No, Really, Your Kids Need to Do Chores

ParentCo. ^ | May 17, 2024 | By Mark Oliver

[daniel1212]

...when it’s time to do chores around the house, I turn on Netflix, plop my son in front of the TV, and let Disney babysit for me. He is, after all, four years old..

I didn’t realize how much this was affecting him until we passed by a toy ship from his favorite show, Jake and The Neverland Pirates.

“It’s The Mighty Colossus,” my son told me, not so much speaking as shrieking. “I need it!”

I said no. He erupted.

He couldn’t understand why we couldn’t afford to buy every toy we saw. Soon he was in tears, thrashing wildly. My wife and I were, for the first time in our lives, one of those parents...

The next day, we tried to do things differently. We planned to clean the whole house, and our son was going to help the entire time. It was supposed to be a punishment – but he loved it. It ended up being one of the best days of his life.

I didn’t need to plop him in front of the TV to do chores. He could help. More than that, he wanted to help. And, as it turns out, he’s actually pretty good at scrubbing the floors.

Children, I’m learning, need to do chores. A lot of us don’t ask our kids for contributions like that. In fact, only 28 percent of parents make their kids do chores. ..

Harvard University ran a 75-year-long study that followed people through their entire lives. It tracked their physical and emotional health, trying, in part, to find some kind of insight into what makes people happy and successful.

Chores, it concluded, were the key....

[daniel1212]

Excerpt. Related:

67% of today's adults say they went to church every week when they were children. A Gallup tracking poll found that only 31% of parents with minor children attend church weekly or nearly weekly. Evangelical Protestant families have the highest rates of attendance; 64% of evangelical teenagers say they attend church weekly.

• 2. About 1 out of 4 U.S. children live in a household without a resident father.
• 3. Roughly 72% of U.S. youthdo not do chores regularly. 82% of today's parents were required to do chores as kids, versus 28% of today's U.S. youth. Data compiled by researchers like Dr. Marty Rossmann at the University of Minnesota shows that kids who begin doing chores early, around ages 3 to 4, achieve significantly higher academic, social, and early career success compared to those who don't. Chores teach children internal accountability, time management, and the concept that a community or family requires everyone's contribution to function.
• 4. The decline in physical and fine-motor coordination among younger children is a growing concern. Repetitive, low-effort hand movements like swiping and tapping fail to stimulate the deep muscle structures of the hands. An increasing number of kindergarteners cannot hold a pencil with a proper tripod grasp, struggle to use safety scissors, and lack the finger isolation needed to turn the pages of a standard book. Activities like stacking blocks, threading beads, molding dough, and coloring require dynamic hand grips and varying pressure. Activities like climbing trees, digging in dirt, or hanging from monkey bars provide essential weight-bearing input.
• 5. Only 31% of modern kids play outside daily, compared to 70% of their mothers when they were children. 55% of youth ages 10–12 get 1 hour or less of free play daily.
• 6. Approximately 59% to 61% of U.S. children live without two or more siblings, meaning they are either only children [no siblings] or have exactly one sibling.
• 7. 48.2% of young adults ages 18–24 read zero books for pleasure in a year. 1% of college students rarely or almost never finish assigned reading.
• 8. Approximately 77% of young Americans ages 17–24 cannot qualify for military service without a waiver. Reasons include overweight and obesity; drug and alcohol abuse; medical and physical health; mental health conditions; and aptitude, conduct, and dependents.
• 9. Approximately 43% of U.S. college students are nonreligious, identifying as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”
• 10. About one in three young adults ages 18–35 in the United States lives with their [two] parents.
• 11. Roughly 86% of young adults ages 18–24 in the United States are unmarried and have no romantic partner.
• 12. Approximately 70% of never-married young adults were fornicating [I provided biblical term] during the past year.
• 13. 69% to 82% of U.S. college students support the right to an abortion. Only 16% oppose a woman's right to choose an abortion, and as much as 78% to 82% support abortion being legal in “all or most cases.”
• 14. Up to 87% of Millennials and 77% of Gen Z actively carry debt. As of 2026, the average total debt load for Gen Z, ages 18–28, sits at $34,328, while Millennials, ages 29–44, carry a staggering average of $132,280, heavily weighted by early mortgages, auto loans, and student loans. Google AI response. Approximately 13.8% of all federal student loan borrowers have received some form of loan forgiveness.
• 15. Peer-reviewed medical data confirms that young Americans are dying at an alarming rate, representing a reversal in decades of public health progress. According to a comprehensive analysis published by Dr. Steven H. Woolf in The Milbank Quarterly, all-cause mortality for U.S. adults ages 25–44 surged by 71.2% between 2010 and 2021. The core drivers of this public health crisis span external causes, including injuries and violence, and early-onset chronic diseases. Overdose rates for adults ages 25–44 multiplied significantly after 1999, driven largely by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, making overdose the leading cause of death in this bracket. Suicide rates among young adults saw substantial increases, while homicides spiked sharply during 2014–2021. Fatalities from transportation incidents rose notably between 2014 and 2021, linked by public health experts to infrastructure and driving habits. Physical illnesses typically seen in older populations are appearing earlier in young adults: deaths from alcohol-induced liver disease more than doubled, with related mental health disorders showing severe increases, while fatalities from diabetes, metabolic disorders, and hypertension climbed significantly over the past two decades. U.S. life expectancy has consequently lagged behind other industrialized nations, ranking 38th globally by 2023.

