In our last installment, I noted that freedom and self-governance are about more than just private protection agencies and answers to the question “Who will build the roads?” Those are important, of course, but the first place we must look when trying to build a world of freedom and peace is much closer to home. We will return to heady discussions of anarchocapitalist ideas soon enough (I know I still owe you a final installment on pollution), but for now, let us continue exploring ways to manifest freedom in our daily lives.
Not too long ago, I read a post in which someone was taking Boomers and Gen Xers to task for not giving our children more chores. As a father myself—the kind who reflects deeply on his own performance as a parent—I was forced to admit that my wife and I are guilty of this. Did we give our child some chores to do? Of course. Did we give him enough? Probably not. And I know we’re not alone.
How did this happen?
Once upon a time, children were an economic asset. One more child meant one more person to work the farm, prepare food, and help raise the younger children. Human labor was essential to survival.
Things are very different today. The Industrial Revolution gave us better tools. Electricity and the internal combustion engine dramatically increased our productivity. With each advance, more could be accomplished by machines, reducing the need for human-powered production.
We complain about the economic situation today (and there is plenty to complain about), but the truth is, our living standards are at historic highs. We have more labor-saving devices than ever before. The costs of these devices continue to fall. Indeed, notwithstanding the recent inflation, the cost of nearly everything has continued to fall for the last century or more. As a result, we have more time to do things other than work from dawn till well after dusk.
All of this has trickled down to children. They are no longer essential to a family’s basic economic survival. They too have more free time (and with the advent of computers and social media, they have extremely diverting ways to spend it).
Schools are continually adding options for sports and other extracurricular activities with which children can occupy their time. Private entities add more choices: Dance. Cheer. Martial arts. Travel teams. There are more diversions than ever before.
Some of this is fine, but too much and children’s time becomes over-allocated and pathologically structured. Some children choose this; others are goaded into it by their parents (for psychological reasons that deserve separate treatment). Add in school and homework, and modern children still end up being pretty busy. It’s a lot to manage.
Meanwhile, we parents have already learned how to be productive. We know how to take on one more task and get it done. What’s one more load of dishes or laundry? Little Johnny or Janie is upstairs doing homework, or unwinding after a day of school, sports, and whatever else. It’s almost as much work to get complaining kids to do chores as it is to just do it ourselves. Sometimes, doing it ourselves feels like the path of least resistance.
Moreover, because of continued increases in human affluence, we have more disposable income than in decades and centuries past. As a result, we have lawn services, housekeepers, and daycare. (My family doesn’t, but lots of people do.) As a result, we have less need to get our own children to babysit or mow the lawn, or to pay a neighborhood kid a few bucks to do it. (Increased affluence has also changed children’s attitude towards such work: they are no longer satisfied by the pittance we were willing to accept in the 70s and 80s. Neighborhood babysitters today ask for real money!)
There are other reasons too, and there is plenty more to say about this, but that’s enough for now. Diagnosing why this has happened is less important than examining the effect it may have on our children.
Doing the Right Thing
In simplest terms, there are two main types of morality:
Enforceable morality: acts for which one may rightly be held accountable by means of protective force or restorative action. Typical examples include assault, theft, property damage, and failure to discharge duties for which one is directly responsible.
Doing-the-right-thing morality (a.k.a. prosocial behavior): all the things we do to be good people and get along with others. Failure to do these things will not produce any sort of protective response (no one may rightly force you to be polite), but they do help you be a likable person and a welcomed member of a community.
Here, our focus is on the latter. Helping out, pitching in, and doing one’s share are part of doing the right thing.
But are children born with that knowledge? I have recently come to believe that when it comes to pitching in and doing one’s share, there are two modes: child and adult.
Child mode
I was thinking about all this while cleaning our house last week in preparation for our annual Independence Day party. The kids—as will come as a shock to no one who has raised any—were nowhere to be seen. In fact, they were sound asleep, as is frequently the case at 11 AM on a Saturday morning.
It’s hard for me to be too judgmental about that. I can recall the same thing from my own youth—waking up to the sounds of weekend cleaning only to pass out for another three hours and avoid all of it. I’m sure I was terribly broken up by the fact that I missed out on hours of scrubbing and dusting and vacuuming!
And that, in part, is the point here. Kids need to be socialized to understand why it is important to help out, and a brief look at the normal cycle of childhood development may help explain why.
The helpless baby
When our children are first born, we parents do everything for them. This is how it must be … and it sets the stage for what is to come.
The helpful tot
For a period of time, little children want to do chores. They aren’t thinking that they ought to pitch in and do their fair share, however. They just want to be doing whatever mommy or daddy is doing at that moment. They want to be with you, and to learn from you.
It is cute and sweet … and it doesn’t last.
Aw man, do I have to?
Sooner or later, children begin to complain when given chores to do.
In a sense, they can hardly be blamed for this. During their first few years of brain development, everything has been done for them. We feed and clothe and bathe them. The house, the food, the electricity, the toys, the HVAC, the hot water … these things just appear. It’s magic.
