Mom...I mean, Dad?

As I was driving my eight-year-old daughter to school the other morning, she asked, "Mom?…I mean, Dad? Why can't you go back to work and let Mommy stay home with me like in normal families." I told her that she was culturally trapped in the '50's, that this was the 21^st century so get used to it. "And besides, honey, if I went back to work and Mommy stayed home, you'd be missing me instead."

"No I wouldn't," she said.

Okay. I know that this is the wave of the future, where antediluvian gender roles are dissolving and where intelligent parents are able to decide rationally which of them is best suited for Primary Care Giving (PCG) and which for Helping to Build the New Economy (that is, if they have that luxury at all). But it isn't the future yet and it doesn't plan on being the future for a while. Even our children are still hidebound by a Leave-It-To-Beaver worldview (and mine doesn't even watch TV, much less Nick At Night). Being the dad who stays at home still requires an explanation.

My personal explanation is simple. Our daughter needed a full time parent. We were financially in a position to afford that. We weighed our mutual aptitudes for the role and observed that, of the two of us, I was the better cook and my wife was the better business head. I say this fully aware that most parents in this wonderfully productive country don’t have that option.

Of course it isn't that simple at all. Emotionally, it is hard for me, a man having grown up in a culture where men went to work and women raised the kids. Likewise I sensed in my interviews with other PCG dads the same vague awkwardness about the subject. Men don't like to talk about it. We'll do it but shut up. When I was a vice president at the largest advertising agency in the world, working on big, manly accounts like Lockheed and Coke and McDonalds, I loved to expound on my career. Now when I'm asked what I do, I cop out and say I'm retired. Otherwise I feel like it would be admitting I listen to Barbra Streisand. Which I do not.

So What Do You Do…Really?

The question I hear most is, "What are your future plans?" To which I reply it's to raise my offspring and then die gasping from exhaustion in shallow water like a salmon (one of nature's more brilliant reproductive strategies I've always thought). I recommend a similar smart-ass retort to any such presumptive question. My mother was never asked what her future plans were. Shopping. And maybe lunch and a movie.

What's the hardest part of being the male PCG? Multi-tasking. This was the most common response I got from my interviews. I've read research (or maybe my wife told me) that men are far less capable of multi-tasking than women. I regard with awe mothers who can resolve a dispute between their children over who was sitting next to whom, while never losing a beat in their conversation with an adult. I usually forget why I was heading for the refrigerator when my daughter asks me where her shoes are.

Yet there are upsides to being Mr. Mom. Number One is the Cloak of Sanctity you get to wear by being the dad who hangs up his guns for his children. Mothers still don't get that credit (unfortunately). When you're a guy, people treat you as though you're some kind of hero. Women's eyes get all big and moist with admiration as they tell me, "Aw, that's so sweet!" (It's too bad I'm not a single dad.) Unless those women are raising kids AND holding down a job, in which case they say, "Get back to work, you bum."

But I am working. Really.

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something heretical. Balance in your kids' lives isn't all that helpful...or realistic. Especially when it comes to raising and teaching children. Allow me to clarify.

Self-help balance

There are several types of balance. There’s the kind they talk about in the self-help publishing industry (Seven Habits of a Balanced Life, Fourteen Rules to Achieving Perfect Harmony, Twelve Steps to Not Falling on Your Face, etc.) in which you are exhorted not to work too hard but make time for your family and, of course, there’s that all-important time for yourself. Well, I’m not going to argue with that. Who would? Why do we need endless shelves of 214 page books on the subject? (I usually get the whole point of these books off the fly leaf blurb and thus save $29.95). It might be refreshing, for a change, to see an iconoclastic title like Eleven Steps to Working Yourself to Death. But if we face the truth, the fact is that in this economy and this country, if you don’t work yourself to death, you won’t survive. It’s easy to say you put your kids ahead of your career, but if you have to take the Red Eye to Atlanta to show smiley face to a cranky client to keep his business, you’ll miss The School Holiday Pageant.

