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

[Anonymous]

I found my "menial" high school and college jobs to be a lot of fun. In fact, even when I started my first job, I still worked the Sunday brunch shift for awhile. I love working with people and I think waitressing gave me incredible customer service skills that have benefitted me throughout my career. I feel like a lot of young people in the workplace, because of COVID or social media or whatever, have no idea how to interact with people. I don't want my kids to be like that.

[Anonymous]

NP here. I'm surprised by the word choice of "menial job." That phrase being thrown around here and the comfort in using it, is a bit shocking to me. You are that confident in deciding? And you are confident that your viewed is shared?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. I'm surprised by the word choice of "menial job." That phrase being thrown around here and the comfort in using it, is a bit shocking to me. You are that confident in deciding? And you are confident that your viewed is shared?

Me too. I think "menial" jobs are like fetching coffee or making copies in an office if you have other skills. I don't think food service or retail or especially not manual labor are menial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

It’s not your job to get your adult son or daughter an internship. What does that say about your child that he needs his parents to work “very hard” to get him an internship?

I had an internship at the state attorney general’s office. I interviewed for it and got it on my own. It wouldn’t have been the same if my father had called his friend and got me the internship.

I also worked part time as a waitress in a large family owned restaurant. I worked in the pub section and it was one of my best summers ever.

You misunderstood - we are not "getting" our kids internships - they are proud & don't want our help (which I might disagree with; most networking is useful & pretty widespread, but we are respectful of their drive). At no point did either my DH's parents or mine secure us any type of internship or job. I don't know if I think that's as much of a badge of honor as you do, but congrats on your AG internship! I am "working pretty hard" to ensure that our kids can DO internships by paying for rent/expenses if the internship is unpaid, etc. Our oldest this summer is working both a low wage job for their college & an unpaid internship. We did not require this & would likely have emphasized the latter as it might lead to job prospects. But, we have spoken to our kids about how much we both valued our time in service jobs as a way of learning people skills. So our oldest has surprised us (and their peers, very few of whom work for the college) by choosing this work.

One other thing I would note - I grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb & as a teen in the 80s, all of my friends had jobs from the trust funders to the kids who needed to hand their paychecks over to their parents. As a lot of other folks have commented, it was a blast to work together & very social. We would close the grocery store or restaurant & then go party together every night. I worked from the time I was 14 (which was the earliest you could get a job in MA at that time) through college, although of course I babysat from the time I was 10. I also worked part time throughout grad school. Hard work does teach you time management & aforementioned people skills; however, I do think kids these days have many more commitments than we did in the way back machine. All about balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Not necessarily!!! It’s very reflective of family values. My neighbors across the street live in a 3M home, both doctors, their college aged daughter spends her summer babysitting and working as a lifeguard when she is home from college and has completed any internships!! Their son “works” as well- he buses tables at a local restaurant and walks dogs. Both kids seem to like having their own spending money and I love the values that imbues!! Our other friends live in an incredible community out in Middleburg and their high school age son is a handyman in their neighborhood, he works at the local Mathnasium as a tutor and also power washes, washes windows and more for extra cash. It depends on the family!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is spending $50,000 per year per child by the time they are in 2nd grade (tuition, EC, enrichment activities).
Why on God's green earth would I have them wash dishes for a few thousand dollars per summer?
Crappy jobs are not the only place where they can learn work ethic, people skills, compassion, etc.

Where are your kids learning those skills?

Exactly! It’s ok to not want them to wash dishes and other “crappy jobs” as you wrote, but where are they learning the skills instead??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also grew up like you. I absolutely want my kids to do some "regular" jobs. I want them to question the value of interning ie working for free. I never did that. I couldn't afford to.

+1. It might sound dumb but they need to develop appreciation for this type of work and the people who do it. I don’t want them to see service workers as less than them. It also will help them to appreciate the value in going into a professional job and earning real money someday.

I feel this way too. I think there’s value to both types of experiences and will make my kids have at least one minimum wage job at some point.

+1

I’m an attorney, but I started out at a fast casual restaurant in high school where I did everything from food prep and cashier to mopping floors and scrubbing toilets before closing down at night. I’ve also babysat kids, managed golf course reservations, and worked at the front desk of a spa.

I absolutely think kids should do these types of jobs because it gives them perspective of how hard this work can be and what it’s like working with the public. I want my kids to have some grit and ability to take on tasks that aren’t always pleasant and later they can also do the fancy internships and such. But handing an UMC life to your kids on a platter won’t teach them to appreciate hard work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This!! There is HUGE value getting UMC and UC kids out of their bubble of people just like them. A menial low wage job not only exposes them to others of different socioeconomic status and situations, but putting them in a position where they work alongside, or even under a manager or in customer service to those “below” them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is spending $50,000 per year per child by the time they are in 2nd grade (tuition, EC, enrichment activities).
Why on God's green earth would I have them wash dishes for a few thousand dollars per summer?
Crappy jobs are not the only place where they can learn work ethic, people skills, compassion, etc.

Where are your kids learning those skills?

Exactly! It’s ok to not want them to wash dishes and other “crappy jobs” as you wrote, but where are they learning the skills instead??

At your mums house

[Anonymous]

Grew up lower middle class and 1% now. Was just thinking of my incoming college freshman’s friend who has never worked. Hasn’t even done volunteer work, like CIT.

I was trying to think of other boys who never worked and there are a few. Can’t remember with older kid’s friends. None of these kids are wealthiest, though I’m sure that’s true for some.

I think it’s so weird and unfortunate. Will make it harder to get a job. We expected our kids to work, at the very least over the summer.

[Anonymous]

Also ^^ just reading thread and I think my oldest got two great college internships because he had a decent work history with several jobs.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it matters much. My father never “let” me have a retail job or similar, he said my job was to study and vacations were for resting. I only had a short job taking care of the youngest ones (a group of 5-6 year olds) in the cast of a musical theatre show. In college, i worked tutoring hs students here and there, just because I wanted. My dh took a gap year before college and worked full time in a bicycle shop, in which he worked most summers during HS too. Both of us ended up having similar, professional careers, grad school for both, and have similar work ethic.

My kids have worked only once, in a children’s chorus, singing in christmas in a mall (lol). They got payed good money, it was like 5 years ago and still have it. If thwy want to work they’ll work. We don’t have a requirement.

[Anonymous]

Lolz all these umc whites contemplating letting their kids do minimum wage jobs to build resilience yet have daddy’s law firm to fall back on when they flunk out of school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. I'm surprised by the word choice of "menial job." That phrase being thrown around here and the comfort in using it, is a bit shocking to me. You are that confident in deciding? And you are confident that your viewed is shared?

I chose to ignore it because I think it has the potential to derail the thread

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is spending $50,000 per year per child by the time they are in 2nd grade (tuition, EC, enrichment activities).
Why on God's green earth would I have them wash dishes for a few thousand dollars per summer?
Crappy jobs are not the only place where they can learn work ethic, people skills, compassion, etc.

Where are your kids learning those skills?

Exactly! It’s ok to not want them to wash dishes and other “crappy jobs” as you wrote, but where are they learning the skills instead??

If you are seriously asking a question, I will seriously answer:
they can learn work ethic by helping to build a house with Habitat for Humanity;
they can learn compassion by translating for migrants trying to enroll their own children into school;
they can learn people skills by working as a receptionist at my firm and offering coffee and an apology to clients who are pissed that they have to wait 90 seconds to meet me.
And guess what? In these environments, they won't be sexually harassed or be made to feel stupid because they have a low rank.