1 CHILDREN'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR WORK AROUND THE HOME Jennifer Bowes School of Educational Psychology, Measurement and Technology University of Sydney Paper presented as part of the Symposium, Development of Responsibility, at The Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, Fremantle, November 1993. DEVELOPMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM In recent years there has been a reawakening of interest in children's development of responsibility. Early researchers in the field were Piaget (1965) and Heider (1958). Piaget investigated children's judgements about the role of intent and extent of damage when children were asked to attribute blame to a fictional child who had committed a wrongdoing. Heider (1958), using similar stories about children's transgressions, produced a developmental sequence of children's attributions of responsibility according to two main aspects of their cognition: intent and foreseeability of consequences. Piaget and Heider's work and the research that followed had in common an emphasis on the cognitive aspects of responsibility and neglected, according to Hamilton (1978, 1992), consideration of role. Hamilton argued that responsibility judgments involve not only consideration of what the child did but also what the child was supposed to do, a proposal that allowed for different degrees of responsibility to be expected from people in different social positions. A school principal, for example, is expected to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong in her school, even if she has not been directly involved. A shift in research approaches to responsibility among social psychologists in the last few years has involved a move away from a primarily cognitive focus to incorporate elements of the social, interactive and contextual qualities associated with judgments about responsibility (Hamilton & Hagiwara, 1992). The emphasis has remained, however, on judgments of degree of responsibility attributed to wrongdoing and the developmental and situational determinants of those judgments. Development of responsibility in children seems to involve more than the ability to attribute blame for wrongdoings. This interpretation of responsibility is based on legal interpretations of responsibility ( eg., Hart, 1968) and legal definitions may not match everyday definitions (Hamilton, 1978). What is the meaning of responsibility that parents use when they justify assignment of household chores to their children in terms of development of responsibility? Teachers say that they give their students homework to develop responsibility. In what sense is responsibility being used in this context? The symposium will not come produce the definitive answer to the question of what the term responsibility means. As Hamilton wrote, "Responsibility is a core concept of social life. Like other core concepts, it is difficult to define adequately and even trickier to study appropriately (1978, p.326). In general terms, what has generated the research work that will be described today is a need to go beyond consideration of children's judgments of liability to consider some of the other meanings of responsibility that we use when we talk about children behaving responsibly and developing responsibility in an everyday, non-legal context. In doing so, we will present some new approaches to the study of responsibility. Children's Responsibility for Work around the Home Work around the house provides an early context for the development of responsibility in children. Requiring children to perform work around the house is a widespread practice. By the age of 7 years children in most countries are involved in such work (Rogoff et al., 1975) although the nature of the tasks varies. In developing countries, for example, children are likely to be involved in the care of younger siblings (Weisner & Gallimore, 1977) while children in Western cultures are more likely to perform self-care tasks such as making their beds and keeping tidy their rooms and belongings ( Thrall, 1978; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981). Certainly Western parents see the development of responsibility as one of the main reasons that they assign regular jobs to their children (Thrall, 1978; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981; Goodnow & Delaney, 1986). Research seeking to establish an association between children's involvement in household work and their level of responsibility as judged by adults has, however, been largely unsuccessful. An association has been found in rural communities between children's involvement in chores and their helpfulness (Whiting & Whiting, 1975). There is, however, little research evidence of any link between children's household work involvement and responsibility in urban settings (Goodnow, 1988; Warton & Goodnow, 1991). It has been suggested that the increased helpfulness (Whiting & Whiting, 1975), a greater satisfaction in their work (Straus,1962), and the earlier assumption of full adult work responsibilities (Stern et al., 1975) reported for rural children along with the dependability and industry observed by Elder (1974) amongst the children of deprived families during the Great Depression could be attributed to the value of children's work in these circumstances. When children are contributing to the real needs of their families, and their work has consequences for family production or survival, then, it seems, household tasks may have real developmental value (Elder, 1974; McHale et al., 1990). Most Australian primary school aged children see their involvement in household work in terms of usefulness, saying that they do the work "to help" (Goodnow & Burns, 1985: Ochiltree & Amato, 1985), even though their parents may have a variety of reasons other than need to justify their children's involvement (Goodnow, 1988). There is ,thus, considerable research evidence that suggests that household work is an important context for children's learning about responsibility. The research I will be reporting was done with Jacqueline Goodnow and Pamela Warton at Macquarie University. Our concern was to investigate responsibility in its several meanings in the everyday context of household work. Our problem was first one of breaking down more finely