Why the Research Keeps Coming Back to Chores
The Harvard Grant Study followed 268 men for 75 years. When the researchers looked at what predicted a good adulthood, two things stood out. One was being loved. The other was something most families have quietly stopped asking their children to do.
Ask a six-year-old to clear the table and you might get a sigh. A ten-year-old might ignore you. A teenager might ask what you're paying. And somewhere in that slow retreat, researchers keep quietly picking up a pattern.
The pattern is this. Chores, the ordinary unglamorous ones most families have largely stopped asking for, turn out to be one of the sturdier predictors of how children do later on.
The Harvard Grant Study followed 268 men for more than 75 years, tracking how their early lives shaped their adulthoods. When George Vaillant, the psychiatrist who ran the study for decades, looked at what separated the men who flourished from those who didn't, two things stood out. One was being loved. The other was having done chores as a child.
Those early-chore children were more likely, in their mid-twenties, to have finished their education, to be building a career and to be in close relationships with family and friends. Children who didn't start helping around the house until they were fifteen or sixteen showed the opposite effect. Starting late, it turned out, didn't just cancel the benefit. It backfired.
The obvious doubt is that chore-giving parents might simply be different from non-chore-giving parents in dozens of other ways. Maybe the chores are a marker, not a cause. But the pattern has held up in tighter, more recent work.
In 2022, Deanna Tepper and colleagues at La Trobe University in Australia studied 207 children aged five to thirteen. They measured executive function, the mental machinery that handles working memory and impulse control. Children who regularly did self-care and family-care chores scored higher on working memory and inhibition, even after the researchers adjusted for age, gender and disability. Interestingly, looking after the family pet made no detectable difference. The jobs that mattered were the ones that contributed to other people.
That last bit is the unusual one. Almost everything else a modern child is asked to do, whether it's homework or football practice or piano, is framed as being for them. Chores are different. They're a contribution to a group. And contribution, it turns out, lands differently in the developing brain than achievement does.
Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist who has written about this, describes the difference as "me" motivation versus "we" motivation. Children who grow up with regular chores learn, almost without noticing, that their effort makes life easier for the people they live with. They start to see themselves as someone who pulls their weight. That self-image is hard to build any other way. You can't really tell a child they are helpful. They have to do helpful things.
There is also the quiet matter of pride. A child who puts the bins out every Thursday has something small and specific they are reliably good at, that the household actually depends on. That is a different kind of confidence from being praised for being clever. It's slower and less exciting, but it is also much harder to lose.
The reasons are easy to understand. Children's schedules have tightened. Homework eats the evening. Clubs fill the weekend. Asking a tired child to also clean the bathroom can feel cruel, and many parents find it faster to do the job themselves. Some tell researchers that chores feel like punishment, something they don't want to associate with family life at all.
There's a deeper reason too. The purpose of childhood has quietly shifted. A generation ago, children were part of the running of the household. Now, childhood has become closer to a long project of self-development, with every spare hour filled with something meant to be good for the child. Chores don't fit that model very well. Washing up doesn't go on a university application.
Except the research keeps suggesting it probably should.
The first is starting young. By three or four, most children want to help. They will do it badly and slowly, and it will be faster to do it yourself. Let them anyway. What they are learning isn't how to fold a tea towel. It's the idea that being useful is part of who they are.
The second is that the chore is real. A made-up task done for the family's approval isn't quite the same as feeding the rabbit, because everyone in the house can tell if the rabbit hasn't been fed. Children pick up the difference between jobs that matter and jobs invented to keep them occupied.
The third is resisting the urge to pay. There's fair evidence that tying chores to pocket money changes what they mean to a child. They stop being a contribution and become a transaction. Keep the two conversations separate. Pocket money for its own reasons, chores because they are part of living with other people.
None of this is really about making children more obedient or busy. It is closer to the opposite. Chores give a child one of the few daily experiences where their effort is visibly useful to the people they love, where nobody is measuring them, and where the reward is simply that life runs a little better for everyone.
That, it turns out, might be quite a lot.
The pattern is this. Chores, the ordinary unglamorous ones most families have largely stopped asking for, turn out to be one of the sturdier predictors of how children do later on.
