Chameleon Magazine

 🧹🥔💡Orlando Bird set off a nostalgia bomb when he wondered aloud whether modern kids are still expected to pull their weight around the house. Once upon a time, offspring were essentially unpaid staff—loading dishwashers, feeding pets, peeling potatoes, even lighting the family hearth. Now? A recent study suggests the only thing today’s youngsters are lifting is their thumbs on TikTok.

🪣 When Childhood Meant Chores

Barry Gibbs remembers school holidays that came with to-do lists from Mum, and, crucially, those jobs actually got done. Sylvia Jones recalls growing up in a household of nine children, where everyone had their daily assignments: cleaning fire grates, setting new fires, peeling potatoes, feeding the dog, or hanging out enough bed sheets to rival the sails of a small fleet. The result? An army of tidy, responsible adults who still beam with pride at their parents’ tough-love training.

Compare that to today’s single-child households, where persuading a teenager to stack the dishwasher feels like negotiating a Middle East ceasefire.

🏰 Upstairs, Downstairs (But Mostly Mum)

Not all big households were hives of productivity. Olivia Pethybridge recalls her father—the 9th Lord Hawke—scribbling daily “task lists” for her mother before heading to the House of Lords. On his return, he’d dutifully check which ones were completed. Answer? None. The aristocratic children, it seems, didn’t pick up mops either. If you want a picture of domestic inequality, imagine Lord Hawke delegating while the bed sheets piled up, his daughters perfecting the art of polite avoidance.

🍼 Chores or Character Building?

So which is it—were chores essential character-building, or just Victorian cosplay in modern kitchens? The older generation insists scrubbing, peeling, and fire-lighting forged resilience. Today’s parents, it seems, are more likely to shrug and say: “It’s easier if I just do it myself.”

Maybe the truth is somewhere in between: children who learn to pitch in don’t just save their parents’ sanity—they also become adults who know how to change a lightbulb without calling a task app.

🔥 Challenges 🔥

Are modern kids missing out on the discipline and teamwork chores once taught—or are we romanticising child labour in the kitchen? Should parents demand more, or just accept that the iPad generation isn’t built for peeling potatoes? Drop your takes in the blog comments. 💬⚡

👇 Comment, like, and share this post. Tell us whether your childhood chores made you who you are—or whether you’re secretly glad today’s kids are skipping the fire grate cleaning.

The best replies will feature in the next magazine issue. 📝🔥