Housework is an important skill for everyone to learn, including boys. Put your boys to work and check out these 6 reasons to teach your sons about housework.
Reasons to Teach Your Sons About Housework
Many people are under the misconception that boys should be outside learning to throw a football instead of inside learning about housework. Boys need to learn to be independent and do things on their own, both outside and inside the house. Teach your son to cook and do laundry and his wife will thank you later. Plus, he'll be able to move out and succeed on his own, even if he hasn't met his perfect woman yet. Here are 6 reasons you need to teach your sons about housework.
6 Reasons You Need to Teach Your Sons about Housework
#1. It’s a part of life
Housework isn’t something that house fairies do for you when you get older, it’s a way of life. Doing dishes, washing laundry, and keeping a house tidy is something your son will eventually have to experience all on his own.
#2. Gender shouldn’t be an excuse
Letting your sons off from doing housework because they are a boy isn’t a great excuse. All kids learn a lot from doing chores, despite their gender.
#3. You’re teaching your son so much
Housework isn’t just about doing something; it’s about learning something. Doing housework shows that your son is maturing and can handle new things. When I was a kid, making a cup of coffee or a can of soup was a big deal to me. Your sons will learn to view housework as a challenge and something to get good at. Housework will also teach them about putting other’s needs before their own. When mom or dad are doing housework, they are thinking about their family, not themselves. This is a great trait to pass onto your sons.
#4. Your son will learn about responsibility
If you are debating what qualities you want your son to grow up with, consider this. Your son will learn a lot about responsibility when doing household chores. Most families realize that it takes everyone working together to make things go smoothly.
#5. Organization and tidiness are good traits for your sons
No one wakes up naturally thrilled to do housework, which is why this is an earned trait, most of the time. However, once your son gets excited about doing housework, he will start to understand that organization and tidiness are GOOD things. A more organized surrounding, room, and home will lead to a calmer, more organized mind.
#6. Commission is always welcomed
Giving your kids chores and allowing them to earn extra money is always different. Maybe you give your kids a base pay for allowance. Teach your sons the value of hard work by allowing them to earn a bonus from doing extra housework. Make sure you explain the difference between the bonus commission and allowance.
Do you plan on teaching your sons about housework?
Did you like these 6 Reasons to Teach Your Son about Housework? Find more on my Parenting board on Pinterest!
If you liked these 6 Reasons to Teach Your Son about Housework, you might also like
How My Sons Helped Me Appreciate My Husband
10 Mom and Son Date Night Ideas
10 Tips for Teaching a Preschooler about Money
Never Miss a Thing!
Join our newsletter to get new recipes, tips, tricks, and tutorials every week!
Shari D. says
(My original comment posted with numerous errors that didn't show up in the original draft. In other words, what I wrote, and then edited, is not the text which showed up! I have no idea why, and I apologise for any confusion. I have repasted what I copied before I posted the first time, checked carefully (again) for errors in spelling and grammar, and hope this one comes out right this time! If you find it appropriate, please delete that first post, and this first part of this comment. Thanks very much for your patience! Shari D.)
Our children were born in 1979 & 1981. No, they're not 6 years old anymore! But, since we had one child of each gender, it was not going to work (in MY house, anyway) that our daughter would be stuck with all the house chores inside, and our son outside playing ball with his dad! "Fifties Nostalgia" and gender discrimination did not live under our roof!
When my babies were old enough to toddle around and throw their toys, we taught them how to pick up the toys, and toddle over to the toy box and give them a fling! Being a girl or a boy was neither here nor there in our house - if you played with them, then you were eligible for learning how to clean them up when it was time to do so. Or rather I did, mostly since their dad was at work every day during the week, supporting us in those rotten old days of early Eighties "Reaganomics," and his unworkable theory of "Trickle Down VooDoo Economics" -- we got trickled on, all right, but it wasn't with money! Not a job for me in sight, or for anyone else either, in a town based heavily on the automotive industry, so I was blessed by being able to stay at home with our babies when they were young, and needed a mother, not a sitter.
You'd have been proud of me though! I managed our household with a budget so tight that Lincoln moaned everytime I opened my wallet! And that I was spending $40-45 a week (out of $178 a week take home pay) to feed all four of us, and buy diapers**, trash bags, TP, HBA products (damn few of those - I wore very basic makeup, none at all on at-home days or maybe just some mascara, and the rest was just bar soap for baths and showers, baby needs, toothpaste, shaving supplies, and my own "personal lady needs," laundry supplies (nobody made, or knew how to make, DIY laundry products, and remember, there were no home computers, no internet, no blogs (a what?) or any other way of mass communication besides TV and print media. Haircutting was done by students at the local Beauty Academy for a few dollars.
