Many years ago, when our children were still fairly small, my husband was transferred to England for a couple of years and we moved en famille to set up house in a small town there. The timing of this transfer was just right. The three children, and especially the older two, were at an age when they could derive some benefit from the experience, and where I was concerned, they were old enough to give me a hand with the chores. Not that these were particularly onerous, but every little bit of help was welcome. They made their own beds (allegedly), kept their rooms tidy (supposedly), and even helped with the dusting and washing up. Where they were concerned, they were happy to pitch in, at least till the novelty wore off.
But the novelty did wear off. Worse, they were exposed to a culture where their peers were paid by their parents to do various chores, and it was not long before they began to feel put upon! We knew that it was only a matter of time before we were forced to address the problem of whether or not they should be paid for the odd jobs they did. But we were fresh out of India and still staunchly Indian in our attitudes. The thought that a mother should have to pay her child to help her was so repugnant that our children remained unpaid and fortunately they soon stopped cavilling about it.
This has always been the way in India, but for how long? Alarm bells rang faintly when I recently read an article in a magazine which advocated that children should be recompensed for the chores they did, since it would make them money wise. Not unless they earned money for work done, was the implication, would they learn financial discipline. I fully subscribe to the view that children will learn the value of money if they have to work for it, but let a child do his earning outside his own home. Far better that he should make money mowing the neighbour’s lawn instead of his parents’!
We take great pride in the fact that the fabric of the family is still strong in India. While elsewhere, such as in Britain, everything is put on a cut and dried monetary basis, our guiding philosophy is that all members of a family contribute to its welfare however they can, and each can rely on the other for sustenance and support without any quid pro quo. For a parent to pay a child a rupee or two for a job done in his own home is neither here nor there. But it could be the harbinger of an attitude that we have so far been able to avoid. If familial relationships are reduced to a materialistic level, it could spell the breakdown of the family as we know it ? and that would be a disaster.
Or am I over-reacting?
