Niamh O'Reilly

DO YOU PAY your children for helping you around the house? Or are you of the belief that unpaid chores and getting stuck in with whatever needs doing is simply part of family life and a good lesson for raising self-sufficient young people?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself recently. Should I tie my kids’ pocket money to specific chores done around the house?

Or do I give them pocket money with no strings attached, the way I received it, to let them learn about finances, while still giving them the chance to earn money for one-off gigs like hoovering/washing the car, or helping in the garden?

Whatever way you do it, pocket money for children is an expensive business. According to a recent survey, the annual cost of pocket money is €1,196 per year, an 86% increase from 2015.

Currently, my two children get €5 pocket money a week, each. They don’t get it for doing sweet FA and are expected to do the basics, like make their bed, feed the dog, clear their plates after dinner, keep their rooms tidy and so on.

Often my youngest will help with dinner prep because he loves cooking, or my eldest will help with DIY because he loves to use power tools. None of it is really set in stone, and if they don’t make their bed all week, they still get their pocket money.

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Like a lot of parents, we tend to fall into the trap of doing the majority of the household chores ourselves, because it’s quicker, and we’re so used to dividing them up between us on autopilot.

Win-win for all?

We give the kids the chance to earn extra money if there’s a big job that needs doing, like filling a skip or painting a garden fence and up until recently I thought the whole thing was a fairly decent arrangement on their end. However, I’m reliably informed that €5 per week is actually bordering on Scrooge-level stinginess, and I should, in fact, give them €1 for every year of life.

For those rates, I’d be doing a Miss Hannigan and expecting the house to shine like the top of the Chrysler building. I can assure you it’s the opposite of shiny. In fact, with both my children spending more time at home thanks to the summer holidays, the house is in bits from their couch-surfing and back-garden shenanigans, using everything from basketballs to the clothesline for their ‘games.’

So, I wondered if it wasn’t about time I shook up the pocket money situation and brought in a proper chores-for-money list, because at six and nine, they are both ready for a bit more responsibility.

I wasn’t sure how this financial experiment would play out, but took inspiration from Rob Beckett, who on a recent episode of his Parenting Hell Podcast, told his co-host Josh Widdicombe about his attempt at summer chores for his children.

Beckett, who was looking for a way to keep his kids, who are 10 and 8, busy over the summer and let them make a bit of extra money, invented a chores list with his wife for their kids to choose from.

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It sounded simple, but brilliant. Hoovering or emptying the dishwasher for a few quid, while he and his wife worked or got on with other things, seemed like a dream; only it wasn’t.

“That’s one of my kids pretending to hoover,” he wryly told Widdicombe during the episode. Essentially, the kids were up for getting paid, but nothing was getting done properly; there was often a big mess left behind, and either he or his other half had to go in and do the job anyway, making for double the work.

It had backfired, utterly.

I’ll be honest, I went into my own experiment expecting it to be a similar disaster. Half-arsed jobs, a lack of enthusiasm, cleaning the same spot on the counter for two minutes and calling it a day, rushing through tasks and leaving the grownups to clear up the mess and do the chore anyway.

But I was wrong.

What could possibly go wrong?

Our list had the usual suspects on there, and the deal was they could choose up to three per day, or none at all, but each had to be done to the parent’s satisfaction. I’m again reliably informed that my rates are fairly Scroogey. €0.50 for unloading or loading the dishwasher. €0.50 for sweeping the kitchen. Setting the table and cleaning the surfaces, €0.50. Hoover downstairs, €1. Hoover upstairs, €2 (a higher fee to reflect the increased labour of carrying the hoover up the stairs.)

Hang out the clothes on the line, €2. Walk the dog around our housing estate, €2, and because it’s the thing they both run from as if they are on fire, I stuck on a bogey chore which was to pick up the dog poop for €10, fully expecting them to refuse or throw up in disgust at the mere thought of having to do it.

After day one, I was down €11.50 for one child and €12.50 for the other.

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I feel like I’d been played. Not only had they thrown themselves into the concept of making some cold hard cash (well, digital currency on their Revolut cards) to spend on Beyblades and PlayStation games, they had, in fairness, done a really thorough job. The hoovering was spot on, and it had even been put away properly.

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The surfaces were crumb-free. The dog had a good walk, and they both called my bluff, saying they picked up after her.

If they kept this up every day, I would be bankrupt by the end of the week. Predictably, and being the pair of savvy operators they are, though, once they’d met their target and doubled their usual weekly pocket money, the chore output dropped off dramatically.

I was just delighted that I didn’t have to hoover, even if part of me felt hugely guilty watching them get stuck in with sweat pouring off their brows trying to hawk it up and down the stairs on a hot day. If nothing else, this experiment has given them a newfound respect for how tiring housework can be.

I’m left with a dilemma though. Do I tweak the list using what I’ve learned, by dramatically cutting the dog poo rate they used to fleece me, while expanding it to include even more household duties and reap the rewards of my subpar child labour rates?

Or do I go back to the hit-and-miss days of the flat rate for pocket money and the hope they will still muck in for the love of the family and forget their newfound love of capitalism?

It’s a tough choice…

Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance writer and journalist.