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Anonymous
Anonymous asked in Society & CultureCultures & GroupsSenior Citizens · 3 weeks ago

Senior Citizens, when you were still living at home with parent were you expected to do many chores?

As the only daughter I was expected to do most things and some neighbours thought that my mum was very unfair to me because my brothers and all my friends were allowed to go out and do their own thing. I had to help with house work, shopping, repairing dad's socks (darning) baking, ironing etc. - you name it and I had to do it.  I wonder how many of today's youngsters do all that and I also wonder if many of today's youngsters would just refuse (and get away with it).

I had sons and daughters and they all had the same chores, no gender differences in my home.

10 Answers

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  • RICK
    Lv 7
    2 weeks ago

    Yes

    The girls did the household chores

    The boys did the outdoor chores

    Seeing as it was a farm the boys did more

  • 2 weeks ago

    I don't think it's sniveling and whining that's the way it was. My father would wake me up at night to make him a cup of tea and I pretty much waited on table at dinner time for my father and brother, "get your father the salt".  I did a lot of the grocery shopping, no car always on foot.  I was born in 1942 in London, had a very Victorian upbringing (a lot of slapping).  My kids are now in their 50s and whenever I caught myself being overbearing and bossy with them I toned it down, I didn't want them to feel the way I did.  And, in spite of the upbringing, we were taught to be respectful and not lazy, which isn't a bad way to live.

  • 2 weeks ago

    In the late 1960s and 1970s, most kids were out of the home by 18.  The boys wanted to wear their hair long and their parents wouldn't let them live at home without a haircut.  And in general, most just didn't want their parents' restrictions.  It wasn't too hard to get a job, even with long hair which was still not respectable.

  • drip
    Lv 7
    2 weeks ago

    My brother and I had chores. Really never thought I had a lot of chores or too many. Saturday’s we all got things done around the house. My brother had “man” chores such as yard work. But we both had chores to do

    I really tried to not have chores for my kids. It was more of the whole family helps out and helps each other.   Dad made dinner and the rest of us pitched on to clean up afterwards.  It is trash day, we all went around the house gathering up trash.  It is not a chore. It is the family working together to keep the house up. 

    My mother almost had a conniption when she first saw my son unloading  the dishwasher, that women’s work she said.  

  • Anonymous
    2 weeks ago

    That was probably true in very many households prior to the 1960s.  Girls were trained to be good wives and, if they did not marry, that training would be expected to be used looking after whichever parent survived the longest.  Many of my generation, and even more in my mother's generation, were trained from being very small to be the 'woman of the house' eventually, sometimes looking after parents, grandparents and unmarried brothers.

    Thankfully, those days are long behind us.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 weeks ago

    This is your past. Let go and move on, or you will never be happy. One child does chores, another doesn't. One child gets beaten regularly, the other one never is.

    You get over the past, or you never become free of the pain of it.

  • Anonymous
    3 weeks ago

    To be very honest, you sound like a self-pitying sniveling bitter ingrate.  I hope you can change your attitude.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 weeks ago

    No, but I did it anyway

  • rick
    Lv 7
    3 weeks ago

    I did the lawn mowing and snow shoveling.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 weeks ago

    Sadly that was the Victorian idea (and sometimes carried on into the 1960s)  of the daughter stays at home and helps the mother to run the home. I never forced my son to do anything when he was at home, I did request that he keep his bedroom tidy and not treat it like dump, other then that if he wanted to wash/dry dishes, wash some of his clothes then I just let him go ahead. 

    I would imagine that some youngsters today would be too busy on their computers/fancy phones to want to be bothered about helping keeping the place around them tidy. 

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