While hard work in other contexts is generally regarded as a virtue, family work--the necessary, hands-on labor of sustaining life by feeding , clothing, and sheltering a family--has become the work no one wants to do. Housework is also a major source of contention between the sexes. One study found that six months into marriage, disagreement over allocation of household chores was the top source of conflict between husband and wife, and it remained so after five years.
We Must Leave the Ease of Eden to Follow the Savior
When Adam and Eve left the garden, they exchanged an existence sustained without effort for a life grounded in hard work. When family members work together in the right spirit, a foundation of caring and commitment grows out of their shared experience. The most ordinary tasks, like fixing meals or doing laundry, hold great potential for connecting us to those we serve and with whom we serve.
Prosaic Work Connects People and Changes Hearts
Family work is prosaic work--commonplace, even tedious or dull. But these small, everyday events combine to form the character of a week, a month, a year, and eventually a lifetime. The daily work of feeding, clothing, and sheltering others has the power to transform us spiritually as we transform others physically. Said Elder Russell M. Nelson: "The home is the great laboratory of love. There the raw chemicals of selfishness and greed are melded in the crucible of cooperation to yield compassionate concern and love for another.
Prosaic Work Was Once the Norm
- The changing work of fathers-Men used to learn the trade of their fathers and took pride in doing what they "were called to do." Because men's tradition of working with their fathers changed providing for one's family came to mean bringing home a paycheck to purchase goods and services rather than performing physical tasks of feeding, clothing, and sheltering family members.
- The changing work of mothers-The work of mothers hasn't changed but how it's done has. Women were told that applying methods of factory and business management at home world ease their burdens and raise the status of their work by "professionalizing it." Surprisingly, the proposed innovations did neither. Machines tended to replace what husbands did. Older children went to school and to jobs. This left mothers with a longer workday and tasks like shopping and driving children around was added. Work, once enjoyed alongside family and friends, began to feel lonely, boring, and monotonous.
- The changing work of children-Children used to help alongside the family in the work to be done. Recent time-use studies show that today's children do minimal housework, and the little they do is mostly for themselves, such as cleaning their own rooms or doing their own laundry.
Parents Do Not Need a Perfect System for Doing Chores
- Work that unifies hearts is "not after the manner of men."
- Parents should seek an approach based on "attentive love."
All Family Members Are Vital to Family Work
- Children can learn to take responsibility for family work
- Mothers set the household tone for family work
- Fathers set the example for participation in household chores
Family Work Becomes a Joyful Blessing When Not Seen as a Burden
The daily rituals of family work are the Lord's gift and blessing to all people and cultures, providing daily opportunities for parents to teach while working alongside their children, for husbands to draw closer to their wives, and for siblings to bond while they work together to serve the family. Daily rituals of cooking, packing lunches, washing dishes, making beds, folding laundry, weeding gardens, sweeping floors, and countless other prosaic tasks are the invisible glue that can bind families together. Instead of asking how to make such work go away, parents should ask how to use it to increase love and joy in their families.
From the textbook, Successful Marriages and Families, Hawkins, Alan J., Dollahite, David C., & Draper, Thomas W., 2012.
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