Goal as a parent for DC to never work non-prof jobs?

[Anonymous]

I grew up blue collar so I didn't know any teens/20s who never worked 'regular' summer jobs - retail, lifeguarding, babysitting, bussing tables, etc. We did it to earn spending money and contribute to college expenses but also because it was just what we did with our time for better or worse.

Now that I am UMC and live among other UMC families, I have noticed many of the teens/20s only so something outside of school if it's 'professional' - internships, travel, volunteering, summer classes.

Is your goal as a parent for your DC to never have to work a 'menial' job? Is it a new 10%er badge of honor for your DC to never have had to work a job that didn't enrich them or is in line with what they like?

This sounds judgy but it's really not - I'm curious if some parents would find they succeeded if their DC never had to work a nothing-burger job.

[Anonymous]

Who knows we don't have kids.
But my husband and I were talking the other day about his first summer jobs. One was laying flooring at a housing development and the other was cleaning fuel tanks. They made him determined never to do hard manual labor for a living and he got serious about school (he was a goof off). He has PhD and very soft hands.

[Anonymous]

I grew up middle class in an UMC town. As a teen my brothers & I worked lots of nothingburger jobs (cashier, waiter, mowing lawns, shoveling). My UMC DH also did those jobs but his parents paid his rent during the summer he had an internship that led to his (v successful) career. I definitely noted that he had a pathway that I didn't. So, although we both think you can learn a lot about life & people by doing people-focused low wage jobs (especially waiting tables) we will likely work pretty hard to ensure our kids get college internships that track with their career interests.

[Anonymous]

Not my goal at all, I think those kinds of jobs are very beneficial to a person's development. I don't think it's a badge of honor at all, not even slightly, to avoid that kind of job. My kids do babysitting in high school with all the diaper changes and tantrums and so forth, and it's good for them.

But I want my kids to be on track for a career so that's the focus. I wouldn't want them to choose a service job over a career-oriented job.

[Anonymous]

First, I bet if you had grown up UMC back in the day, you wouldn’t have seen many more of your peers working then you do today. So, I don’t think much has changed.

That said…I grew up similarly to you and my parents just didn’t much understand how the world works. To them, you don’t take a great internship that will lead to a great career and only pays X if you can take out trash somewhere that pays 2X. I don’t blame them, but a pennywise/pound foolish approach to life.

Interestingly, live near FH and we know kids bussing tables, working at Marshall’s, etc.

[Anonymous]

I am UMC but not earning high income (highly educated but both parents in nonprofit sector). I see real value in young people working a more basic /nonprofessional job, so they appreciate that kind of hard work and have more understanding of people who work in these kinds of jobs.

In high school I was a cashier and in college I waited tables, did fast food, and did office temp work. Those were both eye opening about what my job prospects were without a college degree. And it’s also valuable to learn that there are people who are more skilled than you in other types of work, who didn’t go to college and are not going on to be a lawyer, etc.

[Anonymous]

This is a good topic for exploration. There are a lot of issues bound up into into one question.

The biggest is: is it virtuous/character building to work hard for low pay at a job that doesn't develop skills you will need for post-college employment?

A responsible, pleasant kid already possesses certain skills that can be further developed by working a customer-facing job. But they start with some skills already. I would say that the worse the job/more unhappy the customers, the more skill-building it is. But nobody really wants their kid to have a job with miserable working conditions.

Regarding the value of earning one's own money, there is a definite financial and logistical cost to making sure a teen is employable. Car access, car insurance, loss of control over vacation schedules, interference with study periods are the main factors.

My DH was from a low-income family in a poor area. His first job for pay was in 8th grade. I am from a higher-end middle class, educated family. My first paying job was after freshman year of college. Both of us earned relatively little money for our summer job efforts due to labor market conditions. My husband needed the money. I did not.

We've sort of averaged our thinking. Our oldest did two mildly credible volunteer internships this summer so he has work experience for his resume. What he does from now on is his choice. We would support him doing more volunteer work or getting a paid job.

I believe that work experience is good for teens and college students but I don't believe committing to a dumb job for little financial gain is inherently virtuous and character-building.

A hard, but not dangerous, job for good pay makes sense.

A white-collar volunteer job that lets you explore a career path is also fine.

A passion project that doesn't pay is also fine.