(**About those disposable diapers...yeah, I know. But economically, I could do little else. We had no washer/dryer, no way to get them, or space to hook them up if we did have them, in rented apartments and houses, without hookups. Cloth diapers were horribly expensive, I could not afford to accumulate enough to keep two children adequately diapered, at 21 months apart. Washing them at home was OUT, as there were no available clotheslines to hang them in the sun, or even places to put them. Doing them at least twice a week would double my hassle, since I would have to take both kids with me. Expanding my laundry budget wasn't possible as it was already down to the lowest possible cost. The cost of the disposable diapers was less than the potential increase in costs without them. Cloth diapers also make it more likely that other clothing and bed linens need washed and changed much more often, adding more laundry, and extra expenses for more laundry products. So, there's no way I could justify NOT getting disposable diapers! And my very tall, slender legged baby girl required elastic legged diapers, because the others gapped so badly! It seemed there was just no way to win on that one! Other than doing what I did.)
All cooking and all food items were "scratch!" Those were the days of plain label generics, and whole grocery stores were set up under that concept. White labels with black printing, and basic food information on each container. And, in 1982, I was introduced to shopping at Aldi Foods by a friend (Bless her heart!)
A wonderful "fairy godmother tale" of shopping for the regular grocery items at greatly reduced prices, but no brand names, no fancy packaging, no coupons accepted (because there were no brand names,) nothing besides cash and Food Stamps accepted for payment, no pricing on each item, but on signs hung above each stack of opened boxes, which the cashiers were required to memorize!!! There were no scanners yet either - anywhere! They had wonderful dairy products prices - 69¢ for a 16oz container of (good Grade A) sour cream, for instance! You put your own grocery items on the belt, the cashier put them back in the cart as she rang them up, and you either brought your own bags, boxes or what have you to cart your stuff home in, or you could buy bags there for 3¢ each, and/or grab empty boxes from the shelves or the "Box Cart" as you went through the store! AND the biggest saver of all, NO bag boys, and you packed your own groceries on the "sacking counter" that ran all the way across the front of the store. They even posted diagrams and helpful hints about how best to do that on the wall above the counter.
We qualified for some Food Stamps after I used a neighbor's phone to call that office, and talked a case worker into telling me over the phone whether or not we would qualify based on all our family and financial information, after I explained to her how difficult it was for me to take the kids with me well before 8 AM to take their dad to work so I could keep the car, pay a sitter for an unspecified period of time, wait in interminably long lines, just to find out perhaps that we qualified for NO help at all. She was extremely kind and helpful, and yes, we would get some help, but not a FULL month's, since I had a working husband!
That opened up more doors, for more help, which most famously included the Government "Cheese Lines." These were where you could go to some semi-public place, where a semi-trailer had been parked, loaded up with government "overstock" of commodities, including Velveeta-style loaf cheese, which made outstanding grilled cheese sandwiches, and other things when available, like butter in one pound hunks, dried peas or beans, corn meal, etc., and boy, howdy, did I take advantage of THAT!!
AHHHH - but I divert from my original story by a few dozen miles!!
Our children learned to help with the housework, partly by example, because their dad always helped me with the biggest chores to the smallest, depending on what needed doing. I always went to the laundromat on Saturdays. It was my only day out a week by myself. I would stop at a hamburger drive-thru and get a single burger meal, and take it with me, and once all the clothes and linens were whirling and swirling in the machines, I would sit at one of the many tables and chairs, and slowly devour my lunch. It was quite a treat for me! This of course was well before we got a nice apartment that came with a full size set of washer and matching dryer, several years later.
In the meantime, based on ages and abilities, each one learned to do more and more around the house. We got to the point of posting chore charts, and each had to negotiate any changes to it with each other! It worked out very nicely, with a few minor exceptions! But, we worked them out to most everyone's satisfaction, including theirs!
Other things, like budgeting and money management in general, cooking skills, and so forth, they got the basics of at home. After they moved out amongst the masses and into fully independent existences, they picked up more from just living their lives. Our daughter and son, in that order, learned how to change a tire, and change the oil in their cars, and other basic car maintenance skills, from their mechanic Father. House skills they learned from us both, as they observed their father wasn't too proud or thought only women did those things, and did dishes, cooked occasional meals, cleaned bathrooms (Air Force barracks inspections honed those particular skills before we ever met!) ran the vacuum, and so on. They never got any ideas from us that there was "woman's work" and "man's work" there was just work. I wasn't afraid to get under the hood of my cars and get dirty. In fact, that's sort of how we met. But I'll save those details.
