Elizabeth Kolbert writes:
With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world. It’s not just that they’ve been given unprecedented amounts of stuff—clothes, toys, cameras, skis, computers, televisions, cell phones, PlayStations, iPods. (The market for Burberry Baby and other forms of kiddie “couture” has reportedly been growing by ten per cent a year.) They’ve also been granted unprecedented authority. “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval,” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn’t working out so well: according to one poll, commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled.
Oh, my kids are totally spoiled. Well, Ian's a special case. Let's just pick on Jonah this morning. He could definitely be doing more chores around the house than he does. Steve and I have been working on this.
Both kids are expected to bring their dirty dishes to the sink when they're done eating, but they really should be clearing entire table and loading the dishwasher. Steve spends an hour every weekend cutting the lawn. Jonah is big enough now to help out with that. He's done it a few times, but he could do it more often. I know some kids who do their own laundry, but I'm too picky about that job to pass it along to Jonah yet. Someone stepped on Jonah's cellphone at the swim club last week and shattered the screen. He has to earn money to buy himself a new one.
Other kids can't help out with the family mowing and house cleaning, because those tasks have been outsourced to non-family members.
I suppose Jonah does more than most kids, but he could do a lot better.
So, why are American kids so spoiled? Lots of reasons that didn't pop up in Kolbert's essay.
In some ways, kids aren't spoiled. They are actually working quite a bit. Homework loads are triple what we had. Sports activities are triple intense. Jonah often doesn't finish his work until 9 at night. (We cut him off at 9. Whatever isn't finished, doesn't get done.) The world is training our kids to have a staff of people to do this stuff for them.
When a patch of free time opens up and kids can step in to do housework, they aren't used to doing it and they balk. It takes a lot of parental energy to offer the right sticks and carrots to get the lawn mowed.
A friend of mine sends her kids to a survival camp up in Maine for seven weeks every summer. They kids live off racoons and squirrels that they kill and cook themselves. We're thinking about shipping Jonah off to the camp next summer.
Apt. 11d 
They kids live off racoons and squirrels that they kill and cook themselves.
They’re allowed to cook them? Spoiling them rotten. In my day, we just pounced with bared teeth.
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That was after you walked up hill both ways to camp.
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We live on a ridge and the kid’s school is on another hill. The geography has made me realize that itt is actually possible to walk up the hill both ways to school.
I judge spoiled not by whether the kids do specific chores, but by whether they feel entitled not to. I do think some kids really are very busy. Mine are. Somettimes, adding the chore would mean dropping an activity — today, for example, child has a 9-4 camp and leaves for basketball practice at 5′ returning at about 8. I don’t see much time in that day for chores (hers are supposed to be unloading the dishes and taking out the trash).
Other days it is possible, but requires planning on my part and I have heard the entitlement whine. My kids respond well to bean counting (ie stickers, stars, lists) so we’re working on a set of expectations. Their legitimate complaint is that they come home tired and I nag to get things done. I’m working on having expectations clear so there can be less nagging.
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I think having two parents with full time jobs and commutes contributes too, because we’re doing chores after bedtime just to get them done, so we don’t get to invite my kids to help. (Or “help” at some ages. :))
My nearly-7-yr-old clears his plate, helps with dishes, tidies up after himself, puts his folded laundry away, and makes his bed as his own areas of responsibility.
He also vaccuums, dusts, uses his favourite tool (the steam mop), and helps with outdoor chores, but those are still at our sides kind of thing – not on his own.
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That camp sounds awesome.
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Yeah, what’s the camp called? However, sending the kids off to live with the Brazilian Amazon tribe described in the first part o the story sounds good too . . .
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Yeah. I think I see spoiled less as “how much you do” as “how you react when you are asked to do it.”
When the kids are doing stuff all day, I’d rather spend the time we are together doing something fun — not doing the dishes. I put that off until before I go to bed. So, I don’t mind if nobody does any chores all day. I get angry when I say, “I folded the laundry on my bed — find yours and put it away,” and the Raggirls whine about it. Then I yell. The problem is more often that their rooms are frequently a disaster, and there isn’t time to get to it all.
