A few years ago, Coppens and his colleagues interviewed Mexican-American moms in Watsonville, Calif., about how often their children do chores. They then compared these moms’ responses with those from middle-class families in Silicon Valley with European ancestry.
Although there was a lot a variation within each culture, Coppens says, a clear pattern emerged: “The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average,” he says. “And they were doing so, much, much more voluntarily.”
So what on earth is these parents’ secret?
This may come as a surprise, but over and over again, researchers said one thing is key: embracing the power of toddlers.
Yes, I’m talking about 1- to 3-year-olds who, in our culture, are more often associated with the term “terrible” than “helpful.”
If you look around the world — whether the parents are hunting and gathering in Ecuador, raising cattle in the Himalayas or developing software in Silicon Valley — their toddlers have a few things in common.
The first is tantrums. Yes, toddler tantrums are pretty much unavoidable, no matter where you live, the ethnographic record shows.
But the second commonality is more positive: “Toddlers are very eager to be helpful,” says David Lancy, an anthropologist at Utah State University, who documented this universality in his new book, Anthropology Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers.
Toddlers are born assistants. Need help sweeping up the kitchen? Rinsing a dish? Or cracking an egg? No worries. Toddlers Inc. will be there on the double.
In one study, 20-month-olds actually stopped playing with a new toy and walked across the room to help an adult pick up something from the floor.
Even small tasks, like raking leaves, can give kids a sense of pride and accomplishment, psychologists say. The key is to be sure the tasks make a real contribution to the household and aren’t just “mock work.”
And they didn’t need a reward for their assistance. In fact, the toddlers were less likely to help a second time if they were given a toy afterward, the study found.
“Children appear to have an intrinsic motivation to help,” psychologists Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello concluded. “And extrinsic rewards seem to undermine it.”
No one understands exactly why toddlers have this innate desire to be helpful (or why rewards diminish it). But it could stem from their strong drive to be around their family, says Rebeca Mejia-Arauz, a psychologist at ITESO University in Guadalajara.
“I think this point is really key,” she says. “Doing things with other people makes them happy and is important for their emotional development. They see what their mom or siblings are doing, and they want to do it.”
Messy toddler today, helpful kid later?
Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let’s face reality here. At first, they really can’t do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess.
For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler’s offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says.
“We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I’d rather do it myself than having them helping,’ ” she says.
In many instances, Western moms tell the toddlers to go and play while they do the chores, she says.
But moms with indigenous heritage often do the exact opposite.
First, they give toddlers the opportunity to watch the chores as often as possible. “They invite them over by saying something like, 'Come, my child, and help me while I wash the dishes,’ ” Mejia-Arauz says.
Then if the child wants to participate, “they are welcome,” she says, even if it means going more slowly or if the mom has to redo the task.
“For example, one mom told us: 'When my toddler was doing the dishes, at the beginning, the water was all over the place, but I would allow my son to the dishes because that’s how he learned,’ ” she says.
The moms see it as an investment, Mejia-Arauz says: Encourage the messy, incompetent toddler who really wants to do the dishes now, and over time, he’ll turn into the competent 7-year-old who still wants to help.
Research supports this hypothesis, says the University of New Hampshire’s Andrew Coppens. “Early opportunities to collaborate with parents likely sets off a developmental trajectory that leads to children voluntarily helping and pitching in at home,” he says.
Or another way to look at it is: If you tell a child enough times, “No, you’re not involved in this chore,” eventually they will believe you.
If you give young children a chance to help around the house, psychologists say, you might be surprised by what they can learn. At home in a small village near Valladolid, Mexico, Alondra, 3, peels a mango. Her sister Susy is by her side.