Providing Work Opportunities for Children

Yesterday I had the chance to go to the dry-pack cannery to get some food storage.  Another family brought both their teenagers and their little kids (3 under 8?).   Somehow I became supervisor over the kids, and rather than than working at canning food myself, I looked for jobs for the children to do. Mainly, I found they were good at rolling the cans from the upstairs of the cannery down the can chute to the main level, then they carried the cans to the different canning tables so the people doing the work there wouldn't have to come get the cans.  It worked pretty well, but still there wasn't quite enough work to do.  The kids were loving it and even one of the girls said, "This is the funnest job I've ever done!"

I saw some of the adults sticking labels on the cans, and I thought, what little girl wouldn't LOVE to stick stickers on cans?  So, I took her over to the lady at that station and asked if the girl could stick on stickers.  The lady responded, "But then I won't have anything to do."  I smiled and mentioned that I'm not doing anything (canning labor) either, just "supervising" and suggested maybe she could do the same.  The little girl joined up and was able to help.

I must interject here so you don't think the woman I was talking to doesn't like kids or something.  She's a great lady with 3 of her own children and always willing to serve, so please don't think I'm criticizing her.  I just think that as a whole, as I pondered on my way home, that we get overly concerned about getting things done or looking/being productive ourselves rather than allowing children, who are often just as capable, to do it.

I know I am completely guilty of this.  For example, I could have my kids clean the bathroom, but if I do it, I'll be faster, do a better job, and won't have to hear the whining!  But, when I do that, I'm stripping away the opportunity for the kids to serve and learn.

So my goal from this experience is to remember to let kids help!  We need to create positive work experiences for children.  We need to work with them, and surely their attitude toward work will be positive.

The State of Working-Class Men

I almost just "pinned" this, but thought I'd better save a few of the quotes from The No Good, Very Bad Outlook for the Working-Class American Man:

• Work, for men, means more than money: It connects them to their communities, makes them more attractive as mates and more successful as spouses, and is a linchpin of their self-esteem. When they don’t work, their role in the community tends to wither, harming the places where they live as well as themselves. Their family lives suffer, too. More and more often, less-educated men are strangers to marriage.

• Both men and women have suffered from the disappearance of well-paying mid-skilled jobs in factories and offices. But they have responded very differently. “Women have been up-skilling very rapidly,” said MIT’s Autor, “whereas men have been much, much less successful in adapting.” Women have responded to the labor market’s increased preference for brains over brawn by streaming through college and into the workforce—one of the great successes of the U.S. economy. Men’s rate of completing college has barely budged since the late 1970s.
• To women, men who either can’t or don’t earn a decent living are less necessary and desirable as mates; they’re just another mouth to feed. This helps to explain why rates of out-of-wedlock childbirth have risen to hitherto unimaginable heights among the less educated. Causality also flows in the opposite direction. The very fact of being married brings men a premium in their earnings, research shows, and makes them steadier workers, presumably because they have more stability at home. “Marriage is an institution that makes men more responsible in their pursuit of work and in their work-related duties,”
• Low-earning men are decreasingly able to form stable families. That, in turn, harms their children and communities. “Social capital disintegrates as you have a combination of drop in participation in the labor force and the disintegration of marriage,
• In 1970, more than three-fourths of men, no matter how much they earned, had wives; men at the bottom of the earnings scale were only slightly more likely to be single than were men at the top. Today, nearly half of the low-earning men are single, versus only a seventh of highly paid men.
• Family structure, in short, has become both a leading cause and a primary casualty of an emerging class divide. At the top are families with two married earners, two college degrees, and kids who never question that their future includes a college degree and a good job; at the bottom, families with one (female) earner, no college, no marriage, and kids who grow up isolated from the world of work and higher education. And the two worlds are drifting apart.

This is really sobering, not just the economic side of it, but what it's doing to the family.

What I learned from building a fence

I've been thinking lately about the things we pass on to our kids.  I've typically been in the camp that we choose our actions/reactions, and it doesn't matter so much how we are raised.  However, I think I'm realizing how much example really does influence our children whether we know it or not. 

For instance, if your parents were yellers, but you know it's not very nice and something you don't want to do, then you don't do it.  Right?  Maybe not.  I think people may not want to be yellers, but when it comes down to it, in certain situations, parents just don't know what to do, so they give in to yelling. Now luckily, yelling isn't one that I struggle with, nor did my parents, but it's easy for me to recognize and use as an example.