Philosophical balance

And there’s the balance that Buddhists, Sufis, and Stoics talk about in which you find the true path to enlightenment up the Middle Way. My 10^th Grade biology teacher, Mr. Vogel, used to say, “Everything in Moderation,” daily pointing out to us that there was a lethal dose of everything. I’m sure all you parents ankle-deep in soccer mud can agree with that. Too much soccer affects homework. Too much homework affects play. Too much play affects TV watching time. Balance is good. Not too much, not too little. Just right. Aahhhh! But the truth is some things will kill you in even the tiniest doses, like anthrax bacilli. And if you want to be good at something like soccer or ballet or neuralopthamology, you’ll have to sacrifice a lot of Q time with the family.

Balance the universe on your nose

But the balance that I think is the greatest bogus is the popular notion that everything in the universe exists in equilibrium. We teach our children about ecology and make them hyper-sensitive about the death of pill bugs and draining malarial infested swamps (excuse me, “wetlands”). They learn that any action we take upsets the delicate “balance” of nature. So we should take no action at all. We teach them to accept all ideas as valid or merely alternate points of view, so we should not challenge anyone’s ideas or opinions. That would be impolite. And politeness is another artifact of this theory of a universe in equilibrium. We’re polite when others are rude to us, or thoughtless, or incompetent, or boorish because we seek to preserve the social calm. We don’t want to cause any trouble.

This is the idea of balance that I really think is hooey. The universe exists in anything but equilibrium. It is a seething mass of unpredictable events. What I’m talking about is the kind of disequilibrium that turns your disruptive fourth grader into a model fifth grader in one summer; or that allows a couple of decent, loving, conscientious school teachers to raise a Kip Kinkle to kill them and several classmates. If we could time-lapse our kids for eighteen years, we’d observe them erupting out of smooth, adorable little babies like Incredible Hulks. It’s frightening. No one knows what kind of adults they’ll become. There are stories of well-balanced, supportive families unleashing wackos on the world (look at Franz Kafka!). And there are other stories of incredibly dysfunctional families giving us well-adjusted, productive citizens. There’s no way to predict it.

Balance is for the dead

When your kids learn to ride a bicycle, they aren’t learning balance, they’re learning to make hundreds of tiny muscular adjustments to keep from falling over. It isn’t the gyroscopic balance of the bike that keeps it upright. If you think otherwise, try pushing a riderless bike away from you and see how long it stays up. In the same way, as they grow and learn, they are making millions of tiny muscular and neural adjustments everyday to cope with the hurricane of forces acting on them. It’s nerve -wracking. Balance implies a state of rest, like a three legged stool. But our kids never rest. We never rest. Life is just too unpredictable to rest. Rest when you’re dead.

Chaos under our noses

Yesterday Cheryl and Ellen witnessed a tiny example of what I’m talking about. Outside one of our windows was a beautiful spider’s web. A small, leggy bug was struggling in the web. Soon the resident spider came down to the bug and the girls thought they would be entertained with the grisly sight of the helpless insect being sucked dry. Instead, the spider proceeded to cut the bug free of the web. She worked diligently and carefully, cutting away all the threads imprisoning the bug, finally lowering the kicking thing down to the sill where it scampered away to freedom. None of us knew what to make of this phenomenon. Spiders aren’t altruistic. They aren’t Buddhists. They are relentless, merciless predators. That’s where they fit into the ecosystem. Yet here was a spider acting like an arthropodic St. Francis…like Miss Spider. That’s why the universe isn’t in equilibrium. This kind of stuff probably happens constantly right under our noses and we don’t even notice it. Maybe this spider will spread a new religion of kindness to all spiders. Maybe she’ll die of misguided starvation.

If we really want to teach our kids how to cope with life, we should teach them to scorn the idea of a balanced world and be ready for the unpredictable. There are no eco-systems, only eco-chaos. El Nino is the norm not the exception. Divorce happens to the nicest families. The NASDAQ takes a dive for no reason. The next Ice Age could start any time. And a man who smokes two packs a day lives to be a hundred.

Balance is bunk. Chaos rules.

MY HAND TO GOD

Talking to our kids about religion

When my daughter was four she had an interesting theological theory which she shared with us one bedtime: “God lives on top of our roof. He has very sharp teeth and wings, and He scares all the bad things away from our family.” When she told us this, I looked at her mom and said, “Well, she didn’t get it from me!”