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A mother in New Canaan was recently arrested for leaving her 13-year old in charge of younger siblings.
http://newcanaan.patch.com/articles/chimney-scam
The comments on the story are worth reading. I didn’t read them all, but it’s intriguing that the “children should not be left alone” side does. not. give. up.
Here are CT state guidelines for leaving children at home: http://www.ct.gov/dcf/lib/dcf/child_welfare_services/pdf/leaving_your_child_alone.pdf.
Experts believe a child should be at least 12 before he is left alone, and at least 15 before he can care for a younger brother or sister. These are the minimum ages. Not every child is ready then.
I could not make this up. I’ve hired middle school baby sitters. My children have been baby sitters in middle school. Throughout history, older siblings have taken care of younger siblings.
So, raising children to be incompetent adults does not stem entirely from the parents. The “experts” carry a good deal of blame as well.
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We’ve been having a conversation in my house lately about why all chores default to mom, before mom gets annoyed and starts barking orders. I’m trying to get across the idea that just merely by the fact of being born, one has responsibility for both picking up after one’s self and contributing to the common weal.
I agree that there is more homework and that kids, like adults, should have some time to just *be*. So given time constraints, I’m also wondering …. is it better to give my tween some real household responsibility instead of signing up for art or sport activities? Would the time spent learning the properly cook, clean, sew, change the oil, weed, trim the hedges, etc. ultimately serve the child better (in terms of skills and expectations) than soccer or karate?
The child who lives across the street has a SAH mom assisted by a housekeeper and does no chores, so trying to implement my plan while my kids watch this child frolicking through the sprinkler and blowing bubbles all day may already be doomed to failure. I dunno.
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bj and ragtime,
I’ve heard that too, about its not what you ask, but how they respond when you do, and I do think an attitude of entitlement is what is key.
I’ve experienced spoiled behavior in adults. My ex-husband did objectively more around the house than my current partner, but was extremely spoiled and everything had to be done exactly on his terms, when and the way he wanted them, or he would throw a tantrum or sulky fit (I kid you not). Moreover, he had this constant sense of entitlement that people just ought to do things for him. If you did chores, there was no sense of gratitude or acknowledgement of your time and labor, but rather complaints if it wasn’t done exactly to his specifications. For example, if you cooked him a dinner, he wouldn’t thank you for cooking, and if he didn’t like it he’d tell you it was “shit” and how you messed it up. Likewise, if you gave him a gift, he would tell you why you gave him the wrong present, and how much he was better at gift giving than you. I lived with his parents for over a year, and his mom waited on him hand and foot and rewarded awful behavior by caving in and giving him what he wanted, so I guess it wasn’t surprising.
My current partner also grew up being waited on hand and foot in a culture rather notorious for spoiling boys (though his mother was a pretty well-known Venetian feminist in the 70s, which I guess meant that he at least learned how to do laundry). His natural state is not to do anything chore related, but if you ask him to help out, he does so enthusiastically and without complaint. He’s also very appreciative of other people doing the cleaning/cooking, so it doesn’t feel as burdensome to do things for him, and I don’t mind doing a little more of the housework because I know I can ask him to help out if I feel put out, and in general I’m more efficient with most chores and cooking, so I can get it done faster than he can.
I definitely had some spoiled moments and big fights with my mom as a pre-teen/early teen over chores, in large part I think out of rebellion. By the time I was 16 however, my mom was too busy to parent or run a household in any day to day sense, so it was up to me to do all my own cooking and laundry, and cleaning was done by whoever broke down first at the mess. (Usually it was me with vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom and my sister or mother with dishes.)
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“So given time constraints, I’m also wondering …. is it better to give my tween some real household responsibility instead of signing up for art or sport activities?”
I struggle with this in theory but seem to come down on the side of supporting the activity over the household responsibility. The activity then becomes a responsibility, which then has it’s own potentially negative repercussions (that is, participating in a play with evening rehearsals excuses you from doing the dishes but not blowing bubbles). Since doing a play is probably more fun than doing dishes, the kid decides to do the play instead of doing the dishes, but shouldn’t a kid really have time to blow bubbles, too?
It’s perplexing. I once heard a bon mot from a child/values expert say that we’re raising our children as though they were the dauphin. They’re never required to take responsibility, but we’re training them to rule the world.