A difference I've noticed between my husband and me is our attitudes about work/manual labor.  I remember looking at work/service projects as fun -- you get to spend time together, talk, and get something done.  Of course it's not fun like going to an amusement park, but it feels good.  My husband, on the other hand, always kind of grumbled and overall just doesn't like it.

This last week while my husband, father, and father-in-law were working on building us a new fence (ours had blown over in our December freak wind storm), I think I learned a reason why my husband and I have such different attitudes about physical work.  While the guys were working away, I went outside to watch the progress.  Everything was taking longer than expected, and I asked, "Are we having fun yet?"  My dad responded with his normal, cheerful response and his obvious like of making things.  My father-in-law said something that made me realize this was a burden to him.  He commented that it's not fun now, but at least in the end we'd have something nice out of it.

"That's it!" I thought.  This was why my husband and I think so differently about work! His dad didn't like it, so he doesn't; my dad did like it, so I do (mostly).  I think that's a real generalization, but I do wonder how much of my husband's dislike of manual labor was passed to him from his father's attitude about it.  Would my husband like work more had his dad been more positive about it?  This really made me recognize that we probably do inadvertently pass on our attitudes to our children. 

Now, I do recognize that maybe no matter how positive my husband's father could have been about work that my husband could still not like it, but I think that the chances of our children having a more positive attitude about it will be better when we are positive ourselves.

Another thing I realized during this fence project was that I really wanted to be out there helping, but between nursing a baby and caring for three other kids, it was pretty much impossible.  At first, I felt stuck inside doing "girl stuff" like making lunch and providing ice water.  Then I realized my job of providing food and water was just as important as the work they were doing; it was just different.  Then I realized, too, some people may actually prefer to be inside taking care of the kids and making the food rather than working on the fence.  So, it wasn't so much a "girl thing" versus a "boy thing", but a personal preference.  At this time, it just makes more sense for me to be inside nursing and my husband outside hauling around 60 lb. bags of cement.

You can see in the picture that our cute little girl was out helping by handing my husband the screws.  I hope she remembers that working together can be fun and that if she likes building fences, great, but sometimes she'll have to be taking care of her babies, she can build fences later.

Why Having Someone Else Clean My House Makes Me a Better Mom

A couple years ago, a friend told me that an older neighbor mentioned to her something about the cleanliness of the house reflecting upon the woman of the house.  I think my friend and I were both a bit surprised. I haven't felt like it reflects on me (maybe I should, though), but on the family (and the amount of chaos it is in at the time).  I do like my house clean because I like it clean.  It stresses me out if it's not clean.

Anyway, during the last month before I had my baby (now almost 3 months old!), I had a 13-year old in the neighborhood come help clean my house because I knew I just wouldn't want to (or couldn't) do it.  I told her I'd also want her to come clean the first 6 weeks after the baby was born, and then again before the baby blessing.  Someone in her family would drop her off; she'd mop, vacuum, clean bathrooms, and whatever else I asked her to do.  Then, her family would pick her up when we were done.  There were some great advantages to this.

1.  My house was cleaner.  While she did her jobs (the basics usually), I did other jobs.  We got more done than had been done in a long time!  Even during the week, I'd work on jobs that didn't normally get done (like clean the grill on the fridge) instead of fretting about the regular jobs that constantly needed to be done.

2.  I was less stressed about the house.  I knew if I couldn't get to cleaning jobs during the week, she would when she came.  I was able to let go a little bit and have more fun with the kids and not worry that we/they were making messes.

3.  The house actually got really clean once a week for about an hour!

4.  She got a good experience, earned some money, and I felt good about paying her.

5.  She's a very good cleaner and even if it's not as good as I *might* do it, what she does is way better then when I *don't* do it.

The only disadvantage was that I feel like the family (kids particularly) need to be helping out around the house.  I really like it when they de-clutter and I clean.  It makes me feel like we're a team. 

So, for the most part, I love having someone help me out.  Even yesterday, I thought I might be able to stand to have more kids if I have more help!  I say, house-cleaners for all if it helps us appreciate being moms more.*   Try it, if you haven't, and tell me how it goes!


I might just have to try it for the rest of the summer!


*You know what else helps me be a happier mom?  Massages.  When I was pregnant, I got one every other week and it honestly made a world of difference.  Insurances should cover pregnancy massages.  Women would feel so much better!  (I've actually struggled with lower back pain over the years, especially during pregnancy -- including sciatica -- and the massages have made this last pregnancy the most comfortable pregnancy yet.  I've even gone to physical therapy for my SI joint in the past.  But, through the massages, I think I've identified that when my IT band is tight, then it throws out my SI joint.  Maybe?).

