Getting Our Kids to Help Around the House
How do you get kids to contribute to household labor without resorting to threats or bribes? We explore family responsibility, boundaries, and raising capable kids who contribute consistently and willingly.
How do you get kids to help out—ever, at all—without default resistance that makes it feel like it's not worth the trouble of your having asked?
Kids *should* contribute to their families' lives without their parents resorting to nagging or threats. Kids in other cultures, we are told, participate willingly and fully. Why does this seem so hard for so many of us?
We discuss:
- Whether "chores" framing is part of the problem
- How gender roles shape the expectations of who's helping
- Whether they have to like participating for it to matter
- Why we seem to find this harder than our parents did
Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
- Susan Newman for Psychology Today: Raising Baby Hunter-Gatherer Style
- Jennifer Katzenstein for Johns Hopkins Medicine Wellness and Prevention blog: How to Get Your Kids to Do Chores
- Reem Raouda for CNBC Make It: I’ve studied over 200 kids—parents who have an easy time getting their children to listen never use these 5 ‘toxic’ phrases
- Amy Sutherland for the NYT: What Shamu Taught Me About a Healthy Marriage
- Frank Bruni for the NYT: Tolstoy and Miss Daisy
- Deborah Gilboa: GET THE BEHAVIOR YOU WANT...WITHOUT BEING THE PARENT YOU HATE!
- Our Fresh Take with Michaeleen Doucleff, author of HUNT, GATHER, PARENT
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What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.
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