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.