My wife and I are DINKs, but something I realized yesterday with all of our friends who have teenage children: None of them have a part-time job, not a single one. And none of their pre-teen kids have any unofficial jobs like mowing lawns either.
Not pointing that out to judge, rather my curiosity in understanding if this is an intentional thing and/or what is the cause of the shift. I'm not even trying to state whether it's a good or bad thing, just making an observation with an open mind to the reasons and factors at play.
I've asked the question and apparently its a mixture of:
letting kids be kids and not making them have too much financial responsibility
part time minimum wage not being enough to pay for car insurance or a car like we were able to
college becoming more and more competitive and kids needing more available time to focus on studies and extra curriculum activities to stay competitive
Mmmm ok butttttt we also have a generation of kids with increased social anxieties. I was a shy kid but my part time job forced me to get over that whether I was ready or not. I also had to respect a schedule and couldn't just quit because I wanted off for whatever reason. Either i traded shifts or sucked it up. But work with other teens my age was also fun.
You also have the chaos of scheduling, ie managers who do not care that they are still in high-school and schedule accordingly. Like finals exist, papers and homework exist. I dont know, I want to say that we made it work when we were their age but I don't think the people managing us or scheduling us were as petty as they are today.
When I was a teenager, my boss for my part-time job was also doing that part-time, and her main job was as a school teacher, so she was very understanding of all of us prioritizing school. I didn't realize until later how lucky I was with that kind of arrangement and how fucked over so many people were.
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u/___Art_Vandelay___ 8h ago
My wife and I are DINKs, but something I realized yesterday with all of our friends who have teenage children: None of them have a part-time job, not a single one. And none of their pre-teen kids have any unofficial jobs like mowing lawns either.
Not pointing that out to judge, rather my curiosity in understanding if this is an intentional thing and/or what is the cause of the shift. I'm not even trying to state whether it's a good or bad thing, just making an observation with an open mind to the reasons and factors at play.