I have to confess that we haven’t been a very religious family. When we were kids, Ellen’s mom and I did live in religious families—at least we went to church every Sunday. But after we each grew up left home, we just stopped going-- except when we were visiting our parents and on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t out of any sanctimonious (irony intended) aversion to religion per se; it was mostly just from laziness. I sense that many of you out there know what I’m talking about.

I also think many of you out there who have children might have felt the pressure from your own parents and society to give your kids a religious grounding. There seems to be some universal belief in a need to believe in something, even if it’s only atheism. Left to themselves, your children may develop their own religion based on a chupacabra-like deity with sharp teeth that lives on your roof. And who knows where that kind of free-thinking will lead.

Occasionally, Ellen's mom and I discussed the idea of going back to church and taking our daughter; you know, to expose her to religion. Unfortunately, that subject also made us face our personal attitudes about religion. Being a parent does that to you; it makes you wonder about God and all. I guess we could have just started drinking the Koolaid of organized religion again, letting someone else do the thinking for us. Or we could have dealt with the notion of faith directly ourselves. The first course was tempting, especially to two people as lazy as we were. It’s so comforting to be told what to think and what to believe. But the second had its appeal, too; do-it-yourself religious training. If home-schooling has become a widely accepted practice, why not home-churching?

Home-Churching

Of course this is not something I would advise for everyone. For one thing, our family has a direct line to God. It’s kind of cool, actually. We ask and God answers. Not everybody enjoys this access, so this gives us an advantage. For another thing, home-churching, like home-schooling takes an awful lot of attention. It’s hard enough just trying to balance work, parenting, sports, homework, robotics, swing-dancing, and all the other extra-curricular activities you’ve over-extended your child with. But to worry about the spiritual evolution of your children, too? Come on! There have to be some priorities! You have to save time for your kids to be kids.

But if you do have the time and you do enjoy a direct line to God, then why not home-church your kids? You have an unbelievable amount of power over their thinking. You can raise them as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, Nondenominationists, Atheists, Scientologists, Zoroastrians, Animists, Shintoists, Pastafarians, or even Episcopalians. It’s your choice. Your have powers that are almost--dare I say it--God-like. You can even make up your own religion; there’s lots of precedent. God doesn’t care. How do I know that? See paragraph 5.

Here’s how it works: My daughter and I talk about God frequently. We don’t need to do it in a church or a temple. We can start talking about God in the checkout line at Home Depot, or in a Starbucks, or in the living room during The Simpsons. They are all hallowed places. Ellen usually brings it up by proposing her own, current view of what she thinks the nature of God is. Then I counter with my own current view. And we compare them. I have an advantage, of course, in that I’ve got some years on her and have an anecdotal religious education myself. I’ve also read the Bible all the way through (twice—both Testaments), as well as Thomas Aquinas, Milton, Augustine, the Koran, the complete works of Thomas Moore and Joseph Campbell, and the DK Big Book of World Religions. But I don’t bludgeon her with this weighty bibliography (well, I guess sometimes I do). The nature of our discourse is between equals, weighing theological hypotheses and testing them against logic and personal experience. It’s all so civilized--especially over hot chocolate. But well-endowed as I am with years of religious dilittantery, my daughter has come up with some remarkably original ways to think about God, ways that would have undoubtedly have got her burned as a heretic in sixteenth century Europe.

The result of all this daddy-daughter discourse is interesting. Having moved beyond her saber-toothed conception of God from when she was four, my daughter has developed a quite complex and sophisticated way of thinking about the Deity, even to the point of being able to carry two contradictory notions in her head at the same time; something it takes seminary students four years to accomplish. She’s done a lot more thinking about it than I had at her age, and so she is far more along in her spiritual evolution than I was. And she’s done it all through home-churching.

Be nice to each other, or I’ll stop this car!

I’m not worried about my daughter’s immortal soul. (Her mother may be worried, but I’m not.) I doubt very seriously if her religious auto-didacticism will lead down the road to idol worship and human sacrifice. And if I sense tendencies in that direction, I’m confident I can gently nudge her away from that slippery slope. The thing is, you don’t need to go to church or temple or mosque to instill a strong moral code in your children. All cultures, with or without religions, have clearly defined moral imperatives. And the amazing coincidence is that most of those imperatives are identical, even when separated by time and impassable oceans. And the most common imperative of all is, be nice to each other.

