Today’s society not only encourages, but expects us to have a post-graduate career, a loving partner, happy, motivated children, an even greater post-natal career, followed by a well-deserved nervous breakdown. If you’re not highly-strung and stressed out to the max, you’re simply not trying hard enough.

No wonder family therapy is required to nut out those vitally important issues in life – such as whose job it is to peel the veggies for dinner. No-one wants to peel them, but everyone expects a healthy, delicious, creative surprise at six o’clock.

Job rosters appear to be the universal solution. But job rosters, like family self-help manuals written by single people – have good intentions, but bugger all practical application in the real world.

In Little House on the Prairie, Ma and Pa Ingalls NEVER had any problem getting Mary and Laura to rise at the crack of midnight, milk the cows, collect the eggs and mend the fences. The Brady Bunch never had a “jobs around the house” problem either. Less to do with an effective roster system – and more to do with Good Old Alice.

I doubt the earth would stop turning if my kids voluntarily rose off the couch and offered to help with dinner, but it would certainly rock my world.

Many parents have spent hours creating complicated colour- coordinated children’s job roster spread-sheets dating well into the next millennium. Never confuse activity with productivity. Multi-coloured spreadsheets, like your lazy offspring, DO NOT peel the spuds and carrots for dinner.

A computer-generated lifestyle might fool Nanna and Granddad into thinking your household is an efficient, well oiled machine, But it’s purpose is purely aesthetic. If our family was a business, we’d have declared bankruptcy before we started. We are less efficient at running our household than Basil Fawlty is at running a hotel in Torquay.

It’s not easy nurturing and maintaining a constant state of dysfunction. A lot of hard work is required. Pulling together as a team requires softer voices and effective communication. Radical unworkable thought processes like these that could put family therapists out of business quicker than you could say “That’s the way WE all became the Brady Bunch!”

But the earth, like my head, is still spinning in the Universe, my children’s bedrooms remain toxic waste dumps and the second generation of vegetables is now on the market.

Pre-peeled, pre-cut, pre-packaged pre-frozen pieces of household harmony. More expensive than the fresh alternative, but considerably cheaper than family therapy.

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    Last reviewed: 14 May 2009