I do kind of feel like I’m doing that, sometimes. In my defense, I kind of a have a kid who would like to rule the world (and, she’d do it for the good of all of us 🙂 so I have a bit of support in the delusion. I’m guessing the same is true for the parent who sees their kid fly across the soccer field or move everyone to tears on stage, even though we know that only a very very few of all those kids are actually going to do what we’re training them for, while all of them are probably going to have to do the dishes an fold the clothes.
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I was part of an blog discussion about the right age to let children use public restrooms alone. There were several people in that discussion that said fifteen. Fifteen. That is insane to me. Cranberry is right that this isn’t just parents. The “experts” often send a very loud message that kids are fragile beings without resilience that need their every need tended to lest something terrible happen.
There aren’t a lot of organic ways for upper middle class kids to learn about responsibility. It’s no longer acceptable to let kids roam free and chores are often a tool used to teach a lesson rather than because of an actual need to keep the household running.
The best lessons are the ones that have some authenticity, where the decision-making has some impact on the person’s life. Kids are right to refuse chores because they know that nothing is going to really happen if they don’t. The downside to authentic life lessons is that they often come with genuine risks. Sometimes, often even, the risk is worth it but it’s definitely still present. Yanira the Matsigenka girl is much more responsible than an American six year old but she probably needs to be to function in a world full of many more threats than ours.
And of course, evidence please? Yeah, Yanira seems delightfully competent for her age but as far as I can tell pampered American kids are still poised to run the world.
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We seem to be parenting-against-the grain. Our kids do chores. Every day. I don’t buy the “there is no time because my kids are doing so many fabulous activities” theory.
It seriously only takes 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher. (and another 4 to load it up again) My kids can scrub the bathroom in 15 minutes. They can dust-mop the entire house in 10 minutes. Switching the laundry from the washer to the dryer – 2.5 minutes. They can go pull weeds for 10 minutes. Taking the trash out – 2 minutes. They can make their own lunch in 5 minutes. They can vacuum a room in 6 minutes…and so on.
We aren’t subjecting them to 2 hours/day of hard labor. But we expect 5-10 minutes here and another 5-10 minutes there throughout the course of the day to exhibit an awareness that they are responsible for helping keep the house in order.
And yes – they are busy. Soccer, piano, all-star baseball, swim team, the works. I just don’t see it as “either/or” – it’s simply a basic part of our family’s daily schedule. We all pitch in.
(and yes, they whine about how no other family in the entire universe makes their kids clean and do chores.)
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I think its unfortunate the 13 year old new canaan older sibling lost a sibling temporarily, but it happens. What’s sad is that the neighbor didn’t know her own neighbors well enough to take the 4 year old by the hand and bring him/her across the street and ring the doorbell. But honestly, that is New Canaan, one of the snottiest, WASPiest places where people are brittle and bitter. I agree, we act like kids are spoiled and then don’t give them any real responsibility.
and I am starting to see how activities can totally throw off the balance of any household chores. My answer to this is if you can do it to send your kid to sleepaway camp, one of the ones where they still make the kids do chores, farm camp or when they are 17-18 or something, a foreign country and either do a homestay or just get them a ticket to Berlin and the name of a hostel and German classes and let them figure it out on their own for a summer.
If you don’t give kids some responsibility, even if you get flak, they’ll never just take it.
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Yeah, I think there are other ways of teaching responsibility and a lack of entitlement than chores, which, especially if you hire people to do them, seem artificial for you to make your kids do. I think the problem with raising your kid to be a dauphin is that if they don’t have the resilience and the ability to persevere through hard work and misery, you actually make them less likely to succeed. Even if you’re upper middle class or a bit higher, becoming successful requires an ability to do things that are, if not physically, then mentally and psychologically uncomfortable, and to be responsible and finish things even if you don’t want to or don’t feel like it. (Although an all-nighter is physically taxing, as is studying on less than 7 hours of sleep night after night.) Also, to be successful in life, you have to be a person of your word who is willing to be responsible to others and follow through, even if its unpleasant or you don’t want to. Except for the idle rich or the extraordinarily talented, few people can go through their whole life being prima donnas and not fall on their face at some point. Even if you’re naturally smart and things come easily, you still need to have focus and concentration make a sustained effort to channel your talents into something productive, and I feel like the spoiled people I know generally give up when something is no longer fun.