Update 6/5/12:  My husband mentioned last night that when he read this post that he hoped we weren't becoming "those people" who are out of touch with reality because of me and my massages and our house cleaner helper.  Then I realized we each choose our luxuries, don't we?  Just to feel better I have to say, I've never had my hair colored, never had a manicure or a pedicure, and don't even have a smart phone, a Kindle-type device, or a Wii.  I know there are PLENTY of people out there who don't have ANY of these luxuries I mention, and I think that's fine (we're way too entitled in our country).  I feel pretty blessed for having massages and a house cleaner helper.

Is Hard Work Worth It?

Middle Aged Mormon Man posted "Dig It!" about work.  I've been struggling over this with our kids lately, too.  In fact, I tracked how much time our kids spend on "stuff" during the day.  Yesterday, our 8 year old boy cleaned for 15 minutes, had 1 hour and 15 minutes of screen time, and 10 minutes of homework (then he read at bedtime, too).  Then we had dinner.  After dinner, he played a game with his dad, then when my husband tutored a neighbor boy in math, our son did some Kahn Academy.

Our son doesn't seem to be super interested in sports, so we haven't signed him up for much unless he seems really excited about it. For instance, he did baseball last summer and wants to do it again next summer.  A couple years before that, he did 1x/week, pay as you go karate.  This year, he and our 5 y.o. girl wanted to do a drama class, so they are doing that once a week, but that's it.  Oh yeah, plus there's Cub Scouts.  I wonder if I ought to have my boy in more sports?  Do we have too much free time on our hands or is free time good?  I keep hoping that when the weather gets better he'll go out and play basketball and ride his bike.

We did piano for a while, and he was a good student, and even did well, but he HATES it.  After our teacher moved away, we gave him the summer off, then I started teaching him starting at the beginning of the school year up until Christmas.  We just haven't been back.  When I realize the majority of his home time is relaxation (usually -- he did pretty well yesterday), it makes me sick, and I want him to do something more constructive with his time.  Perhaps he needs to find an instrument he likes more or he chooses the songs to play?

From the article:

I am aware that my generation had it much easier than my father's. He spent his childhood working the farm, milking cows, bailing hay, and then washing up and going to school. It was a tough life. Of course my generation had it much easier, and we had to listen to him talk about carrying 100lb bales of hay around the ranch when he was six.

The latest generation has it even easier. Part of the reason is that technology replaced some of the labor of my youth (gas mowers, weedeaters, blowers, snow blowers, have replaced push-mowers, hand trimmers, and snow shovels)  Part is because my kids and I are Suburbanites: Garden yes, farm, no. Part is because society now prohibits young people from holding difficult jobs for terrible wages. When I was a young man, several jobs I held were brutal - construction, landscaping, etc. They were good for me, and made me stronger, and put some money in my mission fund. They also gave me something to lord over my children with: "When I was your age, I spent the day swinging a pickaxe with blisters the size of quarters..." (Yeah, they hate it)

Another difficulty is that our kids just don't have much time to work anymore because societal priorities have shifted. School, hobbies, church and sports* tend to take up so much time that holding down a job would be virtually impossible.  Most everyone I knew had a job in high school. Now few of the youth I know are employed.  To make it worse, there aren't a lot of jobs out there for young people.  Sometimes I feel that we don't expect much from our youth in the area of work anymore . We figure that since they have all the other "stuff" going on they need time to relax - to "chill". So we let things slide. Chores become a Saturday-only thing - unless there is a game on Saturday, and we let them off the hook becasue they are tired, and they've had a rough week.  (Can you hear me quoting myself?) I would be afraid to tally hours the FOMLs spend laboring vs. hours spent looking at a screen.

How do your kids spend their time?  Do you force them to do music?

Why the Gender Gap Won't Go Away. Ever.

I saw a summarized version of Why the Gender Gap Won't Go Away. Ever. over on LAF/Beautiful Womanhood the other day.  Honestly, I didn't make it through the original article because it is quite long, but I did read the summary on LAF.  I remember, I think it was in a stats class, or perhaps it was an international-development-type class, discussing why women earn less per dollar than men.  It all made a lot of sense. This article also explains why.

