Why shouldn't I let my children learn that cleaning is therapeutic, asks Kate Holmquist

Parents who can afford to, hire servants. They justify this by saying that parents have more time to focus on the important job of child-rearing. Mum can stop nagging Dad, and Mum and Dad can stop nagging the children to stop leaving their stuff lying around, bathroom towels on the floor and soap smears on the mirror. If you can afford paid help, it will make life less stressful - as long as you don't mind rearing children who haven't a clue how to look after themselves.

Not being in this category of privilege myself, I've come up with another solution - and one that liberates everyone from the sex war. Assuming that parents have negotiated their own fair (and not necessarily equal) share of the housework, start using the free help right under your nose.

Get the children to do housework - not all of it, but a reasonable amount.

Assuming that the children are of normal intellectual and physical abilities (and not all are, so that's another issue), there is a lot they can do as long as it's suitable to their age and stage. While it may shock you to hear this, four-year-olds can put toys away and tidy the book and video shelves. Six-year-olds can clean bathrooms. Seven-year-olds can wash ground-floor windows. Nine-year-olds can vacuum and mop floors. Teenagers (if you regard teenagerhood as starting at 12) can certainly cook family meals, do laundry, gardening and good old-fashioned deep cleaning.

You have to start young and praise them for their efforts. My 10-year-old already knows how to make her first family meal - chicken tortillas made with the help of a box of El Paso or Discovery, followed by brownies (also from a box - Greene's - but hey, we'll get to the Ballymaloe cookery course later). All children, from the age of two, can be taught tidy habits in a constructive, non-nagging way. They can be reared with the assumption that they all play their part. If you resent housework, they'll resent it. So be positive.

Otherwise, you're the servant. Recently, a pal of mine was near panic after she laundered her 17-year-old's clothes and one special item was ruined in the wash. She raced around Dublin until she found an item to replace the one that didn't survive the washing machine, so the child would never know what happened.

I have every sympathy for her and I think she did the right thing in replacing the garment. However, my question to her was: "Why were you doing your 17-year-old's laundry?" My pal argues that her 17-year-old is at school from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening, then has studying to do. Weekends are packed with extracurricular activities and social life. The child can hardly be expected to do housework as well.

I argue: get a life, and make your 17-year-old get a life too. How long does it take to put on a load of laundry? Who is going to replace the ruined garment when the 17-year-old is 21 and living in her own flat? "It's easier to do it myself," she tells me. Maybe so, but that's not the point.

We can blame the 1950s ethos of the ideal, urban, nuclear family with Mum full-time in the home for this idea we have that children cannot - or should not - work. In this ethos, it was a status symbol to have reared a daughter who could not cook or a son who didn't know where to find the toilet brush.

A better ideal would be farm life, where children participate in chores as soon as they can manage it.

The next question is, should children be paid to "help out" around the house? Absolutely not. Sharing in the burden of housework is an important part of communal living, especially if you want to raise sons who will have happy marriages. And why should you give your children money for sweeping a floor, when there's a good chance that they'll spend that money on some toy or item of clothing made by child slave labour in a third-world country?

Parents are not paid to do housework. If children are paid to sweep the path or load the dishwasher, Mum and Dad should be paid for cooking the dinners and driving the children to school.

In real life, however, many parents say that they cannot persuade their children to tidy playrooms, bedrooms and gardens without offering financial inducement. This works to a degree. Handed a pocketful of euro, children will reward parents with a sudden enthusiasm for cleaning. This never lasts. Soon enough, children want to know why they cannot have the euro without having to work for it.

I'm not proposing child labour. What I am proposing is that parents demonstrate to their children the satisfaction that comes from doing physical work well. I'm suggesting that if children want certain privileges - like staying up a bit later to watch a favourite programme or having friends around for a sleep-over - they should have to fully participate in the clean-ups that are a reality of family life.

We're all so intellectually-driven these days that even "play" comes from an electronic "station". Engaging with the physical world, organising it, cleaning it, is therapeutic and educational - I have my best inspirations while gardening.

Shouldn't I encourage my children to learn that pleasure? I think I should.