My siblings and I were very precocious academically and got a lot of adult attention and special treatment at school and from the world at large because of it. I remember my parents did their best to knock any sense of entitlement out of us. One big lesson they taught us was that regardless of past performance or how people acted towards us, we only deserved to treated as well as we acted in the moment, and every day was a reset in terms of earning people’s respect and/or admiration. This lesson I think is one of the best things my parents taught me, and I try to remember it any time I feel like resting on my own laurels or if I start being bratty.
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You can tell your kids there’s at least one other family in the same boat 🙂 We do the same. Everyone who lives in the house has chores, ours include dishwasher unload/load, clearing the table after meals and putting away leftovers, putting away all laundry, cleaning their rooms (we have weekly inspection), watering the plants (summers need twice a day watering), taking out the trash and some amount of cooking (they’re 12 and 10). Occasional dust/sweep/mop (unexpected visitors :))
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“Spoiled” doesn’t seem quite the right word. “Vastly unprepared to become functioning adults” seems closer. I have no kids, so don’t have to worry about getting them to work around the house, but I’ve dealt with the result of this parenting style in the work place, at political campaigns and publishing houses. A lot of young people in this mold seemed to have trouble solving problems and executing basic tasks without a great deal of hand-holding. They also complained a lot if conditions weren’t to their liking or if they thought a task was boring (uh, welcome to work!). These were mostly kids from affluent families who attended elite schools. (Yes, it’s a small sample size; and no, it doesn’t mean all kids are like that. But it does seem to be a growing phenomenon, which is why people are writing about it.)
Adding to the plethora of books on the topic, I just finished editing a parenting book called “Duct Tape Parenting” (the metaphorical duct tape is to restrain the parents, not the kids). The author—she has five kids in their 20s—believes that childhood is supposed to be preparation for the child leaving home at 18 to function in life, and that you’re not actually helping by doing so much for your kids. You’re basically telling them they’re not competent and you’re not teaching them the skills to become competent; in her view, the parents’ job is to train kids to be responsible for themselves and for part of the household work (which means letting go of your own standards or methods for getting things done). She’s big on “natural consequences”—letting kids figure out how to deal with fallout from their own decisions (so in Kolbert’s example of the kid who didn’t put the lid on the garbage can and the bear got into it, the KID should have been cleaning up the resulting mess, not the mom). This means, of course, that parents have to let their kids fail sometimes and be unhappy sometimes, and they have to accept outcomes that they, the parents, don’t want (ie, the kid doesn’t do his homework and gets a bad grade), which a lot of parents seem unprepared for emotionally. It was an interesting take, and not one I see in practice all that often anymore.
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I think the point about Howard lot of expectations don’t takeaway lot of timei is a good one. We’re working on it, but aren’t really there yet. My 11 yo is supposed to take out the trash, put her clothes away, clearer plates, clear up after herself, and unload the dishwasher. Our dishwasher tajes longer for us to unload, but the rest of those things really are 2-4 minute jobs. She has time for them if she does them. That’s the point, though, that she take responsibility for them, without constant interrupting reminders.
I think kids really are sooiled when they can’t take care of themselves.
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Yaargh, iPad spell checking is responsible for the junk above.
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Suze while I have had a few of the same issues with interns, I have to tell you that I was a much better parent before I had kids. 🙂
I’m not convinced the core issue is chores, or even parenting in many cases. I think there are a lot of messages around about what people “deserve” and what work looks like.
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Suze said:
“”Spoiled” doesn’t seem quite the right word. “Vastly unprepared to become functioning adults” seems closer.”
That is exactly right.
I’m very interested in the whole hoarder phenomenon and am trying to keep some older relatives from teetering into that category. There is a minority of adults (seemingly very normal, often in helping professions) who struggle with the simplest concepts of daily living. (There’s a very book entitled “The Secret Lives of Hoarders” by one of the people associated with the Hoarders TV show.) Hoarding can be the product of grief or mental illness, but it is also a problem all by itself. Here’s a review of the Paxton book from my blog, mainly quotes:
http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/secret-lives-of-hoarders.html
Trying to avoid bringing up future hoarders is a big part (if not the biggest part) of my domestic training program.
