Even little kids have a wage gap

[redstar826]

Girls do more housework than boys -- and they make less in allowance for what they doGender as an organizing principle for how we value labor appears to have depressingly early, yet unsurprising, roots. Boys, on average, spend two fewer hours doing household chores per week than girls do (they play two hours more). And if they live in households

Comments

[anolinde]

Thank God this has never been the case with me and my brother, but goddamn there really is no hope. =(

[redstar826]

yeah, my parents were pretty good about this stuff too. But, it was really noticeable in my neighborhood though. Neighbors would pay boys to shovel snow or do yard work while girls would get asked to baby sit. Pay for an hour of baby sitting was much lower than pay for mowing the lawn (most of the lawns around here would take about an hour to mow). I had a neighbor once come over and ask if she could pay my younger brother to mow her lawn. Despite the fact that he was too little and I know she had seen me mow our lawn before.

[xo_bumblebee]

Ugh. I remember growing up every year on Thanksgiving, me and my female cousins had to clean up after 20 adults and thus were stuck in the kitchen, working, for hours on boxing up leftovers, rinsing and washing dishes, and making sure the kitchen was spotless. I always hated being in there while my male cousins sat around watching football after dinner. Then I would get mercilessly teased by my family when I'd announce "When I have a kid, they will clean up on Thanksgiving every year, whether they are a girl or boy!"

I never understood that one. It was completely ridiculous, sexist behavior.

[the_physicist]

yeah, i've been told by my family countless times to get in the kitchen at x-mas to cook or clean up while my male cousin doesn't have to do anything other than make a mess of the place. too common.

[romp]

Oh yeah, I would leave the kitchen and go chew out the men in the family, asking it they felt there was something on the Y chromosome which made them incapable of workings in the kitchen.

ooo, still gets my heart rate up!

[ohmiya_sg]

This still happens to me, minus my uncle. All the boys in my generation sit on the couch and enjoy themselves.

[redstar826]

It was pretty wide-spread in the middle class community I grew up in. In my own household, my brother and I had chores we were required to do. But, we would get paid for extra stuff that went beyond our usual weekly routine. My parents just gave us a set allowance each week even if we weren't doing many chores that week. But, I knew many kids who would only get spending money depending on what chores they did.

[gambitia]

I don't feel it was that common in my own community. My parents only paid me to do special chores; for example, picking up all the fallen branches in the yard after a bad storm (nickel a branch!), or painting the house, or cleaning the gutters. When we were older, my mom would sometimes pay us to do stuff if she knew we were saving for something special or hurting for money. Like, I was in college and got slammed by car repairs that wiped out my savings, so my mom paid me to "clean the house really well" before Christmas (I felt really awful about having to take money from my parents, but having the excuse helped).

I've always been kind of uneasy with the idea of paying kids for chores. A lot of people I knew were absolutely awful to their parents on the chore front.

[anolinde]

My parents would laugh at the idea.

[the_physicist]

not surprising, but very sad.

[fenris_lorsrai]

This just make me happy I was only child of two only children so had very little gender division growing up because if they waited around on the "right" person doing it, it often didn't get done. Other than cooking, which always ended up being Mom til I was in high school and then it rotated between the three of us