Parental Think Tank, or, Random Ideas About Parenting

I attended a lecture some years ago on early factory industry in Connecticut (before 1860) and the speaker had a number of photographs taken in factories or of the factory workers standing in front of the mill. One of the things he commented on was the number of young children present. These were not children employed in the factory but just kids hanging around. He also had a number of accounts of adults who reminisced about playing in factories as young children. The speakers conclusion was the same as yours Soz. That work, and the opportunity to observe and to a degree participate in a limited way, was formerly much more available to young children than it is at present

Very interesting that it extended to factories, Acquiunk! That's something I hadn't considered.

One strand of my thinking here is that during research for some other parenting topic, I found that boys were raised mostly by fathers until fairly recently. We think of mothers raising children, but until (the Victorian era? have to retrace my steps), mothers took care of babies but then boys spent most time with their fathers learning men's work and girls spent most time with their mothers learning women's work. (Exceptions in some historical periods and by class.)

So all the stuff we talk about how men should be more involved with childraising has historical precedent, the mothers doing the childraising (as opposed to babycare) is a relatively new development.

Other random thought was that what would make sense would be just that -- kids going WITH their parents to work. Think of the implications. If everyone did it, there would be a bunch of other kids to play with there. Parents would have a lot socially and financially invested in their children being a credit to them. And no need for childcare (though there would presumably be some version on-site.)

Practical problems up the wazoo, but interesting.

Part of why I thought of this is because my husband's uncle is here for a while and is helping us out with various household tasks. (Fixing broken basement lights, fixing a broken faucet, re-caulking the shower, etc., etc.) He and sometimes my husband have been really busy with all of that, and I've been cooking and cleaning more than usual, since I want to provide him with good meals for all the stuff he's doing for us (all the payment he'll accept), and then after dinner they're busy again (usually in our house, whoever didn't cook dinner cleans up after.)

What's interesting is that given all of this grown-up activity, sozlet has been playing on her own a LOT more than usual. She's always good about that, but this has been like 5-10 times more solo/ unsupervised/ non-participatory (on my part) play than usual. And also more helpful.

(Still no particular conclusions. And in case it wasn't clear, ideas more than welcome -- not just a repository for my ideas, hope to get discussions going and see what we come up with.)

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Hm, if I think back to my own childhood, I truly hated helping
my mother with housework, and teaching me how to cook was wasted energy. My father thought, giving me a generous allowance
would entice me to help out more - wrong! I told him to keep his money.

To this day I hate housework and luckily I have hired
help to do the task. Occasionally, little Jane enjoys
helping the housekeeper, but that doesn't last too long.

I do take little Jane to work though, when she's on a school
holiday and she sits there and emulates my every move.
Most annoying to me, but she loves it!

My daughter grows up knowing that having a profession
is more important than a clean house or a home cooked
meal. I encourage that!

On the other hand, when we visit Grandma, little Jane
transform into a "Hausfrau" and helps with cooking and
other chores around the house, of which her Grandmother
thinks are such important things to learn. <sigh>

What did you do when housework loomed?

That's part of what I think is interesting about what Setanta said, that kids went off and entertained themselves precisely to escape that work.

Ey sozobe, my mother still talks about this in anguish.
I either locked myself in the bathroom with "urgent business" and wouldn't come out, or when I couldn't avoid helping, I dropped dishes "by accident". I once made pancakes and
created an absolute mess of the kitchen.

I knew that my mother was weak and would succumb eventually.

Most children make a distinction between "chores" and "work". Chores are onerous. Work is dignified.

Every child--male and female--should be raised to be able to take care of himself/herself: cooking, minor mending, cleaning, major cleaning, first aid, simple household repairs, gardening.... Think survival.

According to the temperments involved, some of those survival skills are "chores" and some are "work".

I loathe vacuuming. I hate the noise of the machine and I hate moving furniture. When my boys were toddlers I encouraged them to move the furniture (and they had to learn to cooperate on the couch which outweighed them both) and as a reward they could push the vacuum cleaner.

Chores--such as taking out the garbage--are something that you get assigned because you are a kid and it is a cruddy job. "Work" is some useful effort with some dignity attached.

My sons and stepsons bitched and moaned about kitchen chores, but I had no problems when it was cook-a-meal-from-scratch time.

NCO's in both the Army and in the Navy look kindly upon young men far from home who have been taught to sew on buttons and insignia and stitch split seams.

Sozobe, didn't you say on another thread that the Sozelet was very computer savvy? Mommie do, daughter do.

I'm not really organized--I'll be back.

Re: Parental Think Tank, or, Random Ideas About Parenting


I think this general idea is at the heart of a lot of it. As technology has advanced and become commonplace adults actually do less and there is less to involve kids in.

When I was a kid we never called service people for anything. My dad fixed the plumbing, electrical, cars, did carpentry, poured cement, etc.. I got tagged to help him with all of those as I was able to. In my early teens when we played baseball on the street and someone hit a ball that managed to break a window we went into the garage and cut a piece of glass and repaired the window and went back to playing ball.

Very few people that I know now do any of this sort of work at hime themselves. Calling a plumber for a stopped up toilet or leaky faucet is common. People around me have all their yardwork done and the landscaping guys even make big $$ at Xmas time decorating houses with lights.

If we (the current crop of parents) don't do any of this sort of stuff out kids will never be exposed to it and there is even less of a chance that they'll do it when they become parents. We've outsourced tedious home labor and in doing so deprived our kids of opportunities to learn a lot of things.

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Re: Parental Think Tank, or, Random Ideas About Parenting



and perhaps deprived some of them of good sources of livelihoods in areas they'd enjoy

Fishin! You're comments remind me so much of a conversation I had this very weekend.

Mo returned home from lunch with his bio-mom and came in playing with mom's boyfriend's gameboy. He dropped the gameboy, ran outside, grabbed his shovel and insisted that we all watch him dig.

Boyfriend started talking about how I should really start breaking Mo in on some of those gadgets since that's the future. My position was that by the time Mo is grown everyone, including Mo, will know how to do that stuff but they might not all know how to dig a hole.

The play that Mo enjoys most are the things he refers to as his work.

Yep, I love fishin's comments, very much the sort of thing I was thinking of.

I will never ever buy that playing a Gameboy is better for a 4-year-old than digging a hole.

The "outsourcing tedious home labor" part is a big part of this whole thought process. I started really thinking about that when I saw that there is some new job called "parental coaches" or something, basically what all us frequenters of the Parenting & Childcare forum do, but these people get paid for it. I'll look up where I posted something about that, it was interesting quotes about how people trust something they are paying for more than things they get for free.