Ok, clickbait title aside, not *that* type of child labour… (although outrage-fuelling journos do your worst, it’ll all help with readers, just as it did with my TedX views).

I recently came across the Harvard Grant Study findings, running since 1938, the longest longitudinal study in history. Among such fun discoveries as the fact that ‘ageing liberals have more sex’ with ‘conservative men ceasing sexual activity around the age of 68’, the most interesting finding was that it identified two key things that enable adults to be happy and successful: 1) Love and 2) work ethic.

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The main thing that correlated with self esteem was whether or not they worked as a child, with those who had some form of consistent responsibility demonstrating considerably higher self esteem than those who did not.

And yet - kids don’t seem to work much anymore. If at all under the age of 16 or 17. And as we know, most of their ‘spare time’ is spent on devices.

This Ted talk which references the research describes how there are two extremes within parenting: underparenting (aka ‘neglect’) and over-parenting, but whereas the negative impact of the former is self-evident, much less attention is paid to the latter despite it being as potentially damaging. Julie Lythcott-Haines talks about the ‘checklisted childhood’ as akin to dog-training with no time for free play or chores where everything has to be ‘enriching’ and ‘A’ grades are valued above all with the result that kids end up feeling brittle and burnt out. She goes on:

But if you look at what we've done, if you have the courage to really look at it, you'll see that not only do our kids think their worth comes from grades and scores, but that when we live right up inside their precious developing minds all the time, like our very own version of the movie "Being John Malkovich," we send our children the message: "Hey kid, I don't think you can actually achieve any of this without me." And so with our overhelp, our over-protection and over-direction and hand-holding, we deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy, which is a really fundamental tenet of the human psyche, far more important than that self-esteem they get every time we applaud. Self-efficacy is built when one sees that one's own actions lead to outcomes, not one's parents' actions on one's behalf, but when one's own actions lead to outcomes. So simply put, if our children are to develop self-efficacy, and they must, then they have to do a whole lot more of the thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, coping, trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life for themselves.

The good news is that there are some easy fixes here… CHORES.. Cooking, cleaning, tidying, gardening - many possible from even pre-school years.. Because, as Lythcott-Haims told Tech Insider: "By making them do chores -- taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry -- they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life. It's not just about me and what I need in this moment."

Whilst far from model parents, my husband and I are embracing this. My 10 year old has started mowing the lawns, the 7 year old empties the dishwasher, bins are taken out and laundry baskets are starting to be decanted down to the machines. OK, so the lawn looks like it’s got alopecia, none of our wine glasses now match and I’m washing far too many clean clothes that were easier to sling in a basket than fold into a cupboard… but… it’s a start. And it also helps us as two busy working parents to stay on top of the household. My eldest has got to the age where he tunes into my stress levels and volunteers to do something… I nearly wept the first time.

And then, as they get old enough, encourage them to get out and earn their own money.

As a teenager, I stopped getting pocket money at the age of 12 or 13 and to this day, I thank my parents for that (who could have afforded it but who both came from working-class backgrounds and knew the life-skills value of graft).

I babysat, had a (brief) paper-round, worked in cafes, a shoe shop, collected glasses, pulled pints and spent a good few years stocking shelves and then behind the till at my local petrol station. Along side the life skills (how to pour a good pint or estimate foot size by looking), I came quickly to understand the value of money and how many hours each purchase equated to. At the age of 17, I recall watching macaws flying towards the sunset over the Amazon River on a youth expedition I’d paid for purely by my pay-check and feeling more pride in myself than I’d ever thought imaginable.

I also worked alongside so many people that had little ambition (or qualifications) to do much more than those sort of jobs and discovered them to be some of the wittiest, most interesting people I’d met. So, yes, another potential antidote to polarisation - as this opportunity to get to know those from so many different walks of life was truly a gift that I believe has made me much more empathetic and understanding of socio-economic difference… in attitudes, perceptions, politics, entitlement and more.

These days, we see so few teenagers in shops or cafes - indeed, the minimum wage hasn’t actually helped them as it’s priced many of them out - despite the fact that having a part time job in the teen years can be so vital to feelings of competency and to developing responsibility. My heart always soars when I’m driving and see a couple of kids walking door to door with buckets and sponges to offer car-washes or if a hand-written flyer arrives asking if lawns need mowing. (We’ve had two 15 years olds do ours in recent years whilst waiting for the eldest to grow some muscles). Getting children volunteering is another option… a charity shop perhaps where they can learn customer-service or merchandising; scouts or kids clubs where they can feel the power than comes from being an older, responsible ‘leader’; old people’s homes; food banks etc.

Not only are we fuelling their self-esteem, but we’re promoting an alternative to the 5-6 hours daily spent on phones. Win-win! We need many more structures, incentives and organisations to help enable such opportunities.

Last word to Julie:

I've got two kids, Sawyer and Avery. They're teenagers. And once upon a time, I think I was treating my Sawyer and Avery like little bonsai trees that I was going to carefully clip and prune and shape into some perfect form of a human that might just be perfect enough to warrant them admission to one of the most highly selective colleges. But I've come to realize, after working with thousands of other people's kids and raising two kids of my own, my kids aren't bonsai trees. They're wildflowers of an unknown genus and species and it's my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores and to love them so they can love others and receive love… and the college, the major, the career, that's up to them. My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming their glorious selves.

Gotta go now - to restack the dishwasher, go through the bins to separate the recycling from the rubbish and double-check where my husband’s current political leanings lie.

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The Case for Bringing Back Child Labour

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