Work Ethic

I've been reading Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  This is her auto- biography she based her series of Little House books on.   I have to say the book as a historical work is detailed, so many footnotes your head spins.  I give Pamela Smith Hill all the kudos in the world for her work on the book.

The story its self isn't anything too surprising, yes, it deviates in some significant points from the books we all know and love, but no one ever claimed those books were non-fiction.  The spirit of Laura that we all grew up with is in this story alive and well.

Perhaps the most striking part of Ms. Wilder's story and the point I've dwelled on the most in the last few days while reading it is the amount of work the children were expected to do.  Not just simple chores that take a whopping 15 minutes of the day but actual work at 5 years old and younger that was simply taken for granted they were to do.  I'm not nieve enough to believe that Ma and Pa never had to send Laura back to wash a dirty dish she missed a spot on, or sweep the kitchen floor again but somehow I got the distinct impression it wasn't often and when it happened she simply corrected her mistake and took care to avoid it in the future.

What a stark contrast from children today.  My boys do chores on a mostly regular basis, when they proclaim they should get paid I usually start requesting payment for every trip to the fridge and that nonsense stops.  The problems I can't seem to find a solution for is the 1) the attitude and 2) the poor quality of work.  Generally I just ignore the attitude, I don't really care if you are angry about picking up the dog poop, just get it done and be quiet about it.  What gets my goat -milks it and shaves it too- is the quality of the work.  I don't even realistically think they won't miss a pile here and there in the yard, but when I find six piles of fresh poo in a 20 foot radius in the dog's favorite poop zone sort of tells me they weren't really working too hard.  Sure I do inspections, but when I point out the six piles I generally get excuses and even more attitude on top of the previous bad one.  All of the arguing, inspection, and such I'd really just rather spend 15 minutes in the yard with the poop scooper myself.

When I think of the poor quality of my children's labor I can't imagine how in the world factories actually found it cheaper to hire children than adults.  Sure, they could hire 10 kids for the price of one adult but I can't see getting anywhere near the same amount or quality of work as an adult unless we loop back around to children like Laura Ingalls Wilder who had done consistent amounts of hard and important work since she was preschool age.

With Laura Ingalls Wilder in mind I hope to start demanding quality work from my children,  I hope to stiffen my backbone and plug my ears to their whining and make them come back and do the job until it is done well.  I hope to make better use of the two short sources of labor in my house to a reasonable amount (I'm not gone work them like its 1880 for Goodness sake).

I better check the booze and make sure it is well stocked.