Parenting Matters: Child labour can't last (sigh)

They say money can't buy you happiness.
And it's true.
Deep-seated happiness comes from the inside out. You can't put a price on it.
But money can buy you sanity.
And the cost, I have found, is around 20 cents a day.
Miss Four has discovered pocket money. And I have discovered that by lining her pockets I have a much more accommodating little girl.
She has two chores a day - to take the food scraps to the compost bin and tidy her room before bed.
Pre-pocket money, a simple request to dispose of the apple peelings, banana skins and bread crusts (most of which were generated by hers truly) was met with: "Ew, it smells. I don't like it. I don't want to. Nooo."
And tidying - in any way, shape or form - resulted in a paddy of prehistoric proportions.
But for just 10 cents a pop there is now total compliance.
"Okay, Mummy," she says, smiling, and trots off looking as if she's just stepped off the set of The Waltons.
Now that's what I call value for money.
And as long as the coins keep jingling their way into her purple dinosaur moneybox, she remains eager to please.
But she is yet to spend any of her hard-earned cash and I suspect once she starts to learn the value of money there will be an uprising.
When she discovers that a fluffy costs an entire week's wages, or starts comparing her earnings with those of her peers, our little arrangement may not be so harmonious.
Before I know it she will be hauling me up before the Employment Court.
Because a Colmar Brunton survey conducted for AMP has shown that youngsters aged 5 to 7 in New Zealand are paid about $11 a month in pocket money.
And then there are those who subscribe to the dollar-per-year-of-age framework.
Either way, I am paying well below the minimum wage.
Under the "age-wage" system, Miss Turning-Five-In-Three-Weeks'-Time, would be extremely comfortably off on an annual salary of $260, more than three times her existing $78.
And Miss Two, who is not yet chasing the dollar, could net $104.
Hmm. Prozac is looking like the cheaper option.