Raising Children with a Joy Ethic

When I was raising two young sons, I wanted them to enjoy a stimulating environment. I knew no caretaker would feel passionate about my children’s development, as I certainly did. It would be up to me to make a home environment that was as beautiful, nourishing, and stimulating as I could make it. Our home was filled with children’s books, musical instruments, art supplies, and toys. To my sons, learning new things was fun, and I loved their wildly original ways of seeing the world.

It was my job to help my sons develop into the persons they were meant to be, people who could joyously thrive in the world. I wanted them to know that their worth was not dependent on anything they did or how well they did it. Yet I realized there was a tension between what I wished for my sons’ development and what the culture expected them to become, persons with a sober “work ethic.” In their school environment, joyful living was not in the curriculum.

I myself felt inner conflict between pressure for my children to become responsible adults, so as to “make a living,” and desire for them to develop into vibrant, joyful human beings. Joyful living seemed to be something people occasionally allowed themselves outside the work environment, when they went on vacation, or partied on weekends.

Today I’ve come to the conclusion that the nervous concern parents feel about teaching children a good work ethic is not as important as we’ve made it out to be. In fact, we long ago learned how to teach this so well that we do it on automatic pilot. Now it’s time to look at the unexamined assumption that learning a good work ethic is of the highest value in our culture. I propose that it’s high time to turn our attention to learning to teach our children a joy ethic -- for that is what we don’t seem to know how to do.

We might then discover that our highly touted productivity in the workplace is overvalued, at the expense of infusing all of life with the spirit of joy.


©2011, Chickee Dorothy Atalla, author of
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