Does Doing Chores Really Help Your Child to Be Successful?

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Does doing chores really help your child be more successful?

Everywhere you look, people are writing about a Harvard Study that demonstrates that doing chores as a young child helps that child to be more successful.

Is this for real? And is it true?

I looked for a Harvard Study on the relationship between doing chores early in childhood and later success - but I could not find one.

Yes, there is a famous Framingham Study that followed a huge number of individuals over 75 years... but it does not mention chores.

And then there is the Harvard Study of Adult Development—an incredible 85-year-long study—and I believe this is where the data comes from regarding children and chores - but the data set is enormous—and I could not find a summary of the findings. It is unclear to me where the information that everyone is quoting comes from. I could not find the reference, article, or a reliable citation.

That's the internet for you! Lots of interesting quotes and click bait - but not necessarily anything to back it up!

So, I looked for other data.

And I found some interesting studies.

A group of researchers analyzed data from 9,971 children participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. These kids were entering kindergarten in the United States from 2010 to 2011, and during kindergarten, their parents reported the frequency with which their children performed chores. Then, in the third grade, these children were given a questionnaire regarding their perceived interest or competence in academics, peer relationships, prosocial behavior, and life satisfaction, and they completed direct academic assessments for reading, math, and science.

The results showed that the frequency of chores in kindergarten was positively associated with a child's perception of social, academic, and life satisfaction competencies in the third grade, independent of sex, family income, and parent education.

And the study showed that children who rarely performed chores had greater odds of scoring in the bottom quintile on self-reported prosocial, academic ability, peer relationship, and life satisfaction scores.

Meanwhile, performing chores with any frequency in kindergarten was associated with improved math scores in the third grade.

The researchers performing this longitudinal cohort study concluded that performing chores in early elementary school is associated with the later development of self-competence, prosocial behavior, and self-efficacy.¹

This dovetails with my recent post on raising children who are both competent and who feel competent. In short, I suggested that expecting more of our children, giving them detailed instructions about what we expect, and then helping them to follow through creates children who feel competent. And that doing this is better than doing things for our children.

But one study was not enough, so I kept looking for information on children and chores.

Another study looked at children's chore behavior and found the following: Most children in the study spent surprisingly little time helping around the house and engaged in fewer tasks than they reported in interviews. The researchers found that offering the child an allowance in exchange for doing chores was not an effective motivator and that children in families with access to paid domestic help tended to be less helpful than children in families without. The authors suggested that while most children are aware that their working parents need help, in some families, inconsistent and unclear expectations from parents negatively affect children's participation in household work.²

So, what's a parent to do?

I recommend starting with chores early and being very clear about what you expect.

Get your two- and three-year-olds to help you mix and stir in the kitchen, give them a rag and let them help you dust in the living room, and ask them to help you pick up the toys. They don't know it's work yet, and if you are doing it, they will often want to help.

At four and five, get them to set the table, pass out appetizers or cookies to guests, put their clothes in the hamper and this sort of thing. Ask them to get you something when you need it, and give them praise and compliments when they do these things

And by the time they are six, give them real chores: feed the dog, sweep the floor, and, again, pick up the clothes and put them in the hamper.

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Teenagers should do their own laundry at least some of the time (sports uniforms, for example!), and each day, there should be a few things they do around the house that benefit everyone. They can cook a dish for dinner, do the dishes or unload the dishwasher. This includes boys as well as girls.

- Start early.

- Don't spring chores on them one day out of the blue when you feel sick and tired of doing everything yourself.

- Tell your kids what to do and expect them to do it.

- Don't fight over it.

- Tell them what to do each and every day.

- And, on weekends in particular, make sure they know that until they do their chores they won't be able to go out to the movies, skating rink, soccer practice... you get my point.

Old fashioned?

Maybe.

Easy?

No.

Doing this will result in pushback some of the time. And it will take a lot of parental energy.

But if your child can help with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of pets, it will make them feel better about themselves, more competent, and more effective in the long run. Just like that Harvard study is supposed to have said. And just like other studies have said.