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iQuestions Faculty, Joe White 
 
 
Question: 
 
Should teens have a job? 
 
Answer:  
 
The decision to help your child have a job is one of the most important 
decisions, and it’s one of the greatest decisions in your child’s life. 
 
Obviously, chores at home are the time to begin the whole idea of 
having a job. The responsibility that a child learns through a job is 
immeasurable. If I’m supposed to be doing the bathroom sink for my 
chore or my job, if I’m supposed to be emptying the trash, or 
whatever, and I get a dollar a week or a dollar a month, or whatever is 
appropriate for a child for allowance, I’m teaching my child 
immeasurably.  
 
But then as my child becomes a junior high student or high school 
student, remember this: busy kids are happy kids. Whether my child is 
doing a job, or whether my child is doing a sport at school, I want my 
child for sure to have something in their life besides school to occupy a 
good share of their time. 
 
I’ll never forget my daughter’s first job. She was all excited about it, 
and I said, “Well, if you’re going to take this job, you’re going to for 
sure work a minimum of forty hours a week.” Sometimes I sound like 
a mean dad, but it’s really important to teach responsibilities. And I 
found out, later in the summer, that she was working some weeks 
thirty hours a week, so I said, “Get a second job.”  
 
 
 
And I’ll never forget walking into the Baskin-Robins ice cream store at 
midnight and watching her dip ice cream, and saying, “You know 
what? When I said it’s got to be a forty-hour job, you know I meant it 
had to be a forty-hour job.” 
 
I remember from my dad learning that when I had a job, I knew what 
it meant to have a responsible attitude toward spending money. When 
a child has a job, a child can participate in buying the first cell phone. 
A child can participate in buying the first iPod. A child can participate, 
for sure, in buying that first car. And they’re going to take care of that 
car. They’re going to wash that car, they’re going to wax that car, and 
they’re going to take of that car. 
 
In fact, I remember when my daughter was driving her first car, and 
she wouldn’t keep the car clean, I remember taking the car out and 
parking it away from her, in a place where she couldn’t find it for a 
while. 
 
You know, teaching kids responsibility is so important. 
 
Another thing that a job does for a child is, when a child is in trouble, I 
think a job is good discipline. When a child does something that’s way 
out of line, or something that’s caused destruction in any way, I think 
you need to find a price tag on that, and increase the job-load to help 
pay for the destruction or the damage, or whatever the child did.  
 
You can’t measure how important it is to have a job. One of the most 
important things I could do for my child is that, when they leave home 
for college or for their first job, they can stand on their own two feet.  
 
In fact, one of the promises that you as a parent need to make your 
child is that when they leave home for school, that you will give them 
ability if something happens to you as a dad and/or to their mom, that 
you will have trained them well enough to stand on their own two 
White -2- 
 
 
feet—so then they can see that they need to work in their life, that 
you’re really giving them freedom. And when a child sees it like that, 
it’s not so bad to have a job. Having a job in the summertime or in the 
afternoon after school or in the evenings is probably one of the most 
important gifts that you can give your child. Go for it. They need it.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
White -3- 
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