Our little boy is growing up. Even in the past few weeks he seems to becoming less of a child and more adult somehow. Well, not an adult. Just older. It seems as if everything has suddenly clicked. A threshold has been reached. A tipping point? Maybe he’s more aware or more self-conscious. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me or talks with us around the dinner table… I don’t know. But when I dropped him off at school a few days ago, tears brimmed in my eyes as I watched him lope away laughing with his school friends.
He used to look back and wave…
It’s hard. When they’re born they’re so close. It seems as if they’ll never leave! Never grow up. You feel like they’ve been sent to torment you forever. But before you know it they’re at school. Going out by themselves. The next thing you know, they’re screening your phone calls. And you’re begging them for a bit of attention or any scrap of info they care to give about their lives.
“Hello? Son? What? Speak up! My hearing’s not so good anymore. Say again? You got married?”
“In VEGAS??”
“Three years ago???”
“To a guy???!!!!!???”
Anyway. He’s growing up. And increasingly the question about pocket money is coming up. I suppose our boy is at the stage when he’ll be needing a little money for toys he wants to buy for himself. Or when he’s out with friends at the pool and he wants to get an ice-cream. Or when he needs to get pills at the club? I DON’T know. I don’t know how the youth of today live their depraved lives.
But I knew this day would come. How should we do this? How will he pay for the little bits and pieces of his life? Up til now we’ve been taking care of everything. ALL we ever seem to do is pay. He’s been bleeding us dry for seven years now.
And it’s getting worse: piano lessons, sports equipment, computers, X-Boxes. We’re hemorrhaging money. With all this buying I do for myself, it’s getting harder to buy the boy stuff as well. Pretty soon he’s going to want an X Box too. Just like his dad.
BUT here’s the thing. I have a BIG problem with the very idea of an allowance or pocket money. I just HATE it. I think it’s a desecration of all that’s truly wonderful and valuable about families.
Now I don’t want to come across all John Howard or Fundamentalist Christian Family Values on yo collective ass but I think there is something very special about families which is destroyed by putting your children on a wage.
That’s right. You heard me.
Pocket money turns your beautiful family into a business. A pretty lame, struggling one, sure but a business nonetheless. You’re no longer a father. You’re a goddamned CEO (without all the stock options, six-figure salary, Golden Parachute clause in your contract and government bail-outs of course). Suddenly the kids are not doing stuff around the house because they’re part of a family or doing their bit, helping out. No. They’re doing it because they get PAID for it.
And that changes everything.
The whole idea of pocket money just blows your family apart. And it places another barrier between you and your children.
Look at it this way. I see a family as a unified whole – as a group of people bonded together in something greater than themselves. And, when it works, you realise the essence of your self AS a member of your family. NOT as an independent person. You are who you are in relation to your family and everyone recognises their value as people in relation to each other and to the family group.
When you think about it – no matter how much people argue against communism, how depraved or idealistic it is etc – we ALL live in a communist system. It’s called your family. Where else in this cruel dog eat dog world do you experience the kind of selflessness that life in a family requires? Parents give and give with never any hope of a “return”. And what’s more, they don’t even care about getting a return. They give for the pleasure of giving. Your family works as a unit, together, for the greater good of the whole. “From each according their means TO each according to their needs”. That’s how it works. And THAT is the very definition of a happy giving, sharing and caring community. In a family, we each do what we can. And we look after those who need it. Without even a second’s thought about what we might “get out of it.”
It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing!
And now here comes pocket money. Instead of ideals of co-operation between honourable family members we get contracts, calculation and the merciless law of profit. Rather than performing tasks like mowing the lawn or doing household jobs because that’s their role in the family, your children do it for a cash payment. Back in the 1950s, even the mother used to be given an allowance from the father! You think that’s crazy? Well I think it’s just as crazy to put your kids on a monthly salary.
It’s an outrage! A poison! The competitive nastiness of the economic jungle infects a family and deprives it of its value to us – the calculation of individual gain wins out in what used to be a safe house that protected people from the ravages of the market. Where the family used to be a “haven in a heartless world” it now becomes simply another way of doing business. What a disaster.
And yet I still hear parents saying “Well little Johnny has to learn the value of money.” Or “it teaches children how to work in society – gives them respect.”
Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. But one thing is for sure – using money is NOT rocket science. (No matter what the banks and “money managers” selling you complex financial instruments with fees-for-all-their-help-because-it’s-just-too-difficult-to-understand want you to believe). It’s something that you can pick up pretty quickly. Your children will learn its “value” soon enough. First job they have. They’ll get the picture. Money comes in. Money goes out. It goes out more than it comes in. Trust me. It’s a pretty easy concept to grasp.
