Publications
Partners
Image: via Shutterstock
Sick to death of dirty dishes piling up and mountains of clothes around the house, Jessica Stilwell embarked on a six-day strike from doing certain domestic chores. After blogging her experiences, she proclaimed the experiment “a success”, according to moms.today.com.
It's the little things...
It wasn’t the regular mom-type tasks that were wearing her out, but the overtime spent cleaning up after her kids who refused to pick up their clothes or do the dishes- relatively easy tasks, but if not done, the house rapidly descends into chaos. Throughout the strike, she continued to make their lunches and cook for them, but when the dishes got left out, or the lunch boxes weren’t emptied, that’s how she left it. Those were the kid’s responsibilities:
“... I fear we are raising a generation of young people whose attitudes will be “What are you going to do for me?” Well dude, it's called a pay check, get your ass to work. I want to end this parenting race with employable, successful, well-rounded happy adults with real life skills,” says Stilwell, on her blog.
After six days, she and her husband revealed to their kids what had happened (they hadn’t announced the strike at any point, preferring to wait for the kids to notice). The clean-up began...
Since the Great Mom Strike, Jessica has made TV appearances urging other moms to try the strike cure. Even locally moms are choosing to down tools and blog their strikes. It’s not easy if you’re normally a neat-freak- you’ll have to live with the squalor- but if your kids have a problem with tidying up their own mess, maybe you could consider the strike cure...
Would you join the striking mom revolution?
Sick to death of dirty dishes piling up and mountains of clothes around the house, Jessica Stilwell embarked on a six-day strike from doing certain domestic chores. After blogging her experiences, she proclaimed the experiment “a success”, according to moms.today.com.
It's the little things...
It wasn’t the regular mom-type tasks that were wearing her out, but the overtime spent cleaning up after her kids who refused to pick up their clothes or do the dishes- relatively easy tasks, but if not done, the house rapidly descends into chaos. Throughout the strike, she continued to make their lunches and cook for them, but when the dishes got left out, or the lunch boxes weren’t emptied, that’s how she left it. Those were the kid’s responsibilities:
“... I fear we are raising a generation of young people whose attitudes will be “What are you going to do for me?” Well dude, it's called a pay check, get your ass to work. I want to end this parenting race with employable, successful, well-rounded happy adults with real life skills,” says Stilwell, on her blog.
After six days, she and her husband revealed to their kids what had happened (they hadn’t announced the strike at any point, preferring to wait for the kids to notice). The clean-up began...
Since the Great Mom Strike, Jessica has made TV appearances urging other moms to try the strike cure. Even locally moms are choosing to down tools and blog their strikes. It’s not easy if you’re normally a neat-freak- you’ll have to live with the squalor- but if your kids have a problem with tidying up their own mess, maybe you could consider the strike cure...
Would you join the striking mom revolution?