The Harvard Grant Study followed 268 men for more than 75 years, tracking how their early lives shaped their adulthoods. When George Vaillant, the psychiatrist who ran the study for decades, looked at what separated the men who flourished from those who didn't, two things stood out. One was being loved. The other was having done chores as a child.
Small Jobs, Stubborn Effects
Marty Rossmann, at the University of Minnesota, looked at a different group and got a similar answer. She tracked 84 children from ages three and four into their mid-twenties, measuring the same things at four points along the way. Her clearest finding: the single best predictor of young-adult success was whether a child had been doing household tasks from age three or four.Those early-chore children were more likely, in their mid-twenties, to have finished their education, to be building a career and to be in close relationships with family and friends. Children who didn't start helping around the house until they were fifteen or sixteen showed the opposite effect. Starting late, it turned out, didn't just cancel the benefit. It backfired.
The obvious doubt is that chore-giving parents might simply be different from non-chore-giving parents in dozens of other ways. Maybe the chores are a marker, not a cause. But the pattern has held up in tighter, more recent work.
In 2022, Deanna Tepper and colleagues at La Trobe University in Australia studied 207 children aged five to thirteen. They measured executive function, the mental machinery that handles working memory and impulse control. Children who regularly did self-care and family-care chores scored higher on working memory and inhibition, even after the researchers adjusted for age, gender and disability. Interestingly, looking after the family pet made no detectable difference. The jobs that mattered were the ones that contributed to other people.
What a Chore Actually Teaches
It helps to slow down and look at what's happening when a child unloads the dishwasher. They have to remember where things go. They have to ignore the more interesting thing they'd rather be doing. They have to keep going after the novelty wears off. And they have to do a task whose reward goes mostly to someone else.That last bit is the unusual one. Almost everything else a modern child is asked to do, whether it's homework or football practice or piano, is framed as being for them. Chores are different. They're a contribution to a group. And contribution, it turns out, lands differently in the developing brain than achievement does.
Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist who has written about this, describes the difference as "me" motivation versus "we" motivation. Children who grow up with regular chores learn, almost without noticing, that their effort makes life easier for the people they live with. They start to see themselves as someone who pulls their weight. That self-image is hard to build any other way. You can't really tell a child they are helpful. They have to do helpful things.
There is also the quiet matter of pride. A child who puts the bins out every Thursday has something small and specific they are reliably good at, that the household actually depends on. That is a different kind of confidence from being praised for being clever. It's slower and less exciting, but it is also much harder to lose.
Why We've Stopped Asking
In 2014, the polling firm Braun Research surveyed American parents. Eighty-two per cent said they had done chores growing up. Only 28 per cent said they asked their own children to do them. The trend on this side of the Atlantic looks similar.The reasons are easy to understand. Children's schedules have tightened. Homework eats the evening. Clubs fill the weekend. Asking a tired child to also clean the bathroom can feel cruel, and many parents find it faster to do the job themselves. Some tell researchers that chores feel like punishment, something they don't want to associate with family life at all.
There's a deeper reason too. The purpose of childhood has quietly shifted. A generation ago, children were part of the running of the household. Now, childhood has become closer to a long project of self-development, with every spare hour filled with something meant to be good for the child. Chores don't fit that model very well. Washing up doesn't go on a university application.
Except the research keeps suggesting it probably should.
How to Start Without Making It a War
Three things seem to matter more than which specific chores you pick.The first is starting young. By three or four, most children want to help. They will do it badly and slowly, and it will be faster to do it yourself. Let them anyway. What they are learning isn't how to fold a tea towel. It's the idea that being useful is part of who they are.
The second is that the chore is real. A made-up task done for the family's approval isn't quite the same as feeding the rabbit, because everyone in the house can tell if the rabbit hasn't been fed. Children pick up the difference between jobs that matter and jobs invented to keep them occupied.
The third is resisting the urge to pay. There's fair evidence that tying chores to pocket money changes what they mean to a child. They stop being a contribution and become a transaction. Keep the two conversations separate. Pocket money for its own reasons, chores because they are part of living with other people.
None of this is really about making children more obedient or busy. It is closer to the opposite. Chores give a child one of the few daily experiences where their effort is visibly useful to the people they love, where nobody is measuring them, and where the reward is simply that life runs a little better for everyone.
That, it turns out, might be quite a lot.
Sources & Further Reading