We talk to our kids a lot about money. My older took a lot of crap from kids who had jobs to earn spending money while he focused on school and ECs like his parents. But these kids had free cars, car insurance, and gas gifted by their parents. My younger is very admiring of a kid who has a job because he needs one. We are not sure whether younger will seek out a job. But we have explained the cost and logistics offsets.

[Anonymous]

I want to make sure my kid does work at least one menial job - even though we could afford for them to skip it.

[Anonymous]

I grew up like you and am now closer to UMC. I will consider it a failure if my child does not have at least one retail type job. I think they are essential to engaging in society.

[Anonymous]

My UMC neighbor's DD just spent the summer between senior year of hs and going to college working at Einstein's Bagels.

[Anonymous]

My DC has to do service hours. (!!) That will be menial enough.

[Anonymous]

DH started in the trades and worked his way up in a national GC company. HHI is about $1M. Both kids want to go into engineering. Both kids have summer jobs in the field. Dogs biggest pet peeve is that project engineers do not actually know how to built what they are managing. They have no idea of the order of the trades, why things work they way they do, or how work can be moved around.

So their summer jobs were as laborers on the job site. Next summer they might be allowed to specialize in a trade internship. It will be a few years before they get to work in the trailer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to make sure my kid does work at least one menial job - even though we could afford for them to skip it.

Me too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a good topic for exploration. There are a lot of issues bound up into into one question.

The biggest is: is it virtuous/character building to work hard for low pay at a job that doesn't develop skills you will need for post-college employment?

A responsible, pleasant kid already possesses certain skills that can be further developed by working a customer-facing job. But they start with some skills already. I would say that the worse the job/more unhappy the customers, the more skill-building it is. But nobody really wants their kid to have a job with miserable working conditions.

Regarding the value of earning one's own money, there is a definite financial and logistical cost to making sure a teen is employable. Car access, car insurance, loss of control over vacation schedules, interference with study periods are the main factors.

My DH was from a low-income family in a poor area. His first job for pay was in 8th grade. I am from a higher-end middle class, educated family. My first paying job was after freshman year of college. Both of us earned relatively little money for our summer job efforts due to labor market conditions. My husband needed the money. I did not.

We've sort of averaged our thinking. Our oldest did two mildly credible volunteer internships this summer so he has work experience for his resume. What he does from now on is his choice. We would support him doing more volunteer work or getting a paid job.

I believe that work experience is good for teens and college students but I don't believe committing to a dumb job for little financial gain is inherently virtuous and character-building.

A hard, but not dangerous, job for good pay makes sense.

A white-collar volunteer job that lets you explore a career path is also fine.

A passion project that doesn't pay is also fine.

We talk to our kids a lot about money. My older took a lot of crap from kids who had jobs to earn spending money while he focused on school and ECs like his parents. But these kids had free cars, car insurance, and gas gifted by their parents. My younger is very admiring of a kid who has a job because he needs one. We are not sure whether younger will seek out a job. But we have explained the cost and logistics offsets.

My menial jobs during the summers in college didn’t really build any skills for me, but they put me environments where I was surrounded by people with completely different financial and life circumstances than me, which is priceless. Kids growing up in UMC bubbles with zero first hand knowledge, nor curiosity, about how other people live, going off to college thinking they have all the answers to society’s problems… blech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up like you and am now closer to UMC. I will consider it a failure if my child does not have at least one retail type job. I think they are essential to engaging in society.

PP. I worked a retail job (department store clerk) as my first job. I made very little over a summer.

I learned:

Employee discounts help your employer make back the pittance they pay you.

Favoritism/nepotism gets other people hours when schedules get cut.

People who say they will write a thank you for outstanding service actually don't.

You will be expected to look happy when you are not even if no customers are around.

Managers have unreasonable demands and may even throw things at you.

People steal and tag switch and by policy you must allow them to do it. You can report after but nothing will be done.

The customer satisfaction survey will be on the transaction that somehow went wrong. Mine was on the one where I was at the cash register during a crowded sale and either I or my bagger did not find and remove the theft prevention tag. That was my only transaction survey in 3 months.

You should definitely get motivated to get a better job that pays good money.

Of these, I'm not sure any of these lessons made me better off except the already logical lesson not to take a dumb job for bad pay.