Here's just a snippet:

Here’s what the authors found: right after graduation, men and women had nearly identical earnings and working hours. Over the next ten years, however, women fell way behind. Survey questions revealed three reasons for this. First and least important, men had taken more finance courses and received better grades in those courses, while women had taken more marketing classes. Second, women had more career interruptions. Third and most important, mothers worked fewer hours. “The careers of MBA mothers slow down substantially within a few years of first birth,” the authors wrote. Though 90 percent of women were employed full-time and year-round immediately following graduation, that was the case with only 80 percent five years out, 70 percent nine years out, and 62 percent ten or more years out—and only about half of women with children were working full-time ten years after graduation. By contrast, almost all the male grads were working full-time and year-round. Furthermore, MBA mothers, especially those with higher-earning spouses, “actively chose” family-friendly workplaces that would allow them to avoid long hours, even if it meant lowering their chances to climb the greasy pole.

Family Work

I've recently felt the unfairness of me, the mother, taking on the majority of the family/household responsibilities.  Aren't we a team?  Shouldn't we all be helping out?  Why are we adults trying to do all the work while the children watch t.v., then find ways after work is done to go out and entertain the children some more?  I've also wondered if I'm too prude in at least wanting my family to help out more when I see so many around me creating excessive ways to entertain their children and avoid work at home. My friend Jamie posted a link to Family Work by Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless, which very well addressed my concerns.  You might think this post is long, but the article is even longer!  I'll share my favorite excerpts -- or just go read it yourself!

. . .Caring for our large family [of 13 children] kept all of us busy most of the time. Mother was the overseer of the inside work, and Dad the outside, but I also remember seeing my father sweep floors, wash dishes, and cook meals when his help was needed. As children we often worked together, but not all at the same task. While we worked we talked, sang, quarreled, made good memories, and learned what it meant to be family members, good sons or daughters and fathers or mothers, good Americans, good Christians (emphasis added).

As a young child, I didn't know there was anything unusual about this life. . . . Working hard was what families did, what they always had done. Their work was "family work," the everyday, ordinary, hands-on labor of sustaining life that cannot be ignored--feeding one another, clothing one another, cleaning and beautifying ourselves and our surroundings. It included caring for the sick and tending to the tasks of daily life for those who could not do it for themselves. . . .


. . .When I went to graduate school, I learned that not everyone considered this pattern of family life ideal. At the university, much of what I read and heard belittled family work. . . .  One professor taught that assigning the tasks of nurturing children primarily to women was the root of women's oppression. I was told that women must be liberated from these onerous family tasks so that they might be free to work for money.

. . . Chief among these forces is the idea that because money is power, one's salary is the true indication of one's worth. Another is that the important work of the world is visible and takes place in the public sphere--in offices, factories, and government buildings. According to this ideology, if one wants to make a difference in the world, one must do it through participation in the world of paid work. . . .

Back to Eden

According to scripture, then, the Lord blessed Adam and Eve (and their descendants) with two kinds of labor that would, by the nature of the work itself, help guarantee their salvation. Both of these labors--tilling the earth for food and laboring to rear children (emphasis added)--are family work, work that sustains and nurtures members of a family from one day to the next. But there is more to consider. These labors literally could not be performed in Eden. These are the labors that ensure physical survival; thus, they became necessary only when mankind left a life-sustaining garden and entered a sphere where life was quickly overcome by death unless it was upheld by steady, continual, hard work. Undoubtedly the Lord knew that other activities associated with mortality--like study and learning or developing one's talents--would also be important. But His initial emphasis, in the form of a commandment, was on that which had the power to bring His children back into His presence, and that was family work (emphasis added).


. . .Their work was difficult, and it filled almost every day of their lives. But they recognized their family work as essential, and it was not without its compensations. It was social and was often carried out at a relaxed pace and in a playful spirit.

Yet, long before the close of the 19th century this picture of families working together was changing. People realized that early death was often related to the harshness of their daily routine. . . .

. . . [R]eforms eventually transformed work patterns throughout our culture, which in turn changed the roles of men, women, and children within the family unit.

By the turn of the century, many fathers began to earn a living away from the farm and the household. Thus, they no longer worked side by side with their children. Where a son once forged ties with his father as he was taught how to run the farm or the family business, now he could follow his father's example only by distancing himself from the daily work of the household, eventually leaving home to do his work. 

