The first argument (cheap labour) is actually a valid one. Anecdotally at least. I know a few families with multiple (e.g. 10) children who keep animals etc. as a large fraction of their income and the children help out a lot. A 4 year old can pick fruit and chase chickens. A 6 year old can peel potatoes and pick herbs. A 10 year old can fix easy mechanical problems. A 12 year old can be trusted with the younger children. Once they’re around 16, they’re pretty much adults and can take on stuff that otherwise you’d have to do.
That being said, you’re right about this being at the cost of one parent a 4⁄5 time domestic engineer. Though in the case of a farm (or in general a family type business), this is still worth the investment. Especially if you treat it as a form of retirement protection—hopefully one of your children will take over the farm once you get old and hopefully won’t kick you out.
Kids can be surprisingly useful resources at a surprisingly early age.
Kids can be surprisingly useful resources at a surprisingly early age.
On farms, as you’ve said, kids can figure out what to do and help out easily. If your work requires a lot of low-skill repetitive manual labor, kids can do that, and it can help teach them how to do your slightly higher-skill labor next year.
This does not apply if you work as an engineer, or in an office, or many other cases where specific skills contingent on mostly-finished-developing brains are required to do your work and there is no manual labor that you can offload to children. If you expect your kid to go through the standard college route, there are 22 years of waiting before they can really do anything useful to help with your labor.
The first argument (cheap labour) is actually a valid one. Anecdotally at least. I know a few families with multiple (e.g. 10) children who keep animals etc. as a large fraction of their income and the children help out a lot. A 4 year old can pick fruit and chase chickens. A 6 year old can peel potatoes and pick herbs. A 10 year old can fix easy mechanical problems. A 12 year old can be trusted with the younger children. Once they’re around 16, they’re pretty much adults and can take on stuff that otherwise you’d have to do.
That being said, you’re right about this being at the cost of one parent a 4⁄5 time domestic engineer. Though in the case of a farm (or in general a family type business), this is still worth the investment. Especially if you treat it as a form of retirement protection—hopefully one of your children will take over the farm once you get old and hopefully won’t kick you out.
Kids can be surprisingly useful resources at a surprisingly early age.
On farms, as you’ve said, kids can figure out what to do and help out easily. If your work requires a lot of low-skill repetitive manual labor, kids can do that, and it can help teach them how to do your slightly higher-skill labor next year.
This does not apply if you work as an engineer, or in an office, or many other cases where specific skills contingent on mostly-finished-developing brains are required to do your work and there is no manual labor that you can offload to children. If you expect your kid to go through the standard college route, there are 22 years of waiting before they can really do anything useful to help with your labor.