Lana Hirschowitz pictured with her husband and son.

After years of doting on our kids hand and foot it’s almost a blessing to have the time come when they can pull their weight and start doing some of the chores around the house. Or is it?

Are childhood chores part of handling the responsibility of a family and getting ready for the long slog that comes with being an adult? Do they teach respect or do they foster contempt? Is it fair to ask kids to do the work you’ve taken on in your own home or is it just something they have to suck up because they’re too young to decide otherwise?

I had a hard time juggling the pros and cons in my head and with my husband before settling on an answer for my own son. And no doubt you’ll be horrified to know I decided against giving him chores as a kid.

While I agree everyone has to take a certain amount of responsibility in a household, all responsibility is not equal. Even now that my son is a teen he doesn’t have the same responsibilities or rights as his father and I do. He cannot make the decisions, he cannot call the shots, he cannot pay the mortgage (which is a real downer) and he doesn’t have to do the laundry.

Sure he has to be a productive member of the home and he has to take his plate to the sink after dinner and make his bed in the morning. He also has to respect being part of a family and what that entails but he doesn’t have to keep the house clean.

He is not a spoiled brat, nor is he a sloth. He is helpful around the house and he’s never said no to a request for assistance when I’ve needed it, but he doesn’t have any chores allocated to him other than sorting the socks. Quite frankly his socks look identical to his dad’s so I actually couldn’t do it even if I tried.

His only job as a child, is to be a child.

I’ve heard it so many times from so many people, and nowhere more so than online, where people tell me about the “good old days” when you left the house at dawn to play on the streets, when you walked to the park by yourselves, when a childhood was in fact a childhood and you were just kids at the park without an iPhone and with no responsibilities and worries.

Remember the stories about how you came home only when it got dark? Is that when you started to do your chores?

I’m giving my child the childhood I want him to have, that time to be just a child. Although it involves heaps more homework than I would like.

Clinical Psychologist Dani Klein from The Space Psychotherapy agrees there is a lot to be said about allowing children to be children, adding, “there is already so much in our world today which accelerates their development into the adult world”.

She agrees, in part, that there is nothing wrong with allowing our kids to just enjoy the time when they can be looked after, play and manage the variety of issues that they are grappling with as they navigate through the childhood and adolescence of the 21st century. Which quite frankly can be a chore in itself

However she also says, “there is something to be said about some kids being overly indulged, full of privilege and mollycoddled which has an impact on their outlook on life and where there is some argument around the idea that we are breeding a generation of ‘entitled and narcissistic’ kids.”

Klein advocates a balance, “as with most aspects of parenting there is usually not an absolute”.

I still think that before long my son will be an adult and he’ll have years of chores ahead of him, of responsibility and jobs and paying taxes and keeping a house clean and his clothes laundered. But he will only have had one chance at childhood.

Like drinking, dating, voting and driving a car, there are some things you only take up in adulthood but you get really good at really fast.

So far it’s working out well for us, the house is clean(ish) and we are all happy. And really I couldn’t want anything more.

Lana Hirschowitz is a blogger, writer and reformed toast lover. You can follow her on Facebook.