From paper routes to lawn mowing to snow shoveling, America’s neighborhoods have been historically teeming with children hustling to make a buck.
Yet with smaller families and fewer children, not to mention the rise in certain technologies making many such chores either obsolete or irrelevant, is that still the case?
Clearly, times have changed.
Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, Dixie Dillon Lane warns that falling birthrates and increasing family-unfriendliness pose significant challenges to the broader health of culture. Many of the issues are complex and require a layered response, but she has one simple solution harkening back to earlier days.
Lane writes, “To increase neighborhood connectedness and safety—and to encourage confidence and self-regulation among children—I suggest a return to the practice of letting our kids ‘work’ the neighborhood.”
She continues:
“There are countless small jobs that need to be done in a neighborhood that are well-suited to children’s skills and maturity levels.”
Lane rightly points out that many of the classic needs in neighborhoods remain: cutting grass, weeding, watering flowers, shoveling snow, cleaning out a garage, washing cars, and hauling trash to the curb.
Many of us grew up in an era when the paper route was something of a rite of passage for an adolescent. It’s hard to put into words just how exciting it was to be assigned your customers and then incentivized to sign up even more.
My first paper route consisted of just over 50 houses spread across nine streets of my hometown. It included two funeral homes, the rectory of a Catholic Church, an apartment building that always smelled like fried eggs, and dozens of individual homes filled with wonderful and even oddball people.
At the time, I was probably most excited about earning money. Looking back, though, I now realize the job was worth a lot more than the weekly paycheck. It taught me so many things, including:
- It’s important to listen more than you talk and show interest in other people. It was intimidating to knock on doors and try and sell subscriptions. But my parents reminded me that salespeople have solutions to people’s problems. “Ask them what they like or what their biggest challenge is,” my mom said, “and then remind them it’s probably covered somewhere in the paper.”
- When tough times come, keep moving through the adversity. Adopting the postal carrier creed, the paper had to be delivered in all kinds of weather. When it snowed, I often had to leave my bicycle in the garage and instead stack the papers in a milk crate that I bungee-corded onto a Flexible Flyer sled. My first route began a half mile from the house, so it was a long and cold slog to even start – but it had to be done.
- Don’t stress about money – but hold some in reserve for an emergency. Carriers were responsible for paying their bill on Saturday morning, so collection often began Friday night. If a customer was away or out of cash, you were out of luck. The bill had to be paid. The discipline forced me to keep some savings available just in case my collection came up short that week.
- An apology should always follow a mistake. When my bicycle slipped off the curb one windy November Sunday morning, my papers blew away in every direction. I retrieved what I could and reassembled them as best as I was able, but inevitably missed components along the way. Within a few hours, my customers were calling me, and wondering what happened to their television guide or Parade magazine. I had to explain the accident, offer a refund and apologize profusely. In the end, nobody demanded their money back.
- Behind every number on a house is a name and a world of many challenges well beyond our comprehension. Regular interactions with my customers reminded me of life outside our family’s four walls. Death, sickness, financial setback, military deployment, estrangement and the normal vicissitudes of everyday living were on full display. That early education reminds me of the oft-quoted observation, “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
There aren’t many paper routes for children anymore, but all of these same lessons can be learned from any number of neighborhood jobs.
If you’re a parent, encourage your son or daughter to try and get hired by a neighbor. If you have children nearby, consider how hiring them won’t just save you some time – but how it might also help save the future.
Image from Shutterstock.