My kids are mostly in charge of their own rooms and picking up the living room (or any other area that they have adversely affected). We have started having them carry their dishes away. (Up until now, poor motor skills made table-clearing risky.) They periodically take a hand at moving trash containers on garbage day or dealing with leaves.
I think the kids really shine brightest at non-traditional kid tasks. During our move, they each packed at least 14 boxes of books, numbering each one BOOKS and numbering each by bookcase and shelf (they were getting 40 cents a box). Anyway, it was very notable how my husband and his dad flew shelving the kid-packed boxes and then stalled on the professionally-packed booms, which were often in huge unlabeled boxes. My husband says that next time, we’ll have the kids do all of the books. They’re fast, too.
I have to admit here that our kids are financially compensated for many chores, but 1) we do have the money 2) it is motivating 3) they don’t get allowances just for gracing us with their presence and 4) they are responsible for paying for a lot of their recreation and art supplies. I am more interested in having the kids do the work and know how to do it than in teaching them some sort of lesson in family cooperation and togetherness. That would totally not fly with our oldest, and I think it would lead to endless fights with her.
We have not so far taught cleaning (rather than tidying) skills to the kids, and they don’t have daily chores yet (dishes, etc.). To be honest, I really never learned real household management when growing up. As a kid, cleaning tended to mean sporadic and frenzied Saturday sessions with a vacuum or cleaning bathrooms, and I was personally thrilled to spend the day chasing cows in the rain instead. My mom rather obviously hated housework (hence the frenzied and sporadic cleaning) and wasn’t very good at it. Our home training was heavy on the work, light on the theory, and today I think that the theory is actually more important than the work itself in housework. I’ve picked up the theory in adulthood, from a combination of reading and paying attention to what cleaning crews do (yeah, I’m that kind of SAHM). (My sister learned a lot from being an exchange student to Germany, AKA unpaid putzfrau.) If I know that blinds should be dusted, the invisible tops of cabinets should be dusted, baseboards should be cleaned, bedding should be laundered at appropriate intervals, and the fridge needs to be gone through regularly, knowing that and seeing that it happens is much more important than just being able to do the work myself. So, I’m personally mindful that just barking orders at kids and enslaving them on Saturdays isn’t good enough–there needs to be a theoretical body of knowledge being transmitted, as well as a sense of what an orderly home looks like. And there are many ways to achieve that. One of the best things I do with my kids is to go through their rooms item by item (usually on a quarterly basis), helping them curate their stuff. I think it’s very important for them to develop a sense of what is and is not important to them, and to learn to part with whatever is not important. Just having an attractive, livable room is good for children.
BI,
I know someone a lot like your description of your ex-husband, and I wonder if your ex didn’t have some OCD and/or related issues, rather than just being a pain in the neck. Your ex’s parents may have tiptoed around him because he was such a rigid, difficult child from the get-go, rather than because they were spoiling him.
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Our kids are each going to have their own bathroom from now on after 5 years of a shared bathroom, and I am planning to turn over daily bathroom management to them as part of their routine required room maintenance. We have bimonthly cleaners, but I’d like the kids to tidy the bathrooms and wipe up spills (a lot can happen in a bathroom in the course of 14 days).
Our oldest has a tendency to just absentmindedly drop things (hair brushes, socks, etc.), and one of my ongoing challenges is to get her to pick up after herself. I’ve already been working on the issue of how we don’t drag stuff halfway across the house to play with it in the living room.
On a different (and happier) front of the battle for domestic competency, my oldest (almost 10 years old) has made a very good start working as a mother’s helper for a disabled preschooler. She has been very focused and responsible and her boss (my very good friend) is thrilled with her. C is very pleased at her success and by making $5 an hour. (We’re keeping her working time short enough that she can give it 100% when she’s there.)
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“On a different (and happier) front of the battle for domestic competency, my oldest (almost 10 years old) has made a very good start working as a mother’s helper for a disabled preschooler.”
