Why I changed my parenting and my kids now do chores

Plus tips for how to teach chores and make them stick

Chore charts courtesy of my seven-year old “super mega chore leader”

Confession #1

I didn’t use to believe in my kids doing chores. Evidently I had also voted with my feet that in our household of three young kids we had too much going on for little people to be doing chores.

But in early 2021 when it became evident the pandemic wasn’t going away, I started reading about how I might do a better job parenting these little people who were home all. the. time. Imagine my dismay when I came across this assertion:

“Chores [are] the best predictor of which kids were more likely to become happy, healthy, independent adults.”

Gah is right.

So what if the conclusion came from the longest-running longitudinal study on human success and happiness, conducted by Harvard researchers? But unable to shake off my curiosity, I couldn’t help but dig further into the research. Ultimately, what I uncovered convinced me to change my parenting priorities and buckle down to teach my now 5 and 7-year old to do chores.

Researching the issue — and my own conscience

• First, the corroborating data. When I searched for more evidence on the value of chores, I found it. One study that’s frequently cited and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal is by Dr. Marty Rossman at University of Minnesota who studied a group of 84 children over a 20-year period. She found that young adults who began chores at ages 3 and 4 were more likely to have good relationships with family and friends, to achieve academic and early career success and to be self-sufficient, as compared with those who didn’t have chores or who started them as teens.
• So I had to flock to fellow-mom validation that chores are hard: I related 100 percent to this ScaryMommy writer’s explanation for not instituting chores: “Do you have any idea how much [stuff] we already have to beg our kids to do any given day?…If I asked them to do chores, they’d listen, but they’d whine. And they’d do a shoddy job. Ain’t no momma got time for that noise. … Have you seen the results when a child sweeps the floor?”
• Yet, when I scrutinized why chores were hard, the soul-searching got uncomfortable: Why exactly was I too busy for chores and to what end? I squirmed in my chair when I read from Michele Borba, Ed. D.’s newest book Thrivers: The Surprising Reason Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine, that kids’ busyness and parents’ constant orientation toward their children’s college admission are NOT actually preparing them to thrive in an uncertain world. In fact, busyness was getting in the way of cultivating the seven characteristics of a Thriver: confidence, empathy, self-control, integrity, curiosity, perseverance, and optimism. Well shucks. Presumably, this idea of thriving was the reason I was already keeping my daughters busy with gymnastics, art, piano, etc. and why we didn’t have time for chores…
• The book that clinched it: In Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us about Raising Children, Michaeleen Doucleff, Ph.D. writes about living in a Mayan village with her three-year old daughter where she quickly saw the developmental benefits of her daughter pitching in on tasks that contributed to the village’s smooth functioning. Doucleff offers this perspective, “By welcoming children into the adult world, you confirm that they belong on the family’s team. Metaphorically, you’re giving them a membership card that they carry around in their back pockets. And that card offers full access to the benefits — and responsibilities — of the team.”

Doucleff’s idea of “having access to team benefits and responsibilities” has strong parallels to this explanation for why chores contribute to professional success, offered by Julie Lythcott-Haims in her 2015 TED Talk and reiterated in her book How to Raise An Adult: “A roll-up-your-sleeves- and-pitch-in mindset, a mindset that says, there’s some unpleasant work, someone’s got to do it, it might as well be me … that’s what gets you ahead in the workplace.”

This linkage between chores, a team mindset, and professional success really resonated for my spouse and me. In my job as a Fortune 50 company talent professional where I help prepare today’s workforce for increased uncertainty and automation, I’m keenly aware of the need for durable, human-centered skills. In his role as an engineering director, my husband also sees the connection.

My conclusion: A foundation of chores sounded like it could serve our three daughters well for happy, healthy adulthoods in the future world of work.

Personal Laundry versus Family Dishes

We got to work teaching our daughters age-appropriate chores. The process was neither quick nor pain-free, but we had not expected it to be.

Because of what we had read, my husband and I delineated between chores that represented taking care of personal needs versus responsibilities that serve the family. Yes, my daughters learned to put away their own laundry so that they had clothes to wear for the week. But we gave a lot more PR to the tasks of unloading the dishwasher and setting the table for dinner because there were others were counting on them and everyone had to contribute in some way to family meals.

I’ll say that the single most rewarding moment was seeing how proud my five and seven-year-old were when they became independent at their chores. They even declared themselves “super mega chore leaders.”

Confession #2

But with the resumption of in-person school and extracurriculars last fall, I’ll confess there have been moments when it was tempting to fill up their schedules and to correspondingly let their chores slip.

We hold on in a few ways. First and fortunately, their chores present themselves nearly everyday and so it’s hard to completely fall of the wagon. The kids know the real difference their contribution makes to the rest of the family. We have weaved the idea of “our family is a team” into the daily and weekly narrative by now.

Second, I gave my original convictions a boost by reading best-selling author and economist Emily Oster’s just-released book The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making. Aimed at parents of school-age kids, Oster acknowledges that “in this age of modern parenting, extracurriculars can feel like an arms race. It’s not just the number of activities; it’s also the intensity.” Nonetheless, Oster maintains her argument that is the premise of her entire book, which is for a family-specific, values-driven approach to support all the family decisions required in the early school years, inclusive of kids’ activities and how they spend their time. Taking a deep breath (or perhaps multiple ones), I was reminded of everything I’d researched, read, and committed to for our family.

Practical Advice for How to Teach Chores and Make Them Stick

It’s never too late to start teaching your kids chores. If you’re like me, it’s setting the intention and really leaning into why it matters to you that will clear the space in your life.

Doucleff offers a fantastic excerpt in Parents.com for how to get young children to help out and even be enthusiastic about the chores. But if you’re beginning a little older (4 or 5+) as in my case and feel daunted, here are my five suggestions:

1. Give it the time and energy it needs. Remember, teaching your kids to do their first-ever set of chores WILL initially take more time and energy than your current system, whether that is the adults do them, no one does them, or they’re outsourced. So if you’re a family running at the margin, this may not be the best time to simultaneously do something else new or different.
2. Select age-appropriate chores. I liked this Montessori-based chart best.
3. Use this method for teaching kids new skills, which is in Lythcott-Haims’ book and I know she speaks about in Parenting Masterclasses: 1) First we do it for you, 2) Then we do it with you, 3) Then we watch you do it, and 4) Then you do it completely independently. My children of course negotiated to stay in Steps 2 and 3 longer than I thought necessary, so be ready for that too.
4. Punch up the family chores to cultivate the “pitching in’’ mindset. This offers the future-focused lesson that others depend on them and that they’re part of a team. My daughters have a greater sense of urgency and pride when completing family chores. You can cultivate this mindset by assigning and explaining family chores.
5. Get grown-ups involved. Once the initial excitement wears off, you need a way to keep chores going. Because I emphasized that family chores help us take care of each other, naturally my 7-year old concluded that mom and dad have family chores too. For us, scheduling time on a lazier weekend day and putting on energizing music helps a lot!

I hope we all have our pandemic silver linings. One of mine will always be that in slowing down and being at home a lot, I had the opportunity to learn more about what I think my daughters really need…and our home was more than happy to offer itself up as a solution.