Growing up I thought that I always had to do more chores than my sister. I also thought that my parents gave her all the easy chores like, sweeping the kitchen, vacuuming the family room and basement, and sweeping off the porch. While my chores consisted of more labor. For example taking out the trash, cleaning the windows, and walking the dog. But after I read this article posted in the New York Times, I thought about my old chores and realized that my sister actually did spend more time with all of her chores and most likely worked harder than me. Although my family doesn’t fit the New York Times post perfectly, my sister did get paid more for her chores. She was already in high school so she needed money unlike a kid who is in middle school. It came as a surprise to me that 73.3% of girls have chores at home compared to the 65.3% of boys. When I thought about it I found it very fascinating how boys do less work and get more money and girls do more work and get less money. Unfortunately, It seems like that is how it is in the real world too. So if from the beginning of our lives we all worked and got paid equal maybe later in life when we start to make the real money everyone would have a fair shot at making as much as they could. Although this might not have been like all the other gender differences blogs I thought it was important to write about and for people to see.
I think that this is an interesting topic for Pat to discuss in his Gender Difference blog post. Giving more chores to girls than boys gives girls the idea that housework is what they are supposed to be doing when they are older. Although as a kid, I never had to do chores, I have noticed that different types of toys are marketed towards girls and boys. Toys for boys are usually cars or sports related while girls toys have to do with beauty and housework. An example of this would be the Easy Bake oven. This toy is marketed towards girls. Traditionally, men go off to work and women stay at home to take care of the kids and do housework. Toy companies engrave this idea into the minds of children at an early age. While I babysit my two younger cousins who are girls, they always ask me to build them a fort so that we could play house. There is always a mom and two kids and always a fight over who gets to be the Mom, forcing us to play with two Mom's. One plays with a toy vacuum pretending to clean the fort while the other makes dinner in a pretend oven. I thought about how strange this was. How could someone enjoy doing a task like vacuuming the floor so much to the point of getting in a fight over who gets to do it? Where did these two little girls get this idea? After reading Pat's post I realized that part of this comes from parents extending what they learned of women doing the work onto the children. Kids look to their parents as role models and if they see that their Mom is staying home to clean, they will want to do just the same.
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