Chicago, IL (Vocus/PRWEB) February 02, 2011
The growing number of people who do not work will likely have an especially tough time this April 28th—the next Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day (TYDSWD).
Jayne Pearl and Richard Morris, co-authors of Kids, Wealth, and Consequences: Ensuring a Productive Financial Future for the Next Generation (Bloomberg, a Wiley imprint, 2010), offer ways to make TYDSWD constructive for parents in these circumstances.
- Stay-at-home parents. The Census Bureau estimates there are approximately 5.7 million (26%), mothers, and 158,000 fathers opting to stay at home (or forced to due to unemployment, illness or disability) rarely sit at home in pajamas watching soap operas and munching bon-bons. Pearl and Morris suggest that on TYDSWD, these parents can expose their children to the many productive activities involved in managing the household such as cleaning, laundry, cooking, shopping and paperwork. Some stay-at-home parents also volunteer in the community.
As parents go about the day involving their children in age-appropriate domestic chores, they should talk about their choice to stay at home: What family values and financial considerations factored into the decision not to work? If parents worked outside the home before, what did they enjoy and what don’t they miss about working? What were some of the main adjustments the parents made during the transition from work to home? How do children benefit from their parents being home?
- Unemployed parents. TYDSWD may sting this year for parents who are jobless. But Morris and Pearl suggest many positive activities to do and discussions to initiate with their kids. On the practical side, unemployed parents can show their kids, about 12 and older, what the job hunting regimen entails: searching online, contacting headhunters, responding to job openings, follow-up emails and phone calls, and tracking system for all the above. Parents can even solicit their children, if they are especially computer savvy, to suggest ways to improve the parent’s electronic tracking or searching. Parents can show the child their resume, and discuss how their education and previous experience have helped them along their career path. What were some of the best career moves they’ve made? And worst ones? Where are they focusing their search now, both geographically and in terms of job functions and industries? How have they tried to cope emotionally and financially with being unemployed? They can also invite their kids to suggest ways to further tighten the family belt.
- Wealthy, nonworking parents. Parents who have chosen not to have a formal job with a paycheck can still involve their children in productive or creative activities in which they engage. What is a typical day in the parents’ life like? If they sit on boards of companies or nonprofit organizations, they can try to take their daughter (or son) to a board or committee meeting. (If that’s not possible, parents can describe what such meetings are like and how they participate.) Parents who sit at a home office and trade stocks or manage real estate can invite their children to help or watch as they research a company or plot of land they have an eye on, and discuss the criteria by which they evaluate its worth.
Artists, writers or those who engage in other creative pursuits can think of a project in which they can involve their kids. Set up an easel and palette for the children to paint while the parent works on one of their paintings. While creating a piece of art, parents can talk about how they approach a blank canvass: the choice of subjects, colors, forms and genre. How has their work evolved over the years? A performing artist can take their child to a rehearsal, or let him or her watch the parent practice. It’s also important to talk about the business side of the parent’s creative work. How does the parent market himself? How has technology changed their art and the market for their work?
Morris and Pearl also have tips for parents who do work:
- Avoid over-glamorizing your job. “The point is not to highlight just what may seem like fun aspects of your job to your child, but to give them a realistic glimpse of your work. Most jobs require many tedious tasks, dealing with sometimes unpleasant customers or co-workers, and pressures from deadlines and competing demands from the boss, or making due with insufficient resources. Talk with your children about how you juggle these aspects of your job, including your efforts to utilize stress management and people skills to improve your work and workplace.”
- Make Every Day “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” Pearl and Morris explain, “You don’t have to wait for April each year to take a child to work. While planning a short business trip or interesting meeting, consider taking your child. At the dinner table, regularly talk about something especially challenging that happened with your work, or some important decision you need to make.”
Kids, Wealth, and Consequences helps parents and their advisers understand how affluence affects children’s future success, happiness and motivation. The book explores everything from how and when parents should talk to their children about the often-uncomfortable topic of money to what families from all income brackets can learn from the economic meltdown about spending, saving and investing to help them better prepare themselves and their children to survive in any economic environment.
Jayne Pearl is a journalist and entertaining speaker, focusing on family business and financial parenting. She is author of Kids and Money: Giving Them the Savvy to Succeed Financially (Bloomberg Press) and has co-authored or ghost-written ten other books. Jayne began her career at Forbes and was former senior editor of Family Business magazine, to which she has contributed for 20 years.
Richard Morris is an adjunct professor at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and is principal of ROI Consulting, helping family owners expand and pass down their business to subsequent generations. Previously, he worked at his family’s 80-year-old privately held company, Fel-Pro Incorporated, managing Marketing and then Acquisitions, and serving on the Board of Directors until its sale in 1998.
