Children Share in Households

Children work in the home:
In the United States their is an ambivalence in parent's feelings on children's role in the house-hold economy. Most parents see performing household work as a way to build character. Some see the "chores" as a way to prepare children for performance of household responsibilities they will need to do as adults. Other families want their children to have a responsibility to contribute to the household. Though all of the reasoning for having chores are different, many parents make house work optional and often pay their children to perform the tasks. Goldscheider argues the experiences children have in childhood and early adulthood are extremely important for family formation in the future. If children, particular boys are not being introduced task associated in the home, they will never value it and perform them when they become adults.

Children role in the household as of now is lacking more than men in the household. Men are increasing their responsibility in the household but children role has actually decrease in the past decades. Frances Goldscheider and Linda J. Waite in this chapter examine how much and under what family situation children share in house work.

How much do children share?
As mentioned earlier, children take relatively little responsibility for most house chores. Though kids do wash dishes and help clean the house, they do not do tasks like grocery shopping, childcare, laundry, cooking or any other labor intensive chores.

Which Children Share?
Children of different ages and sexes perform not only different types of chores but also different amounts. Children entering adulthood, on average, do not perform household task. Some parents believe that early adulthood is a stressful time for their kids due to the task of trying to find their careers. Teenagers help the family the most substantially in the household.

Families with teenage girls do the most household chores in the family. Girls are five times more likely to be contributing in the household and they spend the most time performing house work. Older daughters do groceries shopping, laundry, on top of the usual washing dishes, while older sons do almost nothing in the house.

Mother Only Families:
When the home do not take the form of the nuclear family, the sharing of household work shifts dramatically. Children who live in mother only families do nearly twice as much house work than two parent homes. Due to the stress of the mother having to provide financially and emotionally, children are much more likely to feel needed and more responsible for helping out. Older sons take over many of the roles of their absent father have in the house. Also boys in a single household are more likely to perform tasks that nuclear families older daughters would do usually perform. Older boys in single families homes wash dishes, cook, grocery shop as much as daughters in other homes.

Daughters in single family homes are the people who take on the most household task. They have double the responsibilities of daughter in a nuclear family. They do not only help in daily task, they take over whole tasks. For example, instead of helping their mother cook, they are in charge of feeding the family. Daughters take on these chores until they leave the house, even when they are young adults, they are contributing a lot to the family.

Stepparent Families:
Children who live in a stepparent family do more work than nuclear families but no where near the amount of work single parent children do. The reason children do not do as much work as single parent homes is because most children in stepparent homes experience single mother homes a shorter period of time in at a younger age. Step daughters are more likely to take the duties of childcare for younger siblings; however, similar to families nuclear families, once they become young adults they contribute little to the household.

Question:
In my eyes children should be doing a lot of work in the home. Of course academics are important, but why can our kids balance school with work? That is what are going to have to do in the real world.