A generation without chores

By Richard Rende

Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

I recently moderated a talk for a colleague who was addressing a large group of parents. She asked me to hand out a time wheel, which listed a variety of activities that could make up a typical day in the life of a kid today. She instructed parents to spend a few minutes thinking about how much time their kids spend on each category, then shout out estimates as we made our way around the time wheel.

It was clear that kids devote many hours every day to homework, extracurricular activities and social media. But when my colleague highlighted “chores,” there was a sea of smiles and good-natured chuckles in the audience, and the predominant response from the crowd was “zero.”

I don’t think this exercise produced a fluke result. Research studies have shown the amount of time kids spend on chores has been on the decline for decades. A recent survey conducted by Whirlpool revealed that although 82 percent of Americans did chores as a child, only 28 percent are assigning them to children today. Given this, Whirlpool invited me to review the published research on children and chores to understand what’s really at stake, the positive long-term benefits of this work, why we all should be concerned and what we might do to reverse negative perceptions.

After considering studies done in the past 15 years or so, two patterns jumped out at me. First, there were a number of papers published more than a decade ago on the significant, and long-lasting, benefits that come from doing chores as a child. Regular, meaningful participation in household chores was linked to academic engagement and achievement, and enhanced social skills throughout childhood and the teen years. Studies that tracked kids for decades revealed the ones who did chores had the most positive mental health profiles in adulthood, with more likelihood for professional success, better relationships and personal satisfaction.

The bad news is, in parallel with the decline in chores, more recent studies have honed into a pervasive negativity that surrounds chores. Disagreements about doing chores are a primary source of conflict between parents and kids. The old tricks used to get kids to do chores, like giving an allowance, just don’t work these days. And kids aren’t the only ones who have a negative perception of chores. There’s plenty of current research showing how much mental labor adults expend on chores, and the stresses caretakers experience when thinking about getting all their household responsibilities met.

Although we want our kids to spend time doing things that promote their likelihood of success — personal, academic and eventually professional — the irony is we have gotten away from encouraging chores, which is a proven predictor of these outcomes. Those seminal papers that espoused the power of doing chores emphasized the caretaking aspect of growing up in a family where responsibilities were shared.

The focus wasn’t just on giving kids a list of duties they took on independently; rather, there was a sense of cohesive family interaction and joint participation in daily routines. Doing chores together carries the same benefits as other notable rituals such as family dinners — regular family interaction promotes conversation, which inspires not just talking to other family members but also hearing what they are saying. There’s something powerful about developing a concern for others that leads to a personal ethic that carries profound benefits for the developing child.

How do we bring that spirit to the hectic lives of kids and caretakers? Recent perspectives in cognitive science suggest it is possible to change perceptions of “have-to” tasks into “want-to” tasks if a sufficiently strong motivation can be found. Reframing chores as a way of taking care of others is one such platform.

There are elegant studies showing that kids — even toddlers — are natural helpers. They don’t need prompting to pitch in when they see an adult needs help with something. It’s proposed having more family time and conversations that focus on “we” rather than “me” or “you” can change the tone about chores in the home.

And as caretakers begin to talk differently about chores — replacing complaints and nags with family talk focused on what we all need to do for each other — it’s hoped some of that pervasive negativity will give way to a recognition that doing for our family, and others, ultimately delivers a deep satisfaction, one that our kids will experience and benefit from.

Richard Rende is a developmental psychologist, researcher and educator. He is author of “Psychosocial Interventions for Genetically Influenced Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence” and co-author of the forthcoming “Raising Can-Do Kids: Giving Children the Tools to Thrive in a Fast-Changing World.”