Would you pay your child $100 for making the honor roll? Or $20 for each A? Some parents swear by monetary grade incentives, reports the Hartford Courant. Others say the practice sends the wrong message, and the good behavior will disappear if the reward does. They also worry it may cause parents to ignore the root causes of poor grades, such as depression or learning difficulties.
My immediate reaction is that I personally wouldn’t want to do this. I think children need to learn there are some things one should strive for because they have inherent value, not because there’s a cash reward. Paying cash for grades risks leading to an overemphasis on money as the most important goal in life. (Not that it’s insignificant, but one should strike a balance.) I also believe there should be as much reward for a good effort as for achieving any particular grades or honors. Lastly, I wonder how many of these parents giving their children large sums of cash are also instructing them in good financial habits (saving, shopping for the best value, etc.)
Having said that, I don’t want to be categorical about this. There are as many different situations as there are parents and children. I’m sure there are some cases where a monetary incentive—one-time or ongoing—has a positive effect in both the short and long term. Thoughts or experiences from anyone else?
11:18 pm
Money and Finance, Parenting
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Kelly O
on Mar 30th, 2007
@ 9:43 am:
When we were ten, my sister and I moved in with our grandparents. Our lives were incredibly unstable, and our grades at the new school reflected it. My grandfather offered to pay us $5 for each A, $3 for each B, nothing for Cs, and we’d owe him $3 for Ds and $5 for Fs. Since we didn’t get any other allowance, our grades took an immediate up-turn, and we both ended up graduating high school with honors. (He stopped paying us when we were 16 and old enough to get jobs, by the way.)
He wasn’t ignoring the underlying problem, but he also gave us something else to focus on. He never yelled about our grades or nagged, and while we could spend the money any way we wanted, we only got it every six weeks, so we learned about saving. I always thought that was quite clever and respectful.
Megan
on Mar 30th, 2007
@ 12:27 pm:
I think that in certain situations (like Kelly O’s above) giving cash for good grades does make some sense. The way her grandfather did it – with there being consequences for bad grades, as well as rewards for good ones – sets up a situation where the kids were learning to take responsibility for their actions. In other words, that’s one of the right ways to give money for grades. Unfortunately, I don’t think many people who give money for grades give as much thought to it as he did, and focus only on the reward aspects.
That said, I never got money for grades. All my folks ever did with my grades (and my brother’s) was to post our report cards on the fridge for a week and congratulate us for doing well. We both found school pretty easy, and were pretty motivated kids, so there wasn’t much tension around achievement. There many have also been a system of granting privileges for grades, but my memory is fuzzy on that count.
Queercents » WWYD: Paying Children for Good Grades
on Apr 4th, 2007
@ 8:37 am:
[...] In this week’s What Would You Do series, we ponder if pay for performance is a child appropriate reward system. The question was brought to light when Dana Rudolph at Mombian asked, “Would you pay your child $100 for making the honor roll? Or $20 for each A?” [...]
Liza
on Apr 4th, 2007
@ 9:32 am:
I just commented over at Queercents, and wanted to leave my comment here too. When you first posted this, I hadn’t formulated an opinion, but my weekend reading is making a difference.
What I said at Queercents:
I’m in the middle of reading Alfie Kohn’s book _Unconditional Parenting_, which I was inspired to pick up after reading a couple of amazing parenting-moment posts by Polly of http://www.lesbiandad.net.
Prior to reading Kohn’s book, I might have said, “Sure, why not?” to the idea of paying kids for good grades.
But, it seems that the research on punishment, reward, and moral/ethical development in children indicates that this is a bad idea.
You might get the short term outcome you want, but it’s actually counterproductive in terms of teaching a child to value learning or to work harder than the minimum needed to achieve whatever monetary reward you’ve set up. There’s a lot more to it, obviously, and Kohn goes through tons and tons of research on child development over the last probably 60 years.
The Kohn book is VERY interesting, and I think it’s going to become part of my new “default baby shower gift” package. I wholeheartedly recommend it to parents and parents-to-be.