what is meant by responsibility and then investigating children's developing understanding of responsibility in the context of situations they know well: jobs around the house. In my paper, two kinds of responsibility will be the focus: causal responsibility (the concept that the person who caused the problem should be the one to solve it), and continuing responsibility (the extent to which responsibility is still felt after a job has been delegated). I will be referring to three studies we have conducted at Macquarie University. The first is about parents' perceptions about responsibility for household tasks, the second about what children think (both reported in Goodnow et al, 1991) and the third about adolescents' notions of continuing responsibility following delegation of a domestic task(Goodnow & Warton, 1992).. Rather than examining actual participation or describing the division of domestic labour in those families, we set out in all three studies to look at perceptions and ideas about household tasks. Study 1: Parents' ideas One of the simplest ways of looking at responsibility is in the sense of feeling responsible for a task, feeling that it is your job. To measure how responsible family members felt about a series of tasks, we used the technique of asking parents and children to say whether they could ask another member of the family to take over a job for them. We were interested in how their sense of responsibility for a task varied according to generation (parent/ child), gender and type of task. An interseting finding from this study was the importance of causal responsibility in parents' justifications of why they would or would not ask someone else to do a task. In Study 1, we asked mothers and fathers from 44 families chosen as having a traditional domestic division of labour, how they would feel about asking each other or their teenaged child, to do a variety of jobs: some from a traditionally "female" list (eg., vacuuming), some from a traditionally "male" list (eg., mowing the lawn) and some from a potentially "neutral" list (eg., putting away your own things and putting away other people's things). Would parents ask freely, think twice but still ask, not ask and do it themselves or (a category some fathers thought we should add after pilot testing), "no need to ask, it would be done". We also asked why would they feel that way in order to understand the ideas that lead to their assuming a stronger sense of responsibility for some tasks rather than others. Task differences We were interested first in which jobs parents thought were more easily moved around than others and what were the characteristics of those jobs. A first observation is that it was generation rather than gender that was the organising principle in determining who parents would ask. They were significantly more likely to ask their partner than their teenaged child. Whether they were male or female, teenagers were considered to be more unwilling and less competent than partners. Some tasks such as shopping, cleaning the toilet, sewing, and hanging out the washing were seen as outside the competence of both both boys and girls or as inappropriate for children ie., they were seen as parents' jobs. A second finding was that four groups of tasks emerged: ¥ Male tasks for which mothers and daughters were unlikely to be asked (mow lawn, wash car, small repairs) ¥ Mothers' tasks for which fathers, sons and daughters were all unlikely to be asked (clean toilet, shop, sew) ¥ Mothers' and children's tasks (eg., vacuuming, ironing ). Fathers stood out as less likely to be asked than other family members. ¥ Open tasks. All family members likely to be asked to do these jobs (although the incidence of the mothers saying they would do the work themselves rather than asking fathers was still relatively high). Justifications The reasons why parents perceived some tasks as more "moveable" than others emerged in the justifications for their willingness (or unwillingness) to ask. The first interesting result was that justification on the grounds of gender appropriateness (eg., "It's a man's job or a woman's job") was mentioned in only 3% of answers of this fairly conservative group of parents. Instead, the reasons given were in terms of (a) competence (b) efficiency, (c) whether the job was liked or disliked, and (d) the likelihood of resistance and argument. Mowing the lawn, for instance would rarely be asked of a teenaged girl because of lack of competence. On the same grounds, teenaged boys--and many husbands-- would often not be asked to hang out clothes, cook, or shop for birthday presents. When competence could not be given as a reason, however, likes, dislikes, harmony and resistance emerged as the big issues. These were the grounds cited, for instance, when it came to not asking one's partner or teenaged child to clean a bathroom or put away someone else's things. The jobs seen as especially difficult to move-- and as resisted-- were the jobs that violate the principle of causation, that the person who caused the disorder is responsible for cleaning or restoring it, a principle at the basis of causal responsibility. To ask one's partner or child to clean up after someone else, these parents report, is both "wrong in principle" and useless", since the other person will without doubt resist. Causal responsibility is also involved in the distinction evident in the responses of middle-class Anglo Australian mothers between tasks that involve self-care ("your mess, your job") such as making your own bed or putting away your own clothes, and other- care jobs such as setting the table, preparing food for the family or feeding the pet. Mothers are far more willing to ask a child's brother or sister to take over an other-care than a self- care task. If one child had not made her bed, for example, mothers in one study (Goodnow & Delaney, 1989) reported that they would do it themselves rather than ask another child to do it. Adults, both male and female, use this notion of causal responsibility in their decisions about the division of labour between them in the home, and this is more evident for some tasks than for others(Goodnow & Bowes, in press). In a study of "sharing" couples, we found that washing the car and ironing were overwhelmingly done on a "to each our