"He has some work to do first"

I heard one of the local mothers say some days ago.

There is an article in this morning's paper questioning what age children should be able to have a job for which they are paid. Now they are talking about this country, not a "third world" country where very young children do work.

In this country there are laws about how old children should be, how many hours they can work and what they have to be paid. Those laws vary from one state to another. Those laws do not apply to working in the family business either.

Growing up in a rural area we knew that the children on the farms were expected to work.  When the wheat harvest began at the end of the school year the Senior Cat knew that the eleven and twelve year old boys would not be at school. They would be at work with their fathers. They would be working very long hours. Getting the harvest in was important. The harvest was going to feed the family for the following year. The boys looked forward to working that way. They were intending to "go back on the farm". School was not considered important.

In the dairy farming area we moved to it was even more obvious. The boys were expected to help with the milking both morning and night. The girls would be feeding calves (which is more involved than most people realise) and doing other chores. 

Nobody got paid to do those things. If we, "the teacher's kids", were invited to a farm then we were expected to work too. It was part of being there. It was the way you then had time off to do something considered to be "play".  Brother Cat could drive a tractor long before he had a licence to drive a car. He could deal with the milk cans too. I could prepare calf feeds, use a scrubbing brush, stack timber on the wood heap and more.  

We never played around when we were doing these things. It was work. We understood it to be work. We knew we were not going to get paid for doing it. It just had to be done before you had "fun".  Later still, in yet another location, there were sheep and all the work associated with them, especially at shearing time.

We had our jobs at home too. Mum had us organised. She could not have been a full time teacher in a senior role unless she had us organised to do so many of the usual household tasks. There was a chart on the fridge so that everyone, even the Senior Cat, knew whose turn it was to do what. Even "swapping around" was strongly discouraged. We were not "paid" to do any of this - but our Friday sixpence or (later) shilling would be withheld if the work was not done. My brother and I had to do something extra in order to get the money for the collection plate on Sunday. 

Here in the city many children never have any sort of paid employment and it is obvious some do very little to help at home. Others are expected to work, especially in family run businesses. Across the road the two boys of the paediatrician and her husband do have regular jobs to do. It is what will make H..., the older of the two, come across and put my bin out and then bring it in again - without being asked. It is something he knows he is expected to do - just as he does theirs. It's a little thing perhaps but he had just come home from school the other day when I went to do it. He ran across the road and told me, "That's my job Cat."

He's going to be a good citizen. He knows work needs to be done.  I can pay him with a "thank you".