I think this is a fabulous experience for a kid, doing something for someone else, who sets the standards, and getting compensated for it.
I do think responsibility can be taught without chores, but part of the problem with the activity-based responsibility is that ultimately the responsibility is to themselves (potentially teammates, but that gets underplayed in our neck of the woods).
The idea that you are doing something that needs to get done, not because you’ll learn or be a better person, but because it needs to get done seems to be a big part of what the kids who grow up into poor employees are missing. It’s validating for the kids, too, to learn that they can do something that’s useful to someone else.
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With busy schedules, it’s often easier to do the work ourselves … Not great for our kids, but this should be the worst sin we deliver on our kids. Much to the chagrin of some parents (mostly moms) I know, my kids get allowance for doing chores and remembering to meet their responsibilities. So sue me, but money is a great incentive. And quite frankly they need money to learn how to count money, save money, and spend money. So my kids (5 and 8) set and clear the table, often loading the dishwasher (they do a terrible job but they do it), they clean up toys after they play, and they sort (and sometimes fold) their socks and underwear. For both of them, the sorting was/is a terrific learning tool. And who am I to say that the purple sock doesn’t match the yellow sock, especially when the shirt has both colors in it and someone is dressing herself?!
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Amy P
My ex very possibly some sort of issues, including an oversensitivity to the environment. He basically couldn’t handle living in an apartment because he couldn’t learn to tune out neighbors. He also had problems with my breathing, eating, and lots of other small noises that most people wouldn’t and don’t notice. (I am actually a very quiet person, something I verified with everyone else I knew to check.) Anti-depressants helped a little with that, but he wasn’t willing to try anything else. Ironically, he was known as the easygoing son, compared to his brother who definitely probably had undiagnosed Aspergers (e.g., the brother, who was 33 and also lived with my ex’s parents when we did, got upset when the cleaning lady moved his towel on the towel rack by about an inch, and didn’t speak to his mother for a week because she woke him up accidentally by asking him if he wanted dinner, since he was on a particular sleep schedule for Halo playing.)
Of course, my current partner has diagnosed OCD, and he’s far less controlling and is able to cope with his OCD tendencies in a healthy manner (and help me with my OCD-like neurotic behavior 🙂 So, I think the ex probably had some neuro-atypical stuff combined with just straight-up being a jerk.
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“My ex very possibly some sort of issues, including an oversensitivity to the environment. He basically couldn’t handle living in an apartment because he couldn’t learn to tune out neighbors. He also had problems with my breathing, eating, and lots of other small noises that most people wouldn’t and don’t notice…”
This is very, very similar to the guy I’m thinking of. My version of your ex (not my husband, I am very happy to report) has to have doors closed just so and crumbs have to be wiped up immediately (pretty much as they hit the floor). He suffers a lot from sensory stuff, but he also makes everybody around him suffer, too.
“Ironically, he was known as the easygoing son, compared to his brother who definitely probably had undiagnosed Aspergers…”
Gee whiz.
“Of course, my current partner has diagnosed OCD, and he’s far less controlling and is able to cope with his OCD tendencies in a healthy manner (and help me with my OCD-like neurotic behavior 🙂 So, I think the ex probably had some neuro-atypical stuff combined with just straight-up being a jerk.”
It’s interesting how these things work out in different individuals. I’ve been told to be careful about inflaming possible OCD tendencies in my 7-year-old. He is very conscientious, eager-to-please, sensitive and teachable with regard to housework (far more so than his nearly 10-year-old sister). However, I’m aware that there is a potential dark side (it’s very easy to make him anxious), and we try not to stress him out or take advantage of his good nature. His teachers love him and a teacher at school once mentioned that she and the other third grade teacher would have to fight over who got him.
Other kid stuff:
1) My youngest is very good about setting out clothes at night for the morning.
2) While I’ve been on restrictions, the kids have made a lot of lunches for themselves.
3) My youngest has gotten very good at bringing dirty clothes to the washer. We’re still working on our oldest, whose dirty clothes seem to explode around her room. (The oldest and the youngest are sort of an Odd Couple.)
4) The kids have done several marathon laundry putting-away sessions while I’ve been on restrictions. It was terrible, but it got done.