[ComputerGuy]

Take out the papers and the trash,
or you don't get no spending cash.

[Adder]

A most damning list.

I am sorta glad I won’t be around to see the ultimate results.

They will not be pretty.

[redfreedom]

I fully agree with less TV and having kids do chores. Another factor in ruining kids lives is gaming devices and especially cell phones.

A while back a young couple bought what was likely their 3 year old a cell phone and these young parents were so proud of their kid smiling trying to figure out how to work it. That kid will grow up being one of those mindless wonders that simply cannot leave a cell phone alone.

A case in point. At the electronics dept of Walmart there was an employee helping us that simply could not stop texting while he was working. It was so rude with this jerk paying more attention to his phone than a customer.

[Chickensoup]

Happens at all ages.

Away for a weekend with several friends in 60s through 80s. Between texting shopping and gaming and scrolling it was a quiet weekend. I finally gave up and read fr and x.

This addiction has almost every one. Give up notifications.

[sauropod]

.

[equaviator]

1971-1978 (Mom in school and/or working, Dad working full time) A list of chores done daily, weekly and monthly by me and/or my brother included:

Clean bedroom

Set and clear dinner table

Rinse pots, pans and dishes, etc.

Empty and reload dishwasher

Clean all bathrooms

Vacuum carpet, shake out rugs, mop floors

Do laundry if hamper is full

Fold and distribute laundered items

Straighten up garage

Straighten up basement

Mow the lawn, bag the clippings

Mow next door neighbor’s lawn (xtra cash)

Trim hedges

Pull weeds in flower beds

Driveway and sidewalk edging

Rake and bag trimmings, sweep driveway

Take out garbage

Water indoor plants

Shovel driveway, sidewalk and front porch

Babysit younger sister

Take messages for Mom and Dad (phone)

Feed the dog

Give dog a bath

Wash cars

Wash windows

Retrieve contents of mailbox

Help Mom bring in groceries, etc.

Help Dad with anything (on-demand!)

[equaviator]

Forgot two more:

Dust furniture

Retrieve garbage cans and wash if necessary

[oldtech]

As young kids,my brother & I always had chores of some kind. Of course this was was in the pre-tv & pre-much of anything era, so that made it easier for the parents to assign duties. Didn’t hurt us that I can recall.

[redfreedom]

A few years ago I was visiting with a shrink. She said she had clients that if they do not get a certain amount of texts per day they get clinically depressed and need psychiatric help.

My favorite is watching people dine out. Such as what appears to be a perfectly matched young couple sitting together. Both are on their phones the whole time and say practically nothing to each other.

Or watching people mindlessly walking through a Walmart parking lot focused on their phones almost getting run over by traffic.

Phones are an addiction, similar to gambling and other non-drug addictions.

[MayflowerMadam]

My three privileged nieces, oldest is 16, have to do absolutely NOTHING. They want EVERYTHING. They get what they want.

It’s possible they’ll turn out OK in the end. Parents have great work ethics so that could rub off.

[lee martell]

This is an excellent article. It’s a focus someone in our White House should appoint a Czar or leader for. By the time I was 7 or 8 I was expected to do most of the items on that list as situation or season would dictate. The only thing I never had to do was babysit.

Since I had 3 sisters and I was the boy, babysitting was considered a “girl’s job”. That was different in other families, where most the siblings were preschool. Boy’s jobs typically consisted of shoveling snow. mopping and waxing floors, painting inside the house, mowing.

Back in the early 60s, households were allowed to burn trash. I recall being fascinated by the Blue Fire which resulted when certain man made materials were burned.
I was also assigned to set and dispose of Mouse Traps.

[equaviator]

When my Dad bought his first riding lawn mower (used) we couldn’t get him off of the damned thing! He once told us, “Someday, this will all be yours!” and we said something like “Okay, it’s a deal!”

[equaviator]

"Since I had 3 sisters and I was the boy, babysitting was considered a “girl’s job”."

That's exactly how it was with my cousins' family. The only male was their first-born and he loved to ride around on his mini-bike and smoke cigarettes and what-not while his younger sister did the babysitting. He would've been a good babysitter if it wasn't for that mini-bike and all those other kids with their mini-bikes.

[lee martell]

I’m not sure if your post is sarcasm or not.
Minibikes + cigarettes? Maybe I missed the joke.
It’s still before 6am over here in California.

[subterfuge]

I do check my phone too much but a good day for me is NO texts or replies on FRee Republic!

[bert]

When I went off to college, my dad bought a riding lawn mower

[equaviator]

Yep, teenage boys with mini-bikes whose sisters did the babysitting had more time to spare for getting into teenage trouble.

[equaviator]

My dad loved that mower. One day in the front yard, I kept hoping he would let me take over, so I kept bugging him from the front porch and after about the third time, he rode past and flipped me the bird! However, since he knew that his beer wasn’t getting any colder on the porch, he finally let me finish the job and he got to finish his beer before it got warm. It was a win-win all the way around.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

You are right that the list is damning. Its damning of the parent’s generation and perhaps the grandparent’s generatoin too. Kids don’t turn out the way Generation Z turned out on their own. Their parents made them that way. We need to point the finger at ourselves.