I hate doing dishes more than any other household chore out there. Thank god for preschool where he gets a morning snack every day to cut my kitchen duties to only 4 meals a day. And please let there be a playdate during afternoon snack. If I could get my child to eat a casserole I'd just put the pan on the table, give him a fork and have at it. But no. He doesn't like his food touching. Everything must be served ‘deconstructed'. He then assembles the foods on his own. He comes up with some interesting combinations, I must say. Peanut butter, jelly, and cheese sandwiches? And it has to be white cheese. He won't eat orange cheese. Unless it's macaroni and cheese, which he'll only eat at my aunt's house, even though she uses the same damn blue box.
Children now spend 25% less time doing chores around the house than they did 20 years ago. It's not that they're spoiled--their parents now rely on outside help, and kids are expected to spend more time studying or participating in extracurricular activities. But what effect will this have on them as adults? A piece in the Wall Street Journalposits that these little boys might grow up to be aggravating husbands 'cause the Modern Woman needs a mate who helps with the housework. More interestingly, whether or not children do chores is a big predictor of whether they will volunteer in their communities as adults. Anybody have anecdotal evidence that supports this?
I ran across this piece in USA Today, which seems to suggest that stay-at-home dads do child rearing differently, which in the case of this guy seems to mean that they hang out with the kid but still leave a lot of housework to the wife. Good deal if you can get it. How do you split things up?