5) We’re expecting a baby in October, so I suppose any increases in household responsibility need to be made very soon. Explaining that the kids need to do more “because of the baby” would make the baby unpopular.
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Speaking of people who haven’t learned to pick up after themselves, we’ve just moved into the upper half of a duplex for a year. One of the downstairs tenants (a young guy with tattoos) owns a huge Great Dane that he takes for brief “walks” on the tiny shared green space and then doesn’t pick up after. There is apparently evidence thickly littering that area. Our high temperatures are now around 100 degrees and it stinks so much.
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I suggest one of these signs for the yard, Amy:
http://www.remmeer.com/dumping-dog-yard-sign-p-807.html
That, or scoop it up, put it in a paper bag, put it on his door step, and light it on fire.
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Thanks, Matt. I’ve also found this a helpful reference:
http://www.cracked.com/funny-298-tattoos/
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The “kids these days” diatribes sell papers. It’s a long-term trend for humans. It makes for thrilling reading, of course. Madeline Levine’s earlier book, “The Price of Privilege,” also expounded on the dangers of modern childhood. As I recall, the danger was a emptiness in the souls of modern teens, particularly girls.
She’s a psychotherapist. No one brings their normal, happy, responsible child to a psychotherapist. Maybe in LA? But even there, a psychotherapist would be likely to see kids and families with problems. It’s not a random sample of humanity.
It’s easier to detect “spoiled kids” when they’re not your own.
According to Wikipedia, Matsigenka women marry at 16. Your average LA parent might want their daughters to marry at 28? Education and career success are the primary focus for middle class families in America. It takes time and attention to master academic skills. The family won’t starve if the kids don’t empty the dishwasher at 6.
Do you think Yanira reads and has mastered math to a first-grade level?
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an emptiness, of course.
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@AmyP I was raised by hoarders in the “long on yelling, short on results” class as well. It is a peculiar subclass of family. I’ve found the Don Aslett books pretty good as references / to provoke thought.
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“@AmyP I was raised by hoarders in the “long on yelling, short on results” class as well.”
The funny thing is, housecleaning pretty much came to a standstill after we kids left home. Of the three of us 1) I have had cleaners ever since my oldest was born 2) my sister apprenticed under German host mothers (actual quote from host mom, “That kitchen floor looks like you only spent 45 minutes on it”) and 3) my brother has married a hyper-domestic Martha Stewart type (and I mean that in the nicest possible way).
I’ve learned so much about home care and maintenance in adulthood. For instance, thanks to entropy, you’ve got to keep moving pretty fast just to stay in the same place. I have Aslett’s Clutter’s Last Stand and I like Fly Lady’s book, too (although under Aslett’s influence, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of my housekeeping books). Aslett is good at encouraging total ruthlessness toward possessions. The main thing I’ve gotten from Fly Lady is the idea that you are never behind, and that as long as something gets done every day, you’re doing fine.
Oh, and I have some very happy news. The dog people are moving out at the end of July, and the landlord’s office promises a thorough scrub-down!
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On Martha Stewart–It’s easy to make fun of “gracious living” if you’ve never experienced the opposite. Looking at it from a cobwebby, cat fur-coated hoarder house, it looks pretty darn good.
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cat fur-coated hoarder house
I moved into an apartment where the floor was covered with furballs. I had to scream at the landlord to get him to clean the carpet as he figured I should just run the vacuum sweeper and be done with it.
P.S. I think maybe the old Barnes and Noble on Murray is finally getting a new tenant. The “For Lease, Will Subdivide” signs are down and the carpet is being removed.
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The Matsigenka adults probably teach their children to be independent and helpful. The LA parents in the article (do they really exist?) seemed to have set out to systematically teach their kids to be rude, entitled, and dependent.
I should be more sympathetic, but really? The lack of common sense boggles my mind. How dumb do you have to be to assign your child a chore, neglect to teach him how to do it properly, and then clean up after him when it goes wrong? To fetch things for your child in response to a rude demand? To allow your adult child to move back in without a discussion about rent or timeline or other basics?
Whoever could have imagined it would end this way?
