Should you pay kids for chores?

Piece in Saturday's Body&Soul about paying children for chores. Interesting ideas and it shows how divided people are about it. We were paid for exceptional chores (mowing the lawn, washing the car, painting the picnic table) but nothing for washing up, taking out rubbish, etc. I'd rather give an allowance and expect my kids to do normal tidying/household chores than create the idea that you help out around the house because it's remunerative.

What do ya'll think?

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Hearing sounds of kitchen cupboards being emptied, cleaned out and restored to order, I feel a swell of maternal pride. My 11-year-old son is committing a random act of kindness. He puts in a good couple of hours and, when the job is over, he calls me down to see how immaculate it all is. “How kind! What a big help you’ve been,” I exclaim, adding: “And I didn’t even ask you to do this!” He has the grace to look uncomfortable before replying in a businesslike manner: “Do you think it’s worth a fiver?”

“You mean, you didn’t do it for the love of the woman who gave you life? Just to be nice?”

“Nice is not going to pay for a Nintendo,” he says flatly, holding his palm out.

I pay him, but grumpily, only after accusing him of employing the same tactics of those windshield cleaners who slop dirty water all over your car at the traffic lights and then ask for money, the only difference being, this job actually needed doing and he did it well. And he’s my son and showing enterprise, earning and saving money to buy something he wants.

But can enterprise and the getting of filthy lucre coexist with the family values I really want my children to learn, which are to do with everyone pitching in for the good of our home life, for being kind, and for showing gratitude, and plenty of it, for all the unpaid work I do?

The thorny issue of what type of work you pay your children to do and how much work is expected of them, and how pocket money fits into the scheme of this paid work in the home, pricks deeply into the parental psyche. On the one hand, reinforcing the message that every domestic task has a cash value diminishes the notion that most household work gets done for the good of everyone in the family, that everyone has to pull his or her weight. On the other hand, doing something for the good of the family is not going to pay for your teen’s ticket to see The Killers.

The decision to pay or not is informed partly by family financial circumstances, partly by the parents’ upbringing, and largely by an intrinsic value system. An informal poll of the parents I know suggest there is no consensus. Fran, my most affluent friend and mother of two girls, 5 and 13, says that her teen doesn’t really ask for anything, so there is no incentive for her to earn money right now.

“I prefer to sacrifice my time and do the tasks myself or pay others to do it and give her her time, already occupied with school and other interests. I hope she learns money skills by observing what costs what, not by earning it at home, but maybe a Saturday job when she is older.”

Kate, a single working mum of three older teenagers, says she tried to offer money for chores, but didn’t offer enough. “I’m not going to pay a fiver for them to do the washing-up. I did say: ‘We all have to live here and help out’, but the result is that the boys do nothing and the girl does a little, fitfully, occasionally.”

Suzanne, a mother of three girls with big age gaps between them, says: “I have paid my kids for babysitting because I’d have to pay someone else to do this. I wouldn’t pay for other jobs because I think they should do them as a contribution to family life. Not that I’ve ever known how to get them to do it. But I think that it shouldn’t just come down to cash; that give and take in a family is about caring and not money.”

It’s about caring and money. The difficulty is in working out the right balance. Professor Frank Furedi, the author of Paranoid Parenting (Allen Lane, £12.99), says: “Anything that helps children understand that there is a relationship between effort and outcome is to be welcomed, so paying children for jobs makes sense. Although it is important not to place too much focus on financial incentives since we don’t want to turn relationships into transactions.” But the occasional job-for-money transaction can give children a sense of economic independence that goes some way towards tackling pester power. Sure they can have an iPod, if they are willing to graft to earn the money to buy it.