No, I don’t think my role as a parent is to teach my son about the “harsh realities” of life on the market. My job is to give him the warmth and care and support that he needs to venture out into the cruel world. With confidence and a spring in his step. With a tiger in his eye. And a feeling for what is great and magnificent in life. Not with a calculating eye on profit, individual gain and the base value of cold hard cash. MY role is to teach him that human beings can be better than competitive individuals fighting like dogs for monetary gain.
So when as he grows up, too soon, and leaves us behind he’ll remember the warmth and solace of a group of people living together and working together as one.
Now THAT is value.
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Thank gawd..I thought I was the only one who felt that way.
Thanks for your comment Maz. I thought I was the only one who thought this way about pocket money too. Thanks GOD you’re with me on this. Lets form a political party? Couldn’t be any more crazy than the Shooters Party now could it? Ha ha
I couldn’t agree more. I grew up in Russia and back then, there was not such a thing as “paying” to kids. We kids, as you say, did everything because we were a part of the family.. Family is family. There is a good reason that it’s called a family. Not business partnership.
Totally agree John. Family is family. Lets at least keep business and corporations out of our homes. As much as possible anyway! Thanks for your comment.
Apparently, there’s pocket money and then there’s pocket money. I grew up in small town India in the ’90s and got my pocket money every month. We had pre-decided what my parents would pay for (educational needs, travel, clothes) and what my allowance would pay for (special treats, birthday gifts for friends and family, outings with friends and so on). None of this however had anything to do with the chores I had to do at home. Those I had to do because I lived in the household. The money I got to teach me to live within my means. I never really connected the two until just now!
Interesting comment Sue. From what I know of Indian families that is quite an unusual way of doing things with children. I tend to think the “allowance” idea is an American import. I think Indian families tend to be more on my side when it comes to pocket money. Nevertheless, I have a feeling that pocket money doesn’t teach kids to live within their means. I mean how would we know anyway? Have there been any studies? Or is just my feeling against your feeling? I think pocket money is damaging to the heart and soul of family and teaches children all too soon that they should think of themselves as individuals maximizing their market potential and living separate from the family as a whole unit bigger than the sum of its parts. I think that while you live in a family environment you don’t have independence. You are part of a family. And so money spent inside the family should be discussed with the family as a whole. You get plenty of independence once you’re living away from the family. Pocket money is devisive. And actually counter to the more holisitic attitude you find in many Indian homes.
I’d never thought that pocket money for chores was normal before. I got weekly ‘pocket money’ from about year four till year eight, unrelated to the chores I was meant to do. My parents tried to implement a money-for-chores thing around year eight and my siblings and I basically decided to relinquish pocket money in exchange for not having to do chores, given that it was something like $2 a week anyway.
When I was in Primary School, I used to envy all my friends who used to go on about pocket money. I never got pocket money coming from a chinese family as we were a unit. At one point I tried to get dad to set an allowance for the sake of it. But I think it lasted for a couple of weeks before it got old. I remember clearly how I felt when I was small, I envied that my friends could say that they were buying things with “_my_ pocket money” with a sense of pride like they earned it. And I did not have the same luxury, no because if I wanted something, I will have to consult the committee and it would be purchased as a unit
My hubby comes from a completely different background. Sixth generation aussie he calls himself, (but unlike any aussie family I have ever met). In his family, everyone’s money is their own money even between his parents, and even more so between parents and children, unless it was “gifted”. So naturally my hubby too has happily adapted to the chinese pool of what comes in is everyones, and what goes out is on request. Now that we have our first child (9mo), I have already begun thinking about pocket money!! so it is funny to stumble upon this article. I have considered adapting the western way of paying my kid to take out the garbage. But I will have to agree with you. Our kids will learn the harsh environment of society soon enough, we should indulge them with a warm and loving environment while we can. Sure pocket money teaches the lesson of work done = gain, but why do we want to pay out children for work done, or just for being children? Family should be a environment where money should never be “paid” between members. For this reason, our family hardly even gift money between us, money is like water to us (with permanent restrictions haha!). I want my child(ren) to grow up knowing they’ll always be supported and let them be children and not little elves running around being paid by us to play with toys.
Kids should learn that participating in household chores is mandatory and nothing to do with pocket money. Everyone in the family does their bit.
Pocket money should be a discretionary amount. Ideally it should be small enough that you can’t actually buy anything worthwhile with a single weeks amount. Only if they SAVE it, does it allow them to buy anything worthwhile.
It teaches them decision making, patience and the value of money. They learn what a dollar actually buys.
It shouldn’t be confused with behaving well and contributing to the family. That’s non-negotiable.
I recieved pocket money as a child, but it had nothing to do with the chores we still had to do. My parents were very clear on that. I think this is how I will raise my future children.
Alhtough I do see your point, Angry Dad & Summer’s Mum… That any spending should be discussed with the family unit.
I met one parent who said to his children, “I will give you a dollar to spend however you like.. but if you let me put it into a bank account for you, I’ll put in two dollars.”
I quite liked the idea of that.