Teaching the Next Generation About Web Work

Tomorrow is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day — an interesting proposition for those of us working from home. “Come on, Janie, step into my office. What’s mommy doing? Surfing the web. That’s my job. Yes, I get paid to surf the Web.” Sort of.

In preparation for this event, the Wall Street Journal’s Juggle blog launched a discussion about how parents talk to their kids about work. Blogger Tom Weber acknowledges the need to teach children that people work for money and for other reasons as well:

That discussion about work and pay can be pretty helpful in the teaching-the-value-of-a-buck department. As in, take care of your things because when you lose or break something, it represents not just money but the work that had to be done to earn the money.

In our family, though, we’ve been wary of overemphasizing the monetary aspect of work. We don’t want our kids to see work as this horrible place their parents trudge off to just to get money. My wife and I both feel lucky to be working in jobs we find personally rewarding. So we have also talked about what drives some people to work hard—the non-monetary aspects of a fulfilling career. These are certainly more complicated to explain than the simple equation of go to work, get paid.

Then Sara Schaefer Muñoz continued the discussion by wondering how many people actually work for fulfillment rather than for the health benefits, paycheck, and so forth:

I wonder how many jobs can fit that bill. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with mine: The work is interesting and after a few difficult work environments after college, I appreciate that I now have interesting and affable bosses and colleagues. But I also work for health insurance, as well as financial stability. If I didn’t need to work, would I still be here, purely for the satisfaction? Likely, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Web workers may prioritize fulfillment and flexibility over earnings. Telecommuters may choose less advancement in their careers for the chance to work from home. The self-employed have to fund their own health insurance and must rely on an uncertain income stream, but appreciate the autonomy and fulfillment that running their own business offers. Those who choose the web working way in an office may find their style looks unproductive to the higher-ups, perhaps resulting in fewer promotions and raises (though it’s far from certain that’s the case). Yet many choose web work any way, despite those drawbacks.

Aside from the issues of earnings/fulfillment tradeoffs, we have no idea what the working world will look like in five, ten, or twenty years when our children enter it. Could my parents have told me that pro-blogging offered a fun and satisfying way to fund my web surfing? Did any previous generations imagine all the crazy ways we might be able to make money online? Might health insurance be divorced from its corporate marriage, making self employment more feasible?

What do you tell your children about work? And have you chosen your work based on how fulfilling it is?

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