One of the most spiritually evolved and morally good men I knew was my grandfather, who was ironically a militant agnostic; he only went to church twice in his life (to his own wedding and then his daughter’s). But his favorite intellectual pastime was to argue about the existence of God. The funny thing is, I learned more about what I myself believe by talking to him than by all the other formal religious education I got during the rest of my life. In fact, I’ve known many spiritually evolved agnostics over the years. And all of them have, in varying ways, strengthened my own faith where my more devout friends have not. I know that drives all of them crazy.

So taking my own experience into consideration, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t a bad way to introduce my own child to her spiritual side. We didn’t need to take her to church. We didn’t need to give her strict religious catechism. We didn’t need to make sure that her beliefs were in accordance with some Federally recognized orthodox doctrine. We just needed to talk to her in a Socratic dialog, with give and take. If she herself eventually arrived at a relationship with God--or even a conclusion that she didn’t believe in God--then it would be with stronger conviction than just taking somebody’s word for it. And she’d be able to talk directly to God without an intermediary. Or not. If she wanted.

I’m just saying…

Of course, this isn’t to say that taking your kids to church or temple or mosque is not a good way, too. It’s obviously up to the individual family. As I grew up, I actually enjoyed the theater of the Episcopal Mass; the poetic Elizabethan language of the liturgy, the smell of incense, the plainsong, and the vaulting church architecture with its clerestories naves, apses, and narthexes (narthices?). It was all so medieval. Sitting there in church, kicking the pew in front of me, I used to daydream about knights, snorting warhorses, clanging swords, spurting blood, siege engines, and castles--all the while my dad assuming I was contemplating the beatific mysteries of the Holy Trinity. (Ha! Fooled him!) Church was thumping great entertainment and put you in a salvation mood.

But, as my mother so cynically put it, “Now, what’s all this got to do with Jesus?”

So, I’m just saying, however you introduce your kids to the spiritual realm, you should do it consciously, deliberately. It’s important. It’s important even if it’s ultimately for them to reject religion (as is their God-given right as Americans), so when and if they do reject religion, they’ll know what it is they are rejecting. And when and if they do accept [deity-of-your-choice-here] as their personal savior, they’ll know who it is they are accepting. It’s also important to do this for your kids so you can refresh your own attitude toward God. You know; the teacher being the taught, and all that.

It’s worked for me. In conversations with my daughter and my family, through reading, and overthinking, this is what I’ve gleaned so far:

1. God does not micromanage the universe.
2. God wants us to be nice to each other.
3. God is not a magician or a trickster.
4. Whenever you express love through an act of kindness, or receive love through someone else’s act of kindness, you are feeling the hand of God caressing your face.

Metaphorically, of course.

That’s it. At least for me. It isn’t any more complicated than that. How do I know? God told me.

Here endeth the epistle.

DISORDERLY CONDUCT

Is it just me or have you also noticed that our children no longer just have different personalities? No, they have a “disorder” or a “deficit” or “cooties”. Especially if the personalities are, shall we say, difficult to live with. When I was my daughter’s age I was considered the class clown (oh, don’t act so surprised!). I’m afraid now I’d be diagnosed with ADHD, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. A Double whammy, both a deficit and a disorder!

ADHD, the New Bratiness

ADHD is when your child (or you adults can have it, too) can’t seem to concentrate. He gets bored easily with things that don’t interest him. He may become disruptive and act out. He has trouble controlling himself. He isn’t always “nice.” You get notes from his teacher. It’s a disorder that millions of Americans suffer from, kids and their parents. And it’s been classified as an official disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (so you’d better cut your employees some slack when they can’t get that report to you because they’ve spent all day shopping on E-Bay…they’re not goofing off, they’re coping with a debilitating illness).

I heard one expert say that people afflicted with ADHD are unable to stay focused enough to complete boring tasks, but if they are doing something they enjoy doing they can concentrate for hours. My question is, is this really a disorder? To me it sounds like complete sanity.

I know my daughter's mother and I are not alone in having been asked to have our daughter tested. We’ve compared notes with our fellow parents and her teachers. Nearly everyone in our daughter’s class was also nudged about this. So we had her tested. She had two days worth of tests by professional psychologists with actual PhD’s from accredited institutions. A week later we got back voluminous reports and incomprehensible scores which informed us that she may show tendencies toward attention deficit and that further evaluation may be warranted.

