My father-in-law was an engineer at a large high-tech corporation, and part of his job was to supervise technical workers, some of whom weren’t all that motivated. Usually undermotivated employees are pretty creative in their goldbricking, but he told me of a time when one of his charges was practically an automaton. This fellow would do whatever work he was explicitly given to do, cheerfully and efficiently, but once the work was done he would put down his tools and stare blankly at his workbench—sometimes for hours.
My father-in-law had a strong work ethic, and this behavior baffled him. He tried many things to encourage the fellow to take some initiative; all of it was received cheerfully, but none of it had any effect. Finally, he confronted the man and told him that if he didn’t start looking for useful things to do without being told, my father-in-law would do everything in his power to have the man fired.
The man’s expression suddenly changed, as if a light bulb had gone on: I need to start looking for useful things to do. And he did, eventually becoming one of the better workers, even going on to earn a college degree.
An important part of growing up is the transition from being self-centered to being other-centered. Children start out expecting lots from us, while we don’t expect all that much from them; the household exists and operates for their sake, not vice versa. Modern thinking lets this attitude develop for way too long. Most of the chores that are within a young child’s ability have been hired out in one way or another—water that used to be carried is now brought in through a tap, chickens that used to be fed are now kept in confinement houses many states away, eggs that used to be gathered are picked up at the supermarket, floors that used to be swept are cleaned by a service. For the rest, we can do them more efficiently without involving them and so we tell the kids to go play while we fold the laundry, prepare the meals, or weed the garden.
If it does occur to us that our children need chores, we treat them as an educational exercise, akin to the math exercises that they do just because we tell them to, not because they see any benefit in them. Due to lack of early training they are incapable of doing truly useful work, and the work they are capable of is mildly demeaning for a child of that age, so we make up work that sounds important but really makes no contribution to the household.
All this encourages a self-centered attitude towards work. Work is something I have to do for my own reasons—because I want to, or because I must obey, or because I don’t want to get in trouble, or because I will derive some benefit from it. Absent is any notion that work should be done for the common good, for the sake of the household whose benefits we all enjoy. And so we shouldn’t be surprised when our children walk right by an overflowing wastebasket without a second glance—because it isn’t their chore, or if it is their chore it’s one they do on another night, or they forgot that this was the night for that chore, or any of a thousand other sophistic reasons they might offer when confronted about it.
We constantly battle this attitude in our household, and we have yet to discover the magic bullet that reliably puts it to death. Perhaps we aren’t yet modeling it properly; I know that it is a form of laziness that I have struggled with for many years. But we keep working at it, because one of our convictions is that for a godly man or woman duty trumps personal preference—when you see a job that needs to be done for the sake of the household, you don’t pass it by simply because it isn’t your assigned responsibility.
