Parlor Profiles: Dairy Families Talk About Their Lives

The Role of Children on the Farm

To Work or Not to Work?

Many parents in the study relied a lot on their children for help in operating their farms. Some young children even held very responsible roles. One 10 year-old, for example, does all the evening milking for the family, while a 12-year-old in another family keeps all the barn records.

But four families had an opposing view—their children do not work at all on the farm. These parents felt that school, extracurricular activities and friends were important to their children’s development at this stage in their lives. So the parents chose not to involve their children in farm work at all.

The question of whether children should do farm work faced most families. Of the 17 families in the study, 15 had children. (In three of those families, the children were infants or pre-schoolers and too young to work.)

For many of the families, it was important that the whole family be involved in the dairy operation. Comments like, “On a dairy farm it has to be; here it takes everyone,” and “Every one of us provides labor for the farm,” are examples of how parents felt. In many cases, the children are just expected to work on the farm (see box) and there appears to be little negotiation about it. “They are expected to get their chores done, and with athletics, it’s not always easy so it kind of falls on whoever is here. If you don’t practice or play that night, it’s your turn...”

Can They Handle It?

It’s important that parents give careful consideration to their children’s abilities and the developmental stage they have reached when establishing work responsibilities. Is the job you ask your child to do something that he or she is mature enough to handle? Has your child reached the stage where he or she has the skills to do a particular job or do it safely? It’s just not advisable, for example, for young children to hold positions of extreme responsibility.

Raising the Bar Too High?

Fathers whose children did work on the farm—in some cases very hard work—sometimes had negative comments about how their children performed it. There seemed to be an expectation by parents that children’s work be perfect, an expectation that is not realistic, given the ages of some of the children and the fact that they are, first and foremost, students. One father said, “Well, I guess we like to see that things get done perfectly or exactly every time and I think they (the kids) maybe don’t.”

Many parents tend to expect their children to mirror their own experiences growing up on a farm. This comment by one farmer, who didn’t get to participate in extracurricular activities when he was young, illustrates the point: “If I wasn’t working for dad, I was working for some neighbor. So I was kind of looking for somebody to be that way.” This father did admit that he wishes he had the opportunities his kids have, because he knows he may have missed a lot. His ambivalent feelings are evident when he says, “I guess I’m happy with it now. It has been tough.”

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Produced by Communication and Educational Technology Services, University of Minnesota Extension.

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