According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 27% of men aged between 20 and 34 still live with their parents (and 18% of women). Bernard Salt, the Australian social demographer, has commented that because these men are at home "tied to the apron strings" for longer they are likely to have unrealistic expectations of their partners.
Well, if someone was going to pick up all your clothes, wash them for you, iron them, cook, take care of the bills, etc, allowing you to focus on all your ME time, why wouldn't you sponge off your parents?!
I've no problem with young people who stay at home with their parents if they contribute to the running of the household, but it seems these days that so many mothers love having their "little" boys still around and thus do everything for them to encourage them to stay. And so when they do finally enter the brave new world without Mummy to clean up after them their wives/girlfriends are quite likely going to get a bit of a rude shock as to how much mothering these guys are expecting...
I, on the other hand, have determined that I will raise a son who will be helpful to his wife. This means I am starting to train him now. The effort to get him to tidy up after himself is ongoing (and likely to be for many years yet - he does afterall have a messy mother who is trying to clean up her act), but I've been wondering about other things that I need to teach him around the house. We've also got to start focusing on him cleaning up his room - he doesn't really own that yet because we've mostly done it for him so far - so he needs to learn/work out where things will go when they are put away.
He loves to help with baking, but I'm starting to think of other cooking things he might be able to help with - such as topping and tailing beans for dinner, and other stuff like that, as long as the knife is blunt enough not to do too much damage... He wants to help with the washing up too, but at this stage I don't want all our dishes broken... perhaps I need to separate out all the plastics so he can learn to do those. He also loves vacuuming, so I normally let him have a go once I've done the main part.
When did you start to get your kids to help around the house? What are some other things that a not-necessarily-careful 5 year old might be able to help out with?





