The first thing many of us hard-working moms do when we wake up in the morning is put a pot of coffee on, shower (hopefully), get-dressed, and throw a load of laundry in before the kids get up.
When trying to get our little boy to unload the dishes with us, they would rather play drums with the spoons than neatly place them in the drawer, so we slowly stop asking.
But is there a greater issue being created by super moms taking over the household duties as to not interrupt the convenient flow of our children’s schedule?
Domestic skills are a fundamental part of life, without them it is difficult to thrive in both your professional and personal careers.
Practical knowledge, like how to complete a load of laundry or cook a decent meal, has been on the decline in recent years, as Mommy Underground has previously reported.
Parents can feel that they are emasculating their sons by requiring them to participate in household chores that would typically be assigned to women, such as cooking and cleaning.
However, all humans need to be able to eat and keep their living space sanitary regardless of gender roles.
Traditionally, much of the housework gets done by the mother because she is home more often tending to the children.
Today people are preparing more home-cooked meals than in recent years, but a majority of them are still being done by women, according to the Nutrition Journal.
As much as men may feel their life is going to turn out this way, it is very unlikely that a young man will transition from having their moms do everything for them to having their wife do everything for them.
There is usually a time period where a young man is living independently before they begin their families.
Research even suggests that once you are married you are likely to be happier when you share in the housework.
The New York Times reports:
“The degree to which housework is shared is now one of the two most important predictors of a woman’s marital satisfaction.”
So why are we not doing what we can as parents to help our little boys develop skills that will enrich their life?
Lauren Gordon writing for Café Mom said that she began practicing life skills with her son at 15 months old by taking “turns brushing his teeth and combing each other’s hair,” and wiping down the table and cleaning up toys together.
The tasks don’t have be monumental in order to have a big impact on his knowledge of how to take care of his body and space, as well as be a helpful husband and father one day.
Once upon a time it was expected that life skills, including changing a tire and addressing an envelope, were going to be taught at home.
Unfortunately, parents over all have been failing in this department miserably!
With hectic schedules and both parents often working out of the home, individuals are looking to the education systems to fill in that void.
According to a joint study between Monash University and the Australian Scholarship Group, 69% of parents believe that the school should be teaching their children social skills.
Ideally, this would be a skill set your child should already possess when they enter school in order to function optimally in a classroom setting.
Parents want less and less responsibility in the home in order to keep up with a lifestyle that has moved beyond physical time constraints, showing the need to re-establish conservative values in the home.
Phys Org reports:
“”The Australian Scholarship group chief executive John Velegrinis said the results suggested that there were “increasingly blurred lines as to where responsibility begins and ends as parents’ perceptions of their traditional roles and responsibilities change.””
Our boys need to know how to make themselves scrambled eggs, throw in a load of laundry, and wash their dishes when they are done with them.
While there are many skills your son will need to know in order to grow into a respectful and responsible young man, the ones around the house should not be neglected.
Start small in introducing domestic responsibilities to your son, beginning with light chores of sweeping the kitchen or wiping down the table, and moving into bigger tasks like the washing machine when they get older.
Hopefully, introductions into the need for domestic education inside the home by a parent will open up conversations and opportunities to share other essential life skills that younger generations are lacking.
Please let us know in the comments section if you have a way that you have introduced domestic skills to your boy and how they responded.