May have? Further evaluation? I want to know now, is she or isn’t she?

These things take time.

This is when I found out that there is no such thing yet as a quick test for ADHD…you know, like when you stick your arm in that machine at the pharmacy and it tells you your blood pressure and your likelihood of having a learning disability?

Altogether I’ve consulted with four psychologists and a psychiatric nurse who specializes in ADHD. Unlike me, all of them were reluctant to leap to conclusions. They were maddeningly responsible. All tried to calm me down and point out that such a diagnosis often takes months of old-fashioned observation and study (family dynamics, mental health history, and stuff). And all said the same symptoms could be masking other things; you know, all the more boring and unfashionable disorders like depression or anxiety. (Actually the psychiatric nurse wasn’t so reticent about her opinion about whether Ellen had it, “Pffft. You want to see kids with real ADHD? Come to my clinic.”)

Lengthy evaluations? I don’t have time for that!. My child may have a disorder!

Of course the big question on my child-of-the-sixties brain was DRUGS. I talked to a lot of parents (who shall, for obvious reasons, remain nameless) who swore by Ritalin. “Difference between night and day,” was a phrase that came to mind frequently. “Suddenly he could concentrate,” was another. “Helped her get through the day…and me, too,” was still another. Sounded good. Get us some of that good stuff.

Gimme That Drug, NOW!

But then that high pitched voice in my head (no, not that one, the other one) spoke up and started nagging me. “Drugs bad. Drugs bad. Just Say No. Redrum. Redrum.,“ and some other stuff I couldn’t quite make out. But I did stop to think (something that does happen occasionally to us ADHD sufferers) about the implications of putting my daughter on long term meds. Reading on about Ritalin I learned that it’s related to amphetamines (on its mother's side). Hmm. But everyone I talked to says it’s not addictive. Hmm again. It seems I distinctly remember some popular wisdom in the eighties that described another psychotropic drug as being non-addictive. What was that drug? Anyway, not important.

Then I read about a five year University of Maryland study of some 200,000 kids in which they found a 300% increase in the prescription of Ritalin. This drug was being given to 2 and 3 year olds for crying out loud (literally). And you can’t get much more ADHD than a typical 3 year old. The study also revealed that the drug was usually prescribed by pediatricians on the recommendation of the children’s teachers. A New York Times article (NY Times, Feb 20, 2000) on the subject said, “… experts speculated that the reasons might include the reluctance of HMOs and subsidized medical care programs to pay for counseling or other treatments that do not involve drugs, the pressures from parents and schools to diagnose children with attention disorders, the rise of drugs as the preferred mode of treatment and the fact that most prescriptions in subsidized settings are written by primary care doctors rather than specialists.”

I read in the medical description of methylphenidate hydrochloride (as Ritalin is known to its close friends) from the online drug database, RXList, and found these possible side-effects, “Nervousness and insomnia are the most common adverse reactions but are usually controlled by reducing dosage and omitting the drug in the afternoon or evening. Other reactions include hypersensitivity (including skin rash, urticaria, fever, arthralgia, exfoliative dermatitis, erythema multiforme with histopathological findings of necrotizing vasculitis, and thrombocytopenic purpura); anorexia; nausea; dizziness; palpitations; headache; dyskinesia; drowsiness; blood pressure and pulse changes, both up and down; tachycardia; angina; cardiac arrhythmia; abdominal pain; weight loss during prolonged therapy. There have been rare reports of Tourette's syndrome. Toxic psychosis has been reported” Hm, “toxic psychosis?” That doesn’t sound good. Though I’ve been assured that Ritalin is not addictive, I read on, “Careful supervision is required during withdrawal from abusive use, since severe depression may occur. “ But it’s not addictive.

Oh, I just remembered the name of that other drug in the eighties that promised increased performance without the risk of addiction. Cocaine.

But…let’s assume that popular (as opposed to professional) belief about Ritalin as being non-addictive is true and that it can help our kids’ performance. What about when they get more active in sports and want to take a little something to enhance their performance there? Steroids for instance. What do we say then? “Well, honey, that’s completely different.” You see where I’m going here.

