Childhood

Children’s Share in Household Tasks 

By Goldscheider and Waite

In Children’s Share in Household Tasks, Goldscheider and Waite investigate the role of children in the home, focusing on how much they participate in household work and on the nature of their participation.  The authors describe how current definition of childhood is one that stresses the need for a child’s preparation for adult roles in the workplace rather than at home.  Children therefore take little responsibility in household work.  In order to better understand the role of children in the home, Goldscheider and Waite examine the results from their study, National Longitudinal Studies (NLS) of Young Women and Mature Women.  In this study, women answered a variety of questions about household chores.  Overall, the study indicated that children contribute about 15 percent of the share of household work.  However, the participation of children in household work varies according to the family structure, type of task, and age and gender of the child

In two-parent household, Goldscheider and Waite found that teenage children partake in a greater amount of household work than do younger children.  Further, the study showed that females contribute an overwhelmingly greater amount than do their male counterparts.  In fact, according to the study, Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 do the greatest share of work among children.  Upon further investigation, Goldscheider and Waite found that girls generally take part in such household tasks as cooking and cleaning, while boys are more likely to contribute to yard work.  When asked why parents assign “chores” to their kids, the overwhelming response was in order for their children to develop a sense of responsibility. 

Goldscheider and Waite found very different responses among single-mother homes.  In these families, all members are expected to contribute a greater amount.  Boys, in particular, contribute a greater amount.  This is partly because these boys often take on the roles of the absent father.  But this phenomenon is also due to the fact that in these families, the allocation of the tasks is less gender-specific. 

            I found this reading very relevant.  While I have always been exposed to the division of household tasks according to gender, I had never been aware of it.  Because of my own experience, I have always thought of fathers and children as useless around the house. 

Children’s Perspective

By Ellen Galinsky 

In Children’s Perspective, Ellen Galinsky confronts the issues of work and family through the lens of her Ask the Children study, which provides data from employed parents and children.  In studying this data, Galinsky found disparity between public opinion and research findings.  There our four debates that, according to Galnisky, expose this disparity.

            The first of these debates is based on the question of whether it bad for a child to have an employed mother.  Galinsky found that 76% of employed parents are do not think that an emplyed mother is deleterious to a child’s development.  Most of the 24% who disagreed with the majority were fathers.  The data revealed a greater opposition of mother employment among families in which the wife was not employed, which implies that people are more likely to support their situation.  While the parents of this study contributed passionate and divergent responses regarding this issue, there was relative uniformity of answers among children with employed- and unemployed-mothers.  Galinsky concludes that a children are more likely to be attached to their mothers according to how warm and responsive their mothers are, not according to their mothers’ employment statuses. 

            Galinsky then turns the attention to fathers.  The effects of employed fathers on their children are rarely debated.  Rather, the concern focuses on the negative effects of unemployed fathers.  According to Galinsky, this is due to society’s gender expectations, which demand economic responsibility of fathers.  Just like her conclusion of employed mothers, Galinsky maintains that it is not so much the father’s status of employment that matters as it is his attention to his children. 

Next Galinsky addresses the heated debate about childcare.  Is it good or bad for children’s development? According to Galinsky, childcare is often bad for children, but it is not because it displaces parental care.  Rather, it is bad for children if the care is of low quality.  It is the wuality of the childcare that determines the nature of its impact and Galinsky believes that it is in society’s power to establish good quality childcare.

            Finally, Galinsky discusses the debate of quality versus quantity.  According to the children in the study, they do not yearn for more time with their parents.  Rather, the wish that their parents were not so stressed and exhausted.  It is therefore the quality of time the parents spend with their children that matters.

            Adding children’s perspectives to the work and family debates added a very personal and innocent angle to the debates.  On the one hand, I was weary to accept some of the responses, as I did not feel that children could objectively assess their situation.  But then, on the other hand, I guess no one can provide objectivity about his or her situations.