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Our children at home cannot understand this heated controversy
about their life. They love the activities they do with
their parents and friends. We are not raising our children
to be so acutely aware of which activity “makes money”
and which doesn’t. We do not live this way as a people.
Every person is essential in our community, no matter what
they do. Our life is based on loving and serving, no matter
who we are. Every person’s role is vital.
As our children grow into adulthood, they learn to handle
and manage money. But in our daily life, they do many valuable
and essential things. When they are helping me in the house
or yard, or when they are doing their lessons, or when they
are helping their father in a cottage industry, we don’t
want to teach them to rate their lives in terms of the consciousness
of money. You cannot place a monetary value on simply doing
something together with people you love, as if some tasks
are “worth more” than other tasks.
It is in this context that we take our children with us
to work in our cottage industries, just as we take them
with us to work in our houses and yards. We have a life
together. It is a life of love and care. We all share whatever
income we get, because we all contribute, no matter what
exactly we do in the community. The children contribute
when they do their home-school lessons with all their heart,
just as they contribute when they help with supper, when
they help in a cottage industry, or when they play musical
instruments so we all can dance and sing. We praise them
for every contribution they make.
Because of the way we live, we have never considered ourselves
as possibly having a problem with the issue of child labor.
Our children themselves simply cannot relate to this concept.
We have a life, and it focuses on love, not money.
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