Children and Financial Crises

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Financial worries can be distressful to the point where they preoccupy adult thinking, hindering creativity, productivity, and peace of mind. How does this affect the children in the family? Children are sensitive to any serious situation or crisis in the family. Parents do well to share as much of the truthful aspects of a situation as the child can understand. If children are deprived of the truth, they may collect fragments of the situation, then imagine things that are far more worrisome than the truth.

Children feel honored to be taken into the confidence of their parents. When told that there won't be money for a bike like Jimmy's down the street because it will be needed for groceries, to buy oil to heat the house, or to pay for mother's medicine, the child is usually willing to forego the desired object. For most children it will be a valuable experience to learn early in life how to live within the family's financial situation.

Ronald Pitzer
Family Sociologist

Originally published in June, 1987

College of Human Ecology in cooperation with the University of Minnesota Extension Service

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