Something’s not right. Is there really a sudden epidemic of ADHD going on? The DEA (a really credible source) estimates that 15% of American school children are on Ritalin, a 700% increase in the last decade. But research to date indicates that the incidence of actual ADHD in the population is somewhere between 3 and 5%. Which would mean that 5 to 3 times as many kids are on Ritalin as really need it. Did I say there would be no math?

What could be causing this seeming over-prescription of Ritalin? It couldn’t be a conspiracy of the drug companies in collusion with the HMOs. What would they have to gain by it?

You could have it. Your neighbor could have it.

Then it hit me. Maybe ADHD has an evolutionary advantage.

I happened to see this entertaining video by this cool and funny psychologist, Daniel Amen (isn’t that a great name?) who can instantly spot an ADHD sufferer just by looking at the inside of their car (long term evaluation, my foot!) He’s that good. According to Dr. Amen, there are several clear signs of ADHD. An incomplete list runs like this:

1. A sense of underachievement (That’s me!)
2. Poor organizational skills (It’s like he’s known me all my life!)
3. Chronic procrastination (Me again)
4. Uncompleted projects (But it was raining!)
5. Poor handwriting (I was pre-med in college for just that reason)
6. Tires easily (yawn)
7. Tactlessness (have you gained weight?)
8. Easily distracted, short attention span (what was this list for?)
9. Impulsive (let’s sell the house!)
10. Restless, fidgety (yeah, yeah, yeah)
11. Difficulty waking up (I’m not a morning person)
12. Trouble getting to sleep (I’m a night person)
13. Performs worse under stress (I thought it was just me!)
14. Often creative, intelligent, successful (something I’d like to fix in my life, I can tell you)
15. Frequent use of parentheses (uh….)
16. The list goes on (ad infinitum)

Holy Ubiquity, Batman! That could mean any of us! What’s more, Dr. Amen says, many ADHD sufferers tend to be very creative, brilliant, accomplished people. Einstein, it is speculated, had ADHD. And Mozart. But, says, Dr. Amen, think of how much more creative and successful they could have been if they’d had the tools (drugs) to manage their ADHDness. Okay, Dr. Amen, I’m thinking. That’s probably why Einstein was so stupid he couldn’t reconcile his theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics. Of course! It’s all so simple now. Thank you, Ritalin!

But… But… Dr. Amen, sir, what if it’s the ADHDness itself that is responsible for creativity? Does anybody really know? Getting back to my original theme, is it really a disorder after all? What if it’s actually a survival advantage in this frenetic culture we’ve built around ourselves? I mean, if it’s really getting more widespread, it must have some useful purpose. The gene that causes sickle-cell anemia, for instance, was also important in combating malaria. Maybe the gene that is responsible for ADHD was important in discovering general relativity and writing the Jupiter Symphony. And maybe it’s the rest of the non-ADHD population that should be taking drugs to keep up. (Just kidding, officer, it’s my Tourette’s Syndrome talking.)

Years ago, I read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, Childhood's End, about what happens when the human race experiences an evolutionary leap in a single generation. The new children were almost a different species; smarter, quicker, more creative, and without patience for the slowness of the old world. Maybe that’s what we’re experiencing now. The world’s environment is rapidly changing. Why should we be surprised if our species adapts to it? And haven’t you noticed that the kids seem to be getting taller?

But I never finished the novel. So I don’t know what happens.

MAKING ALLOWANCES

Allowances. How many kids get them? How much? What for?

Once we decided to start, Cheryl and I have enjoyed an endless debate about how much allowance to give our seven-year-old. I know, all the rest of you had this same discussion when you were first dating, as well as sensible debates on whether to buy them a car, on how much TV is allowed, etc. We, on the other hand, never even thought we’d have kids. Anyway, the crux of it, as usual, stemmed from how each of us was raised (…and I seemed to have turned out just fine, thank you very much!)

A number of policies have been tried. First we decided to give a set, weekly amount and required that Ellen do a minimum number of chores as “part of the family.” That didn’t work. Then we tried giving her a set amount to invest in high-tech, start-up ventures. That didn’t work. Then we tried an ala carte system where she had a menu of chores, so she could earn as much or as little as she wants depending on how industrious she felt. Didn't work. So I asked around.