. . .Historian John Demos notes:  . . ."Now, being fully a father meant being separated from one's children for a considerable part of every working day.^"

By the 1950s fathers were gone such long hours they became guests in their own homes. The natural connection between fathers and their children was supposed to be preserved and strengthened by playing together. However, play, like work, also changed over the course of the century, becoming more structured, more costly, and less interactive.

Initially, the changing role of women in the family was more subtle because the kind of work they did remained the same. Yet how their tasks were carried out changed drastically over the 20th century, influenced by the modernization of America's factories and businesses. "Housewives" were encouraged to organize, sterilize, and modernize. Experts urged them to purchase machines to do their physical labor and told them that market-produced goods and services were superior because they freed women to do the supposedly more important work of the mind.

Women were told that applying methods of factory and business management to their homes would ease their burdens and raise the status of household work by "professionalizing" it. Surprisingly, these innovations did neither. Machines tended to replace tasks once performed by husbands and children, while mothers continued to carry out the same basic duties. Houses and wardrobes expanded, standards for cleanliness increased, and new appliances encouraged more elaborate meal preparation. More time was spent shopping and driving children to activities. With husbands at work and older children in school, care of the house and young children now fell almost exclusively to mothers, actually lengthening their work day.³ Moreover, much of a mother's work began to be done in isolation. Work that was once enjoyable because it was social became lonely, boring, and monotonous.

Even the purpose of family work was given a facelift. Once performed to nurture and care for one another, it was reduced to "housework" and was done to create "atmosphere." Since work in the home had "use value" instead of "exchange value," it remained outside the market economy and its worth became invisible. Being a mother now meant spending long hours at a type of work that society said mattered little and should be "managed" to take no time at all.

Prior to modernization, children shared much of the hard work, laboring alongside their fathers and mothers in the house and on the farm or in a family business. . .

With industrialization, children joined their families in factory work, but gradually employers split up families, often rejecting mothers and fathers in favor of the cheap labor provided by children. . . . The child labor movement was thus organized to protect the "thousands of boys and girls once employed in sweat shops and factories" from "the grasping greed of business."⁴ However, the actual changes were much more complex and the consequences more far-reaching.⁵ Child labor laws, designed to end the abuses, also ended child labor (emphasis added).

At the same time that expectations for children to work were diminishing, new fashions in child rearing dictated that children needed to have their own money and be trained to spend it wisely. Eventually, the relationship of children and work inside the family completely reversed itself: children went from economic asset to pampered consumer.

Thus, for each family member the contribution to the family became increasingly abstract and ever distant from the labor of Adam and Eve, until the work given as a blessing to the first couple had all but disappeared. Today a man feels "free" if he can avoid any kind of physical labor--actual work in the fields is left to migrant workers and illegal aliens. Meanwhile, a woman is considered "free" if she chooses a career over mothering at home, freer still if she elects not to bear children at all.

 For Our Sakes

. . .[I]t is the very things commonly disliked about family work that offer the greatest possibilities for nurturing close relationships and forging family ties. Some people dislike family work because, they say, it is mindless (emphasis added). . . .We can talk, sing, or tell stories as we work. Working side by side tends to dissolve feelings of hierarchy, making it easier for children to discuss topics of concern with their parents. Unlike play, which usually requires mental concentration as well as physical involvement, family work invites intimate conversation between parent and child.

We also tend to think of household work as menial (emphasis added), and much of it is. Yet, because it is menial, even the smallest child can make a meaningful contribution. Children can learn to fold laundry, wash windows, or sort silverware with sufficient skill to feel valued as part of the family. . . .


Another characteristic of ordinary family work that gives it such power is repetition (emphasis added). . . . However, each rendering of a task is a new invitation for all to enter the family circle.

Some people also insist that family work is demeaning (emphasis added) because it involves cleaning up after others in the most personal manner. Yet, in so doing, we observe their vulnerability and weaknesses in a way that forces us to admit that life is only possible day-to-day by the grace of God. We are also reminded of our own dependence on others who have done, and will do, such work for us. We are reminded that when we are fed, we could be hungry; when we are clean, we could be dirty; and when we are healthy and strong, we could be feeble and dependent. . . .


. . .This daily work of feeding and clothing and sheltering each other is perhaps the only opportunity all humanity has in common. Whatever the world takes from us, it cannot take away the daily maintenance needed for survival. . .  (emphasis added).

