Why Children Need More Chores Of course, at Motherlode, we've discussed this before. It's the subtext of our worries about baby gates and the subject of posts like Peggy Orenstein's on the "overprotective impulse" and Randye Hoder's on negotiating her 13-year-old's social life. But I've been thinking - and recent research looks to be bearing me out - that we need to be talking more about a different kind of independence. This isn't about how soon our children can ride their bikes where, although that's important. This is about laundry. And cutting your own food, and doing your own homework - and the fact that according to the Wall Street Journal's "Field Guide to the Middle Class," while a 5-year-old in Peru's Amazon region can be found climbing trees to harvest papayas and "helping haul logs thicker than her leg to stoke a fire," an 8-year-old in America's Los Angeles region can be found lying on his back on a sofa, ordering his dad to untie his shoe - and being scolded only because he didn't say "please." Ten years ago, a team of researchers from U.C.L.A."s Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) recorded 1,540 hours of footage of 32 middle-class, dual-earner families with at least two children, all of them going about their regular business in their Los Angeles homes. What they've found, as they parse through footage and findings, has been the subject of much discussion (including Jennifer Senior's infamous New York Magazine feature "All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting") and a fair amount of argument. (One of the post-doctoral students involved also called it "the very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever.") "Field Guide to the Middle Class" is the most recent, and it focuses in, as the researchers have done lately, on how the children contribute - or don't - to the household. This kind of thing pushes my buttons, because we have refocused ourselves, just recently, on this exact question in my household. My husband and I are both dedicated, in theory, to the idea of children doing chores and housework. In practice, we often distribute the jobs, only to find, again, that it's just so much easier to do them ourselves. One week, leaving a dish on the table after breakfast may cost you part of your allowance; the next week, one of us might clean it without comment. It's not been a system I'm proud of (in fact, it's not been a system at all). This month has brought a renewed effort to assign the chores and stay on top of their performance. That did mean that last night I stood in the kitchen, arms crossed, refusing to help "team dinner-clean-up" (one older child, one younger) as they loaded the dishwasher, washed pans and wiped (and re-wiped) counters, instead of sitting down and letting my husband clean up, as he usually would. It meant closing my eyes as one half of "team laundry" (again, one older child, one younger) balanced on a chair as the other half threw wet laundry up to her to put in the dryer, and then yelling, from the sofa, to confirm where the soap goes in instead of getting up to make sure it was getting done right. It also meant that yesterday, my 10-year-old, assigned to "empty the car" (because if I run errands, then pick up all four kids, it's a five-trip project just to get everything out even if they do carry their backpacks), also put away the groceries without being asked. It meant that after they went to bed, the usual load of family-related tasks was already done - not quickly, not easily, and probably not well, but done. This morning, as the chaos of the new morning-plus-chores system reigned, and whining and sobbing based on the relative fairness and unfairness of various chore-and-homework burdens ensued, my husband turned to me and said, "Maybe we should rethink this." It's time; in fact, it's past time. I know - I know - that I was more capable and independent at their ages than any of my children are, and I certainly know that that kid in Peru has them licked. But I also know that they can learn, and that if they don't, it's on me. Because if someone would do all your laundry and dishes and pick up your coat from the hallway floor, wouldn't you roll with it, and maybe ask them to tie your shoes, besides? "The kids are oblivious to their parents" perspectives," the anthropologist Elinor Ochs, one of the authors of the research, told the Journal. We, as parents, shouldn't be oblivious to who taught them that, and who can change it. How do, or did, chores play out in your house? Who has managed to raise kids capable of doing laundry, and will anyone admit to tying an 8-year-old's shoes? What's the gap between your intentions and your actions, when it comes to teaching your children to fend for themselves?