I talked to a couple of dozen fellow parents. I didn’t say that I did the definitive study of allowance policies of all families in turn-of-the-century America; I’m still waiting for my grant to come in. So while the results are largely anecdotal, they nevertheless enable me to leap to many unsubstantiated conclusions.

Three different styles of allowance-giving

As in our family, some parents pay an allowance for services rendered; things like making the bed, emptying the dishwasher, spaying the cat, etc. Others have a kind of entitlement policy in place where the child gets an allowance just for being part of the family (but they’d still better do their chores, or else). Some kids are paid a lump sum based on the aggregate of all chores and demeanor during the week, like a salary. And a few don’t give allowances at all, either not having thought of it, or with a militant attitude that money is the symbol of a corrupt capitalist system.

Why?

When asked my group of experts what the purpose of the allowance was, nearly all answered it was to make their child understand the value of money. Of course, The International Monetary Fund itself doesn’t understand the value of money, but, by God, we’ve got to cling to the hope that somewhere, some child may actually hit upon it. I like to think of us all participating in the National Monetary Comprehension Project.

How much?

One formula that is very popular is the child’s age times a dollar (per week). This seems to me about as rational as that old formula from the ‘eighties, that your salary should be your age times a thousand. Other parents just set an arbitrary amount based, apparently, on the Depression Era dollar (when, by jingo, you could see a Tom Mix pitchur-show, buy a Baby Ruth bar and a bottle of sa’sparilla, and still have change left over from your quarter). I was puzzled by this formula and how it fit in with an understanding of the value of money. But that doesn’t mean it was wrong.

Few, however, seem to be aware of Minimum Wage statutes mandating at least $7.95 per hour in our state. In our family we have estimated the maximum amount of time it should take to make one’s bed (2 minutes 11 seconds) and prorated that in compliance with the minimum wage (29 cents). If there is any danger to the job (roof work, for instance) or heavy equipment involved, we pay more. We don’t pay for diversions while the bed is being made, like lining up the Beanie Babies, finding Waldo, etc. since these activities, while estimable, do not enhance the domestic efficiency of the family unit. And since Cheryl or I don’t want to rule out a Supreme Court nomination at some future date, we of course pay all state and federal employment taxes and mandated benefits, as well as ascertain the citizenship of our child.

What is to be done with all this new-found wealth?

Quite a few parents work closely with their children on payday: Some to save, some to charity, some for college (yeah, right, like fifty cents a week's going to fill that bucket), and some to spend . There is a lot of goal-setting. I think the kids of these families have the best chance of learning to use resources wisely and of becoming responsible members of the community. But that's no fun.

However, a minority of those I surveyed (including us) just let their kids spend their allowance on any junk they wanted. I even encourage my daughter to spend all of it immediately, just like we do. As a result she has learned the true meaning of the term “rip off.” This summer, while at Knott’s Berry Farm, I irresponsibly let her take all four dollars she had in her pink, vinyl, Hello Kitty Wallet (almost a week’s salary) and play one of those games where you get to throw two beanbags at a pyramid of bottles in the hopes of “winning” a big green Yoshi. She tossed her beanbags and missed, then turned back to me with a look of loss and indignation on her face and exclaimed, “That was a rip-off!” Exactly. Tuition well spent.

The Dark Uses of the Allowance Principle

Two mothers I talked to use allowance in a frighteningly diabolical and coercive way. And I love it. They have instituted the idea of a “negative allowance” to manipulate desired behavior. It’s a domestic version of the political principle that Lazare Carnot invented during the French Revolution, “Let war pay for itself.”

For example, two brothers can decide to have a fight in the car on the way to school, but they have to pay for it—literally. A fight costs fifty cents, payable immediately. It’s all turned into a nice little business deal. I think this is revolutionary. And patriotic to boot. It emphasizes freedom, but at a price. Both moms claim that the change in behavior in their children has been dramatic. Or at least their kids haven’t figured out yet that sometimes fighting is worth fifty cents.

The best way to do it

What is the right way to handle the allowance issue? Well, I’m no professional--at least in terms of child-rearing--but it seems to me, out of my extensive study, that the best way is to do what your own parents did with you. And you turned out just fine, didn't you? Either that or do the exact opposite. So they won’t turn out like you!