Family Work in Modern Times

. . .Families working harmoniously together at a relaxed pace is a wonderful ideal, but what about the realities of our day? Men do work away from home, and many feel out-of-step when it comes to family work. Children do go to school, and between homework and other activities do not welcome opportunities to work around the house. Whether mothers are employed outside the home or not, they often live in exhaustion, doing most of the family work without willing help. . . .

. . .Spencer W. Kimball was particularly insistent on the need to grow gardens. . . 

I hope that we understand that, while having a garden, for instance, is often useful in reducing food costs and making available delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, it does much more than this. Who can gauge the value of that special chat between daughter and Dad as they weed or water the garden? How do we evaluate the good that comes from the obvious lessons of planting, cultivating, and the eternal law of the harvest? And how do we measure the family togetherness and cooperating that must accompany successful canning? Yes, we are laying up resources in store, but perhaps the greater good is contained in the lessons of life we learn as we live providently and extend to our children their pioneer heritage. (Emphasis in original.) 

Exemplifying the Attitudes We Want Our Children to Have

. . .Until we feel about family work the way we want our children to feel about it, we will teach them nothing. If we dislike this work, they will know it. If we do not really consider it our work, they will know it. If we wish to hurry and get it out of the way or if we wish we were doing it alone so it could better meet our standards, they will know it. . . .

Refusing Technology That Interferes With Togetherness

. . . Before we accept a scientific "improvement," we should ask ourselves what we are giving up for what we will gain. . . .


Insisting Gently That Children Help


A frequent temptation in our busy lives today is to do the necessary family work by ourselves. A mother, tired from a long day of work in the office, may find it easier to do the work herself than to add the extra job of getting a family member to help. A related temptation is to make each child responsible only for his own mess, to put away his own toys, to clean his own room, to do his own laundry, and then to consider this enough family work to require of a child. When we structure work this way, we may shortchange ourselves by minimizing the potential for growing together that comes from doing the work for and with each other.

Canadian scholars Joan Grusec and Lorenzo Cohen, along with Australian Jacqueline Goodnow, compared children who did "self-care tasks" such as cleaning up their own rooms or doing their own laundry, with children who participated in "family-care tasks" such as setting the table or cleaning up a space that is shared with others. They found that it is the work one does "for others" that leads to the development of concern for others, while "work that focuses on what is one's 'own,'" does not. Other studies have also reported a positive link between household work and observed actions of helpfulness toward others. In one international study, African children who did "predominantly family-care tasks [such as] fetching wood or water, looking after siblings, running errands for parents" showed a high degree of helpfulness while "children in the Northeast United States, whose primary task in the household was to clean their own room, were the least helpful of all the children in the six cultures that were studied" (emphasis added).


Avoiding a Business Mentality at Home

. . .[F]amily work should be directed with the wisdom of a mentor who knows intimately both the task and the student, who appreciates both the limits and the possibilities of any given moment. A common error is to try to make the work "fun" with a game or contest, yet to chastise children when they become naturally playful ("off task," to our thinking). Fond family memories often center around spontaneous fun while working, like pretending to be maids, drawing pictures in spilled flour, and wrapping up in towels to scrub the floor. Another error is to reward children monetarily for their efforts. According to financial writer Grace Weinstein, "Unless you want your children to think of you as an employer and of themselves not as family members but as employees, you should think long and hard about introducing money as a motivational force. Money distorts family feeling and weakens the members' mutual support."

Working Side by Side With Our Children

I am still in awe of the power of shared participation in the simple, everyday work of sustaining life. Helping one another nurture children, care for the land, prepare food, and clean homes can bind lives together. This is the power of family work, and it is this power, available in every home, no matter how troubled, that can end the turmoil of the family, begin to change the world, and bring again Zion.

So, I think I came away with some really good things (in addition to all the quotes).

How can I make work enjoyable?  Make it social by working side by side, talking, singing, and telling stories.

I also really enjoyed the Spencer W. Kimball quote about having a garden.  It seems like the stereotypical culture in Mormondom is to have a garden, bake bread, sew cute things, have a neat house, etc., and we expect the mother to do all those things, so she ends up doing them frazzled in isolation.  But really, the primary purpose is not for the mother to learn and do those tasks, but for her to connect with her family through them.  To me then, it almost seems pointless in doing those things if there is no connection made and no one is learning.

My husband pointed out that when we work together as a family doing family tasks we teach interdependence, not independence.  Independence can be a good thing, but it can take us away from connecting with and caring or others; interdependence brings us closer together.

Related Posts:


Father Come Home
The Art of Manliness
Teaching the Doctrine on the Family