Put the kids to work

Helping kids participate in the household economy improves their mental health

Credit: Disney

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This month, a new paper has been making the rounds. It argues that a “primary” reason kids’ mental health has fallen off a cliff — something I’ve previously written about here — is “a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

So in other words, all of our hovering and helicopter parenting is bad for our kids.

These findings did not surprise me. In fact, one of the paper’s authors — along with psychologist Jonathan Haidt — made the same point back in July. There’s really no question that kids need more autonomy today. As the paper points out, “if children have little experience taking control of their own lives, they are unlikely to develop a strong sense that they can exert such control.”

For me, someone who accepts and laments all of the above, the real question then is, how? How exactly can kids gain more independence? What’s the solution?

One answer is probably to let kids play independently more.

But what I found more intriguing about the paper was its mention of the “household economy” — or in other words things like chores and kid-friendly jobs. The idea is that kids become more independent and have a stronger internal “locus of control” — or, the idea that you control your own fate¹ — as they become contributors to the functioning of a household. And that in turn improves mental health.

The paper goes on to note that hands-off parenting where the aim is to turn kids into active contributors is common in history and indigenous communities — and probably the result of natural selection.

Indigenous pedagogy is driven by the child’s eagerness to acquire useful skills and become an integral part of the community, abetted by the adults’ granting the child full access to the community. Parents acknowledge the risks in such hands-off childrearing, but see it is as essential to the child’s education. As Hewlett noted regarding one foraging society, “Aka mothers express regret when their infants cut themselves while playing with knives, but they don’t want to restrain their exploration and learning.”

In many indigenous societies, children as young as age 5 years are expected to contribute to the domestic economy and are eager to do so, and there is widespread acknowledgment by observers that children’s psychological well-being is enhanced by these opportunities. Children are typically assigned chores consistent with their level of development. Some of the early assignments involve running errands, to ever greater distances. The errand-runners will need to navigate, and thereby learn about, their own neighborhood, the larger community, and the surrounding bush (to fetch water, firewood, and edible and medicinal plants).

It kind of sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it? As an adult, I think I want fewer responsibilities and obligations (whether a lifestyle of permanent vacation would actually make me happy is another question). But for kids, requiring them to contribute — or in other words, do age-appropriate work — is a long-standing and widespread feature of human families, and tends to have positive outcomes².

This is basically the same point Michaeleen Doucleff made in her book Hunt, Gather, Parent, which includes observations of parenting practices in three far-flung indigenous communities. Kids in such communities were expected to contribute. As a result, they were able to act independently and without some of the behavioral challenges that bedevil many American kids.

Doucleff also writes about how families in indigenous communities function as a “team.” Kids have important roles to play, and aren’t just passive passengers tasked with eating, playing, and doing school work. They’re not merely beneficiaries of their village, their contributors as well.

I think that’s where these ideas really intersect with the village-building concepts I’m trying to explore in this blog. Villages — literal or figurative — only exist when people actively work to maintain them, and kids can participate in that maintenance work. Not only that, this new paper shows that kids’ mental health and sense of independence improves when they do. It’s a win-win.

So that’s basically the thesis here: One antidote to kids’ deteriorating mental health is to make them village builders. Put them on the family team. Give them jobs that contribute to the household economy.

I’m tempted to end this post there, but I suspect this idea sounds less significant than it actually is. After all, what parent doesn’t want their kids to contribute?

But the thing that jumps out to me is how much more responsibility some kids have compared to, say, what my own children are expected to do (or compared to what I did as a kid myself). Both the new paper and Hunt, Gather, Parent note, for instance, that indigenous children might be tasked with things like finding firewood or collecting water — essential tasks that ensure the community’s survival. Similarly, I’ve known people who grew up on farms who were collecting eggs as toddlers and driving tractors as teenagers.

These kinds of tasks strike me as being pretty close to actual jobs³. And I suspect there’s something to that; in environments where kids typically contribute to the household economy, their contributions are real and significant. They might start out sweeping the floor or washing the dishes, but eventually they graduate to driving the family tractor, proverbial or otherwise⁴.

I know this isn’t always easy. As a person who doesn’t live on a farm or run a family shop, I often struggle to think of ways to assign real responsibility to my kids. And I think this may become more difficult as they get older; they’ll get more busy, and I can’t really ease them into an apprenticeship at my job writing news articles on the housing industry. I’m also apparently not alone in this struggle; the point of the paper is to highlight kids’ diminishing opportunities for independence, including to participate in the household economy. And that diminishing coincided with and in part caused a decline in mental health.

But given how pervasive helicopter parenting and the attendant mental health problems are, part of the solution is probably just a worldview reorientation. The job of a parent, it seems, is less about protecting kids from risk and more about helping them contribute to their village.

Thanks for reading to the end of this post. If you liked it, consider sharing it with a friend. What’s the worst that could happen?

Headlines to read this week:

An Interview with Ruth Gaskovski

“When did you become a mom? What was that transition like?

We welcomed our first child in 2005 on a windswept island, away from family, during an emotionally tumultuous time. Neither my husband nor I had any interest in religion, and were drifting through life propelled by secular ideals of satisfying personal interests, following success, and pursuing pleasures. The arrival of our daughter was a wake-up call. Our self-serving existence was suddenly turned up-side down, or rather inside-out, as love was directed outward toward her, rather than our selves.”

5 Questions with Family Studies: Seth Kaplan on 'Fragile Neighborhoods'

“Strong social habitats foster strong families, networks, and institutions locally as well as the connections to people and sources of influence across other parts of society. They encourage cooperation, trust, and mutual support among residents and businesses; nurture a sense of security, belonging, and meaning; promote skills and norms that help residents thrive in the broader society; and attract investment and different types of residents (e.g., different socioeconomic status and stages in life). Fragile neighborhoods, in contrast, do the reverse, making it harder to sustain a family and raise children.”

1. This is in contrast to having an external locus of control, which means that a person sees him or herself as a passive figure, acted upon by external forces and not in control. This worldview is associated with worse mental health outcomes.

2. The paper also notes that kids who had actual jobs got a sense of accomplishment that went beyond mere money: “Another study, also in Australia, concluded that high-school students who held part time jobs felt more independent and happier, overall, than those without such jobs. These feelings were reported to derive not just from the money earned, but also from improvements in their social lives and enjoyment of the work itself. A recent article in Nature summarized evidence that independent adventures and active contributions to the welfare of the family or community increase mental well-being in teens.”

3. The same could be said for Doucleff’s father-in-law, who she says grew up working in the family bakery, and for members of the real estate family I profiled last year.

4. This is an idea Doucleff teases out as well, writing that indigenous “team” families give their kids meaningful tasks. They also let the kids learn by trial and error.