own" basis, the causal responsibility justification being, "She drives the car" or "They're his shirts". Study 2: Children's ideas In Study 2, a parallel study to the one on parents and teenagers, we asked 8, 11 and 14-year-olds about possible redistribution within the family of four jobs: cleaning the bathtub or basin, making the bed, washing the car and setting the table. These jobs were chosen because they were tasks in which children might be expected to participate and which represented the four types of task that had emerged in the study of parents. The children were asked to say if they felt they could ask the mother, father, sister or brother in a hypothetical family to do the job for them if it was their job and they were unable to do it for some reason. Similar results were found to those in the adult study. Tasks varied in terms of degree of responsibility or ownership that the children felt and differences were tied to causal responsibility. A self-task such as making their bed was considered more a task that could not be given away than setting the table, a task done for others. The tasks differed as well in who they might be delegated to: mothers and sisters but not fathers and brothers were considered suitable substitutes for cleaning in the bathroom, whereas fathers or brothers but not mothers or sisters could be asked to wash the car. Setting the table, on the other hand, could be moved to a brother or sister; parents were less likely to be considered for taking over this task. Setting the table was also seen more as a children's job than as either a boys' or a girls' job. The distinction made by the mothers between self-care and other- care jobs is the same one that children show a clear awareness of themselves. Children see it as less appropriate to give away a self-care job than an other-care job (Warton & Goodnow, 1990) and by the age of eight know that payment for self-care jobs such as making the bed are as ludicrous as "being paid to wash your face". On the other hand, being paid for jobs that are not self- care tasks, such as washing the car, is seen as reasonable by children of eight. The distinction is not so clear at younger age levels: six-year-olds think it quite acceptable, indeed desirable, that they be paid to make their beds. This provides some evidence for a developmental progression in children's ideas about causal responsibility. Other evidence comes from studies by Shure(1968) and who found that children as young as four showed some awareness of this principle, preferring other children who did clean up the mess they had made to children who left it for others to do. Warton & Goodnow (1991) found that 8-year-olds regard it as unfair to be asked to put away their brother's or sister's belongings or to tidy up toys alone after two have played. Study 3: Adolescents ideas about continuing responsibility Another kind of responsibility is implicit in "ownership" of a job and that is the continung responsibility that the owner of the job has over its satisfactory completion even after it has been delegated to someone else. Again, household work was the context in which understanding of continuing responsibility was investigated (Goodnow & Warton, 1992). Sixty-six adolescents, boys and girls, aged 14 and 18 years, were interviewed about their ideas of continuing responsibility in the hypothetical situation of having asked a sibling to do one of their household jobs. Not only were they asked about whose responsibility it was if the job was not done, but they were also asked questions about appropriate ways to remind, supervise and check on a task given to somebody else. In contrast to the legal definition of responsibility which holds the original owner of the task liable, these adolescents saw the obligation resting with both the person who asked and the person who accepted the task. Degree of perceived responsibility for both parties varied, however, according to whether or not reminders were given and problems anticipated. The young people's comments indicated that they would take into account how easy a job was to forget, how important it was to them that the job was done, and the seriousness of the consequences if the job was not completed. In addition, the study found that adolescents develop an increasingly more detailed set of judgments about appropriate and inappropriate ways to act, especially towards others. Ideas that are linked to continuing responsibility include not nagging or being too "picky" when someone is doing a favour, and using requests rather than orders when delegating work. Discussion The three studies reported here offer some new ways to understand and study developing responsibility in children. Two kinds of responsibility or obligation linked to "ownership" of household work tasks were presented: causal responsibility (the person who created the problem should fix it) and continuing responsibility(the extent to which obligation is still felt after a job has been delegated). The distinction between self-care and other-care tasks evident in the responses of both adults and children in these studies offers a promising way of exploring further children's developing sense of responsibility. In our culture, children are given self-care tasks first, tasks such as making their beds and keeping their rooms tidy. Even at teenage level, their involvement in other- care tasks, work which benefits the whole family, is small(Goodnow et al., 1991). We suspect that in other socioeconomic and cultural groups, this individualistic approach may be less marked and that responsibility may extend beyond self-care to a wider range of other-care tasks. The other issue that has emerged from these studies is the importance of children's understanding of the relationships and associated social rules that are part of responsibility. This was particularly evident in the rules and procedures that adolescents thought appropriate for delegation of tasks within the family. This is an area that would benifit from further research. Another way of thinking about responsibility is in terms of self- regulation. When we talk about children being responsible for certain tasks, we often mean that they will do those tasks without needing payment and without being reminded. 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