According to a new French study, boys aged 10 to 11 perform only one household task more often than little girls. A worrying observation.
Although domestic tasks are mainly carried out by adults, children sometimes tend to participate. It depends on each family. While some parents want to let their children focus on games and their schooling, others prefer to give them responsibility at a young age and teach them new skills. A study from the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), which has just been published, looked at the distribution of domestic tasks, according to interviews carried out with 7,361 children aged 10 to 11 in 2022.
The study highlighted the two tasks most performed by children: setting or clearing the table and taking care of pets. Nine out of ten children say they carry out one of these two tasks at least occasionally. Tidying up your room is also quite common, with a quarter of children doing it every week. The tasks that concern some children, but which remain more occasional, are: helping in the kitchen or cleaning, hanging out the laundry or taking out the trash.
Several criteria are taken into account regarding the frequency of children’s participation. First of all, according to the study, it is linked to family configuration. Only children participate less than those with brothers and sisters. For activities, such as setting the table, helping with housework and taking out the trash, participation increases with the number of children. Thus, children would be in greater demand when the overall domestic workload is greater.
Large families also tend to learn fairness between brothers and sisters. Furthermore, children from single-parent families participate less frequently in chores than children living with an adult couple. This can be explained by the more limited number of tasks as well as the difficulty single parents have in mobilizing their children.
The sex of the child also seems to play a role. A difference in participation was observed between girls and boys. Girls participate more overall: out of 7 main tasks, they surpass boys in 6. If it is fairly balanced when it comes to setting or clearing the table, there are many more girls who take care of the animals and tidy their rooms. or to help with laundry, cleaning or cooking. Only one household task is more taken care of by boys: taking out the trash. Nearly 55% of them do it from time to time compared to just over 40% of girls.
This gender distribution reflects that observed in adults. “It’s a mirror of what we observe among parents, where domestic and routine tasks are mostly carried out by women,” summarizes Anne Solaz, co-author of the study. For girls, participation also varies according to social environment, which seems to influence boys less. The daughters of farmers are asked more for cooking, laundry or cleaning, while those of executives tidy their rooms more on their own.