families, a recent Pew Research survey found that about four in 10 Americans report that the recession has brought their family closer together."

This Bogus “Winter Babies” Research is Starting to Get Interesting

The idea that babies born in winter months are less intelligent is raising its ridiculous head again.

But a recent Wall Street Journal article that my son-in-law sent me is surprisingly good. It describes how sound research methodology is being applied to the question of winter babies and intelligence.

Factors that were studied include:
Mother’s educational level
Age that a teen drops out of school
Vitamin D (winter babies get less sunshine)
Pesticides in surface water

This article changed me from a cynic on this topic to an interested observer.
To see all of my Winter Babies posts, click here.

Is the Idea of a Lifelong Marriage Obsolete?

This is a superb piece in the WSJ by Kate Hymowitz. Among her excellent points:

“Higher-income, college-educated couples are far more likely to get married and stay married than their less-educated and lower-income peers.” The typical divorce is not of mid-life couples who are bored, 20% of marriages break up within 5 years. She provides excellent statistics and a good grasp of the “marital satisfaction decreases with children” paradox.

My favorite line: (re happily married empty nesters) “Perhaps it’s the joint pride of a difficult task completed”.

And the title question’s answer is….NO

Bad Parenting Humor; Not Funny if you ask me

Summertime Week post 2 of 4

A number of books are in stores this summer and they attempt to describe the lighter side of bad parenting. It's Sick.

I support things in families which help both children and parents like marriage, for example. Strong marriage benefits spouses and their children. Along come several books that reveal and even brag about incidents of bad parenting. Ellen Gamerman’s Wall Street Journal article does a terrific job of describing this new trend. Actually, I pray that it is not a trend in fact, but rather just a trend in print.

Instead of “not funny,” our young son (two decades ago) used to say, “N-O- Funny, Daddy,” if he did not like something that I had said. And that’s the feeling I got when reading sections of Gamerman’s article such as, “When her two young sons first started walking, a mother in California would gently push them over.” The thinking was that her sons would be better off developmentally by crawling, first. A physical therapist told her to do this. It gave the mother a “nasty thrill.”

Friends, this is garbage and it nauseates me. A website is described that logged 500,000 confessions from women in 2 years. If these admissions on websites are towards the goal of better parenting, fine. But if this is one big joke, I respond with “N-O-funny!”

And You? do you find humor in these mischievous confessions? Am I being too old school here? Let’s hear your comments.

Summertime Week Posts:

1. Children gain more weight in summer than during school
2. Summer books: Bad Parenting stories are so funny (not)
3. (From the We-Kid-You-Not-File) Summer Strolls: the direction your stroller faces could affect your baby's language development
4. Seriously, you call this summer camp?