Chores Without Wars
Lynn Lott and Riki Intner
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 1589792629

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

With wisdom & humor, this practical guide gives you techniques to turn Dad & Kids from Reluctant Stick-in-the-Muds into Enthusiastic Team Players. You & your house cleaner will love this one!

One of the single mothers with whom I raised my kids, used to have a hilarious Parthian shot, that is, as her kids were dashing off to the next important apex in their lives, leaving their home chores undone, she would yell: “on your way to the Olympics why don't you take out the garbage?” She & I would chuckle wryly about one of the seven wonders of the parenting world: how your children can achieve great things & still act like royalty about housework.

...“It is not unusual for family members to maintain traditional values that interfere with their making changes. Values are unconscious decisions all of us made as young children about the way we think things are supposed to be... [and] are usually black-and-white decisions about what we think is right or wrong, good or bad. Since we made these basic decisions before we were five, we were unaware that we were deciding. We believed that what was happening in our families was how the world should be...Values (beliefs about the way things should be) are the last things we change.”

If is a big word in this little book: If you grew up with traditional values...If you believe that men are the “breadwinners” and women are the “homemakers”...If you were expected to do as you were told...If jobs were assigned by your parents who told you what to do...If your family divided chores by sex, age, or some other arbitrary method....If your parents told you to go out and play and not to worry...

“...begin by telling yourself that helping with work around the house is everybody's job...who is part of the problem must be part of the solution...dads, moms, grandparents, little kids, big kids, roommates...” There is no quarter given in this lively, polite & serious instructional book about the battle of class and caste, always masked by those wimp words: housework.

Back in the “good old days” of my childhood, chores were assigned by gender. Thus there were brothers laying about like heirs-apparent while little Cinderella hauled coal from the cellar, made beds & laundered linens; set tables, cleared meals & did the dishes. None of that was what men did.

So when it came time to train my children to be useful members of a household did I succeed? Not entirely. Oh, they both learnt the regular stuff under duress but did they do it willingly? Without being nagged did they clean bathrooms, pick up, take out the garbage, etc.? No.

I wish I'd had this little book - when I look through my journals of those years, I was a prime target for what Lynn Lott and Riki Intner have to teach about how to turn my family from slothful enemies to agreeable allies.

During the '70s I lived in communes & some of our fiercest political struggles were about housework; its dearth or obsession. So much so that one collection of idealists disbanded over the Cooks Don't Wash Their Dishes Bull. We all could have used such a book as Chores Without Wars! This is one useful collection of exercises, examples & techniques.

It's just as useful for flat/roommates - imagine Chores Without Wars as the Hoyle of Housework! Rules by which everyone can abide, it'll definitely make for pleasanter co-habitation among harried humans. Enjoy!

With Foreword by Jane Nelson, co-author of: Positive Discipline for Preschoolers; Positive Discipline for Blended Families; Positive Discipline for Teenagers; Positive Discipline A-Z and many more.
(Updated 04/18/06)

Rebecca