Family Work

"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of... work."

-The Family: A Proclamation to the World

A few weekends ago, we were using our Saturday morning to get caught up on household work. We had mounds of laundry to fold, and I couldn't get my son, Nicky, to stop talking my ear off, so I threw a pile of hangers at him and told him to hang up shirts while he rambled. Pretty soon the entire family was in the room with me working on laundry (some contributing more than others).

This is a common scene in our house. Rather than assigning each of the kids specific chores, we tend to work together.

A few semesters ago, I read a presentation for school titled "The Power of the Home Economy," by Kathleen Slaugh Barh, in which she discussed the value of family work. I feel that, in some ways, the presentation set me free.

Let me explain.

You know how you see all sorts of fancy chore charts and programs all over the Internet? There are methods for earning screen time or money. There are rotating schedules of who does what on which day. There are fridge magnets, stickers, clothespins, popsicle sticks, and dry erase stuffs of all varieties! It all makes you feel like you need to have perfectly structured chores, and there has to be some sort of cuteness involved or you have completely failed at life, and your kids will surely grow up to be useless.

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I've tried numerous chore systems during my years of experimental parenting. There have been charts, magnets, stickers, and all sorts of do-this-to-earn-that sorts of things, and every one of them has failed.

In my textbook for my Proclamation class at BYU-I, there is a chapter titled, "The Meanings and Blessings of Family Work,"and one of the authors happens to be Katherine Slaugh Bahr. This chapter addressed the faulty chore chart phenomenon:

We interviewed parents of adult children about how they had coordinated family work when their children were growing up. Most spoke of trying several ways to structure and reward chores. Typically, each system broke down after a few weeks or months, prompting parents to reorganize according to a new plan that promised better results. As time passed, the new plan would yield yet another failure. Not even the most competent and organized of families found a way for family work to remain consistently structured, convenient, and conflict-free.

What I didn't realize was that, in my family work, there was something great going on that didn't require any amount of cuteness. It didn't involve lists, magnets, rewards, or stickers. Though we rarely followed through with chore systems, our alternative was (and still is) tackling housework together.

Before I studied Bahr's articles, I abided by the idea that my children are supposed to be assigned chores, then set free to do those chores and report back when they are done. Barh stated:

A frequent temptation in our busy lives today is to do the necessary family work by ourselves.  We have learned that it is usually more efficient to work alone.  Also, experts have advised us that children must learn to work independently... A related temptation is to make each child responsible only for his own mess, to put away his own toys, to clean his own room, to do his own laundry, and then to consider this enough family work to require of a child (1999). 

She goes on to suggest that we short-change ourselves when we take these approaches because there is value in doing work for and with each other. "...Family work places us in situations that require reliance on divine attributes we do not yet have - love, mercy, patience, submissiveness, and a willingness to sacrifice for others. Also, family work does not fit neatly into many accepted notions about motivating and managing people" (Bahr 2012).

One thing I have often felt guilty about is that I sometimes need my children to help clean up messes that they didn't make. Some of my children are messier than others. Whenever there is a two-year-old in the family, there is constant havoc in all corners of the house, and let's be honest - the two-year-old never does her share of the chores. I've always struggled to figure out what is fair to ask of my children. Because I need the help, I have often asked my children to assist in cleaning even when they weren't involved in the creation of the disorder. They often cry that it's soooo unfair, and I usually respond with something along the lines of, "We all help each other. We all contribute when we clean up messes, even if we didn't make them," but in the back of my mind, I'm wondering, "Is this okay? Am I being unfair?"

This information put me at peace about having my children clean up messes they didn't make:

Canadian scholars Joan Grusec and Lorenzo Cohen, along with Australian Jacqueline Goodnow, compared children who did "self-care tasks" such as cleaning up their own rooms or doing their own laundry, with children who participated in "family-care tasks" such as setting the table or cleaning up a space that is shared with others.   They found that it is the work one does "for others" that leads to the development of concern for others, while "work that focuses on what is one’s ‘own,’" does not (Bahr 1999).

Additionally, in an international study of helpfulness among six cultures, children from the United States who were primarily responsible for cleaning their own rooms were determined to be the least helpful (Bahr 1999).

I find this fascinating as it reassures me that it is okay to ask my children to help clean up messes they didn't make. They are learning about service and contribution in doing so.

Our lack of successful chore charts is no longer a source of guilt for me. Instead of checking off "Bathrooms" on Tuesday or "Mop Floors" on Saturday, we usually work as a family accomplishing whatever needs to be done (it turns out, the bathroom isn't always dirty on Tuesday anyway).

One of our favorite ways to do work as a family is by taking turns choosing a song to listen to and trying to clean an entire room together before the song ends (the kitchen usually takes three or more songs). With everyone working to speed clean, there is very little time for nagging or bickering, and we often get the entire house clean using this method.

Here are a few reasons to do household work as a family:

1. Family work binds us together. When we do work as a family, we learn about sacrifice. We learn to do things for one another without expecting something in return.
2. Working together dissolves the feelings of hierarchy. When parents work side by side with their children, they create a feeling of equality. 
3. Most household chores only require a minimum amount of concentration, leaving family members free to have conversations, sing, or tell stories together. 
4. Being in the same room together gives parents the opportunity to give the children guidance as they clean rather than doing a critical inspection later (for example, if I'm in the bathroom with my son as he is cleaning the toilet, I can say, "Oh, look! You missed a spot!" and he can take care of it right then as opposed to him cleaning the bathroom unsupervised and having me come in later to see that he did a terrible job). Think of it as Quality Control: Special Bonding Edition. You just need to make sure you are cleaning with the child rather than watching the child clean.

Bahr stated:

On a daily basis, the tasks we do to stay alive provide us with endless opportunities to recognize and fill the needs of others.  Family work is a call to enact love, and it is a call that is universal.  Throughout history, in every culture, whether in poverty or prosperity, there has been the ever-present need to shelter, clothe, feed, and care for each other (1999).

Imagine the doors that open in the relationship with your children when you work together! It's still important for children to learn to be responsible for their own space and possessions, but when you work together as a family, you increase your bonds, and the work becomes more meaningful. As an added bonus there are no charts required!

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This post was inspired by "The Meanings and Blessings of Family Work," by Kathleen Slaugh Bahr, Kristine Manwaring, Cheri Loveless, and Erika Bailey Bahr published in Successful Marriages and Families: Proclamation Principles and Research Perspectives, 2012. This piece of writing is part of my Family Proclamation project for FAML 100 at Brigham Young University Idaho.