Childhood Chores Teach Responsibility
by Rowland P. Barrett, PhD
Director, Developmental Disabilities Unit
Bradley Hospital
 Chores allow children an early and sustained opportunity to
experience responsibility. Independence and self-sufficiency in
life are tied, ultimately, to mastery of two types of
responsibility: personal and social responsibility. The process
of identifying, accepting and acting to satisfy personal and
social responsibility must be learned, and children learn this
process when their parents accept the responsibility of teaching
it to them.
Some Lessons Are Easier Than Others
Most parents experience no difficulty in creating
opportunities for the development of personal responsibility in
their children. Beginning with toilet training, parents usually
assign tasks to their children that allow them to progress
toward independence, such as washing their own faces, brushing
their own teeth, dressing themselves, completing homework and
attending school. For the most part, children have no difficulty
acknowledging the existence of personal responsibilities and
accept them readily.
Parents often experience greater difficulty in developing
opportunities for their children to acquire a sense of social
responsibility. Assigning household chores is a way for parents
to teach children about social responsibility by employing the
most fundamental and easily accessible unit of society: the
family.
How Children Benefit from Chores 
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