Woman teaches 12-year-old son invaluable lesson that sweeping and wiping are not 'girls' chores'

The world is filled with misogynistic issues that need to be addressed. While a lot is going on in terms of movements, acts, laws and so on, the primary responsibility is to change our perspective towards these issues. As parents, we have the extended duty to raise our children with the right values. That's what u/MapCritical8176, mother of three boys, did when one of her sons chose to be misogynist about doing chores. She posted her story on Reddit explaining how she taught her son a lesson that household chores are "not specific to any gender."

The mother mentioned that she had three sons, twins, who were 12 years old and a 10-year-old. She went on to say that she came up with the idea of assigning chores daily to each of her sons and once they complete these chores, they would receive an allowance. She then explained the conditions she put forth, "Once they started earning money, they would be getting 10 dollars a day for every day they complete their chore. If they fail to do so, then 10 dollars would be deducted." Having followed this concept for two years, the family had a well-sketched idea about how the entire thing works.

However, there was a slight fiasco. The mother said one of her 12-year-olds refused to do the chores, like sweeping the stairs and wiping the surfaces. She explained that he had initially done his chores, but when he had a conversation with his friend over a game of Fortnite, he changed his mind. "His friend asked what chore he had to do, so my son told him. In response, my son's friend said, 'It's a good thing my parents don't make me do girl chores.'" It created a bias in her child's mind, but the mother calmly explained to her son, "Knowing how to clean was not specific to any gender, it was a life skill everyone needed to know." She also let him know that things work differently in different families and explained her family's conditions.

Still, she said that her son chose not to do the chores for the following days. To make her son understand his error and avoid making him sexist in the future, the mother decided to take some action. She said, "As agreed I took 10 dollars out of his allowance for each day he didn't do, which allotted to him only having 20 dollars in his allowance whereas his brothers had 50." When her ex-husband termed her 'insensitive' for her action, the mother said, "I assured him that if he had decided to start giving the boys an allowance then he could run the allowance however he wanted, but this was ultimately the system I had come up with."

The mother stayed firm on her decision to teach her son a much-needed lesson. Several Reddit users commented on how the mom was right in her action and that the idea of a $10 allowance was too good a deal in the first place. u/PlentyHopeful263 said, "Do the job, get paid. Don't do it, don't get paid. It's pretty simple." u/lesbian/sourfruit said, "Good for you for standing your ground and teaching accountability and consequences alongside it."