Giving Children an Allowance Does More Good Than Harm
CON (7 arguments)
In some areas, teens may be introduced to drugs or other things that can harm the child. W/ allowance money, these kids could purchase these harmful items. And to give allowance to children, parents must first trust that they will not fall victim to peer pressure, which many cannot. So overall, allowance does more harm than good.
27% of all children in the U.S. live in dangerous and poor areas. The outside influence and peer pressure will force these children who get allowance to use it for bad things.
Yes, in a perfect world, allowance would be great. Teaching kids good morals, giving them money to be independent with: that’s all good…but only if the world was perfect. But it’s not. There’s crime, and violence, and drugs, and myriads of other things that can negatively influence children. Yes, ideal if we had allowance. But in this realistic world, allowances just don’t work. Unless the pro can get every single parent in America to agree to constantly monitoring what their child spends their money on, allowance will definitely do more harm than good to our society.
In the cities of today, there are slums. And ghettos. And negative influences on children. But giving children money to spend on these negative influences only makes the situation worse.
Since parents cannot monitor their children every second of the day, children will claim they “earned” something or “did” something when their parent wasn’t looking and lie to get money. This, in effect, SPOILS kids and actually creates bad habits in children. If allowance could be practiced correctly, it may be beneficial, but as we cannot be sure that children are not taking advantage of their parents, allowances are detrimental.
Kids will get the sense that everything they do deserves recognition and reward. They will start badgering their parents to pay them for everything, which creates bad manners and habits. This will translate to other parts of life, like school, athletics, and social life. E.g. student asked by teacher to pick up an eraser- student will say “How much money will you give me”.
Children could adopt destructive values about money. In today’s complex, consumer-oriented world, kids may adopt values about money which completely contradict the values the pro side is trying to claim. For example, children could come to equate money with self worth. They will become hooked on possessions, on keeping up with the crowd, on always staying in fashion. They will adopt the attitude that parents are always available to bail them out when they need money; that if they want money, all they need to do is ask for it. This will lead to unrealistic expectations.
Parents will use allowances to motivate their kids to score goals in sports or to get better report cards. These bribes will teach kids to equate money w/ success, that money is the only real reward for achievement. They will get the notion that money can buy anything in life, and make unrealistic expectations of society.
A study conducted by Elizabeth Swan, Ph D. in children pyschology
When children receive allowances from their parents, they will start to think that their parents can always bail them out. They will grow up with poor money management skills, for if a parent gives a child his or her money, he or she will obviously monitor the child’s every payment to make sure that they money they gave their children won’t be wasted.
According to a study conducted by CNN, of 1500 parents who gave their children allowances, only 8% of them actually let their child be independent with the money. The children won’t learn anything, for their parents will be doing the money management things for their child.