We have quite literally infantilized them. Is it any wonder, then, that they are shocked when asked to pitch in?
Only when asked
In the next advancement, the child no longer gripes at every chore, but they also only do what is asked. They do not yet offer to help. And looking independently for things that just need to be done is even further off. (For some, this doesn’t happen until they get their own places and find out the hard way!)
As an adult, it is easy to lose perspective about this. Offering to help is the right thing to do. I know how to do the right thing. Why don’t they?
Here too, I have come to believe that if we expect our children simply to know this, we may be underestimating the degree to which they are conditioned by a childhood in which things just magically appeared.
Throughout their formative years, they watched you go off to work each day, but they didn’t actually experience the labor and long hours themselves. Until they become adults and get their first jobs, such toil exists only in the abstract. You do the work of making ends meet. They only experience its effects. The fridge is full. The lights are on.
When they open presents on Christmas morning, we tell them that Santa brought them. We do not tell them about the 150 hours of shopping, wrapping, cooking, cleaning, and planning that go into creating a magical Christmas. We don’t tell them about the stress; we shield them from it.
In fact, we intentionally work to protect them from most of the harsh realities of adulthood. We try to preserve their innocence and allow them to be children for that preciously short time during which childhood is possible.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, when they stay in child mode a little longer than they should.
Adult mode
As adults, most of us know to do the right thing.
When we go over to a friend’s house for dinner or a party, we offer to help. We ask what we can bring. When we are overnight guests, we try to do even more to earn our keep. Our hosts may refuse and tell us to relax, but we at least offer.
Sometimes, when appropriate, we don’t even ask. We just do the dishes or clear the table because it is the right thing to do. We don’t make our hosts wait on us hand and foot, just as we wouldn’t let them be the only ones who pay every time we all go out to a restaurant.
Chores and self-governance
As properly formed adults, we would never dream of living in someone else’s house for weeks, months, or years without doing our share. An able-bodied adult guest who doesn’t pitch in on rent, food, utilities, and chores is a mooch.
A baby who doesn’t pitch in on rent, food, utilities, and chores is just a baby. The interesting part is the transition. When—and how—does a child learn to be a proper adult?
If we do not teach them as children, they will still learn eventually, though it may involve a few gradual realizations (or rude awakenings) as young adults.
Either way, it is important that they learn. A self-governing society requires self-governing adults:
(In)dependence
In 1848, Frederic Bastiat defined the state as that “great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”
He was right. The state takes money by force and distributes it as it sees fit. In a democracy, people can attempt to vote themselves a share of the loot, and it is economically rational to vote to receive more than one pays in taxes. The result is a grasping scrum that resembles Bastiat’s definition well enough.
What does the world look like without a system that allows some to live—by force of law and the power of a government gun—at the expense of others? Who does well in such a world, and who does not?
We know the answer. Productive, self-directed people thrive.
People will continue to help the truly needy, of course, but moochers become pariahs. That certainly isn’t anything we would want for our children.
Cooperation
Productive people seek each other out for further collaboration. This is how businesses form and work with other businesses to create innovation and productivity. Cooperation is the human superpower.
Such cooperation is obviously happening now, but it becomes dramatically more important in a world in which governments are not doling out subsidies or granting special treatment to businesses. Zombie corporations, cronyism, and bailout queens cannot survive in such a world.
Children who have been raised to do their part will go on to form healthy businesses that can survive and thrive in a self-governing world.
Community and reputation
Throughout history, social norms have been a highly effective mechanism for regulating behavior. Stigma and ostracism can go too far, of course, but they play an important role in moderating disruptive behavior. In any human society, one’s reputation is often one’s most important possession.
Governments tend to atomize communities and impersonalize these forces. Today, it is not the disapproval of one’s fellows that one primarily fears, but the punitive hand of the state. Remove that hand, and reputation once again rises dramatically in importance.
This removal is precisely what advocates for a self-governing world seek. We wish to end the use of preemptive violence in human interactions and restore individual consent to its rightful place as the fundamental unit of moral concern.
Such a world requires self-governing individuals. Contributors. People who pull their own weight. People who understand the importance of having a good reputation and work hard to maintain their own.
Teach your children well
Teaching your children to contribute when they are young sets them up for success in life, whether we live in a self-governing world or not. I have come to realize my own mixed record in that regard, both as a parent and as a (former) child.
As a parent, it is tempting to get frustrated with the children in my life for not pitching in. For not offering to pitch in. For not seeking out ways to pitch in without me having to point out obvious tasks and project-manage all of it!
But if I want to be a self-governing person, I must also ask myself how much responsibility I bear for that situation. Yes, I became a parent during a time when the parenting zeitgeist and economic incentives have changed. Nonetheless, it is still ultimately on me to teach my children well, rather than blaming them for not knowing things.
Rabbit parents don’t do much to teach their babies. Go forth and eat grass, my son. Watch out for foxes. That’s pretty much the extent of it. Human children need to be taught—all the more so if we expect them to be true self-governors.
And yes, that starts with telling them to do their chores.