However, one project I've always been quite proud of, was when we were dating, my mother's car was badly in need of a valve job, causing it to smoke like a train engine at idle. That's pretty heavy duty engine work, requiring re-machining of certain internal engine parts, and is quite involved. However, with my fiance's help, one of his co-workers, and myself, we all got "down and dirty" tearing the engine down in her backyard garage, beginning on a Friday night after work, doing the vast amount of the engine work in what they called a "Hobby Shop" on the Air Force Base, (I did some of it, called "grinding valve seats" myself!) and then putting all the new and redone pieces back together again, mostly on Saturday, and having it drivable in time for me to go to work on Sunday afternoon! It was a load of fun, and I got just as dirty as anyone else, ruining three T-shirts and an old pair of jeans in the process! I have performed a few minor repairs on my cars myself, having learned a great deal from him over the past 41+ years. I couldn't do any of that now, but I sure had fun with it while it lasted! Our daughter got that wide streak of independence from me, I'm happy to say. Now SHE is wife and mother to her dear husband of 16 years, and their SIX children, all born at home! If that's not independence, I'm not sure what is! And our son, who loves both his parents equally and completely, is not married, but his girlfriends in the past, and the one he has now, have all thanked and congratulated us on raising such a competent, kind, polite and loving young man!
Well, I'm sure that's likely much more than you ever really wanted to know about me, but it seems sometimes that once I get started with a story, it's difficult to know where to stop!
Hope this finds you and your lucky family well and happy!
Themistoklis Papaioannou says
Greetings.
I could not disagree with you on the subject of children and chores more. There is not any study to the effect that chores really help kids [not even the Harvard Study, which I have examined]. In fact, the only study I found that came close to testing this idea was a 2003 study by the University of Amsterdam. In this study, researchers found,“A direct (negative) path was found between the number of chores assigned and school success (GPA)” … that negative correlation was likely because “too many chores and responsibilities interfere with schoolwork.” Again, there is no evidence that doing chores contributes to a child’s success. The Minnesota research was not peer-reviewed and thus unreliable.
Kids should NOT be made to do chores. The housework is NOT the child's responsibility. The parents are the carers and providers. The children are NOT the help. Kids should PLAY not WORK. Schoolwork including home school academic work is plenty enough. Chores are not difficult to learn anyone can in MINUTES. Its not the child's role to contribute to the family. As for self-confidence, deep relationship, pride, etc. can be gained via many other ways. These include play, art, sports, family time, etc.
Absolutely EVERYTHING can and is taught without chores thus making them redundant. The only reason any parent would insist on making kids do chores is so the parents have less work which is a bad reason and amounts to taking advantage of kids. By chores I mean tasks such as doing the laundry, mopping / sweeping floors, washing the family dishes, loading / unloading dishwashers, cleaning toilets / bathrooms, etc. obviously a parent can teach a child how to do anything WITHOUT making it the child's job / responsibility.
I am thankful that my parents did not require regular chores from my sister and me growing up in the 1980's. I am grateful we had true parents who respected our childhood. And I NEVER had problems with performing any chore. Both my sister, me and EVERYONE I grew up with are living proof that regular chores for kids are worthless... well maybe just take a load off lazy parents. Do you know how long it took me to learn for example laundry? 10 minutes! I had the cleanest room at Seminary or everyone said so. So the nonsense doesn't stick with me.
Sincerely,
Themistoklis J. Papaioannou
PS: Even the phrase "we are not raising children, we are raising adults" is wrong. No, you are raising CHILDREN who will GROW INTO adults. RESPECT CHILDHOOD.
Michelle says
Hi, I have a degree in education, which studies child development extensively, obviously. Plus my own personal experience as both a human who was a child and a parent of 5 children.
My school aged children are honor roll students. They're in whatever sports they choose (and they choose a lot. Baseball, softball, dance, cheerleading, wrestling, soccer). They love playing outside and riding their bikes and playing with the neighbors and going to the park, all of which they do almost daily unless the weather is too severe (we live in the Midwest US, so it does get very very cold here). AND they each have daily chores. The thing about chores is that if you do them every day, they don't take very long because it's already mostly clean. And obviously, chores should be developmentally appropriate.
As far as research, there's TONS of it. Way more than just the Harvard study, though I'm interested that you've decided your experience negates the findings of the top college in the country.
Here is a list of them.
https://researchaddict.com/chores-make-kids-happy-according-to-research/
So thank you for your thoughts. However, I find them to be untrue, at best, and ignorant and straying from psychological research, at worst.
Themis Papaioannou says
Teaching children skills and making them do regular chores is not the same thing. Although we should teach our children skills we should not burden them with regular chores. Play is the work of childhood.
PS: Children can and do learn EVERYTHING you said [a bunch of clever excuses to get your child to share in the load] WITHOUT having regular chores!
Michelle says
As I said, my children do plenty of play, more than most kids who are always stuck to screens. They also make a mess and are responsible for cleaning up after themselves.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.