My kids and their peers (Northeast UMC suburban) do very little housework, but they work their tails off at school, music, sports; they listen to parents, coaches, and teachers and are usually polite and respectful; they willingly help around the house when there is time (not often, admittedly – see sports, music, camp, SAT prep, church group etc.), they are usually involved in some kind of community service activity. They are mostly polite, disciplined, hard-working and willing to learn new things. So if they have to learn to clean a bathroom at 22, I’ll put my money on it turning out just fine.
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Leaving cleaning and other chores aside, I’m interested in the posters’ take on the demise of teaching children home ec. and other life skills.
When I was a kid, all students had to study the basics of cooking, cleaning, sewing, mechanical drawing, electronics, typing, and woodshop even as part of a college prep curriculum at our school. We also practiced our clarinets,played on softball teams, and acted in musicals.
Does everyone feel that teaching kids to do these things is a waste of time? When did teaching kids how to *do things* fall out of favor? (Honestly, one of the things I was most proud of in junior high was the stepstool I made in woodshop. Also, it turned out that I loved soldering. Who knew?)
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“Does everyone feel that teaching kids to do these things is a waste of time? ”
It’s the trend towards more academics. We did all those things too, in junior high school. The “smart kids” took algebra in the 8th grade. Now, the kids who are on the college prep/accelerated courses are doing algebra even sooner. They’re taking biology in the 8th grade. I don’t know if they’re learning more than we did, but they’re being “taught” more.
I know my kids are doing more in elementary school than I did in elementary school. As examples, I was exposed to the 4-4’s problem (write numbers with a combination of 4 fours and operators) in 8th grade. My daughter was given it in 5th (mind you, she has a “mathy” class with some kids who plan on being mathematicians some day, but the contrast is still interesting). They’ve been exposed to factorials (in the same way I was in 8th, with the operation but not its usefulness completely defined. Some of the kids in the class do understand when to use factorials, too, though. She’s learning to write timed essays. She’s learning word roots. She’s “learning” spanish (though this is a weakness). They’ve been exposed to reading music in class, given the fundamentals of portrait/3-d drawing. And then there’s tech, which didn’t even exist: they can use sketchup to draw designs and plans, power-point, type (30 or so wpm), write short computer programs.
yes, my kids are in a private school, so I can’t say for sure that every school offers amping up of academics.
On the other hand, we had band, wood/metal shop, home economics in JH (which my daughter won’t have).
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@Amy – agreed re: Martha Stewart and I actually used one of the earlier Aslett books that has a list of what you need to clean when that has saved a lot of arguing. Same. exact. thing. about things coming to a standstill, too. My sister is _hyper_ decluttered and clean and I am kind of mid-range.
I just looked at the piece again and I still am not convinced. I personally find Bly’s Sibling Society was a better answer to the question of perpetual adolescence than the idea that parents are just screwing up because they can’t be bothered to train their kids as adults. (The thesis was, if I am remembering it well enough, that marketing keeps us in a perpetual “I deserve and want this” state in order that we continue to consume goods.)
Having met a goodly number of Francophone men in particular I have to say I absolutely snickered at the idea that French parenting produces fully-formed male adults at the age of 22 or whatever. Ahem.
And the noble savage flavour of the piece kind of bothered me too. It reminds me of the fetishization of the Yoruba tribe in the Continuum Concept where kids just magically never get burned…except they did. Matsigenka kids might learn different things at different times but that doesn’t mean that their cultural knowledge is more valuable than what the kids are learning at the same time.
(In fact this goes back to my growing soapbox that the New Ideal Household that grows its own cucumbers and pickles them itself, which I sort of did (CSA beets), and then realized I had spent two weekends of my time where I could have freelanced, and about $40 on canning supplies when pickled beets were on sale for $1.49 for a 500 mL jar, is sort of about faux independence and keeps middle-class educated people, mostly women, busy being all proud of their home canning while their reproductive rights, social safety net and public education are all eroded. But hey, we can all homebirth and homeschool right?)
If North American kids are learning to ask for help better, well, that may make them better networkers which is probably THE critical skill right now in terms of guaranteeing employment.
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Shandra,
I personally quite enjoy hearing about liberal women Handsmaid’s Tale-ing themselves.
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