Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years

Chapter Six: Teen Culture: Working Hard and Having Fun

[ Chapter Six { Teen Culture Working Hard and Having Fun When an Amish youth group comes to work on a relief project, they accomplish about three times as much as a non-Amish youth group. —Program director Work as Virtue More than thirty years ago, I was driving an Amish entrepreneur to our house to install a stove that we had bought from him. This was my first real conversation with a bona fide Amish person. In the course of our discussion, I asked the young father what he hoped for his two-year-old son. Among other things, he answered that he hoped Nathan, their firstborn, would become a hard worker. Not only did that happen, but his other six siblings have also developed the sterling Amish work ethic. Although hard work is not part of the Ordnung, all Amish parents want their children to be diligent workers. This virtue is regarded as a scriptural mandate and is a cultural distinction, as much as their plain clothes and horse-drawn transportation . The Amish regard work as a privilege and as an obligation to the family, the community, and God. They gain esteem and satisfaction not 126 [ Growing Up Amish { primarily from high-status or highly paid positions, but from meeting the financial needs of the family and working industriously and intelligently. The Amish have traditionally understood work to be a vocation, or calling —a fulfilling end in itself, one that glorifies God and brings joy to the laborer and the community. Parents not only serve as examples of dedication to work, but they also tirelessly instruct their offspring in developing a rigorous work ethic. As children and young people learn to work hard and take satisfaction in their accomplishments, they not only contribute to the family but also confirm their Amish identity and strengthen their ties with the community and the culture. Parents expect children and teenagers, whatever their abilities, to make significant contributions to the family. John A. Hostetler has written, “The Amish ideal of work is not to get rid of it, but to utilize it in giving every member an opportunity to develop his faculties.”1 Children as young as three or four may begin learning how to work by “helping” their older siblings and parents. Rather than telling their three-year-olds that they are too young to do anything, parents encourage them to help pick strawberries, water the chicks, and feed the calves. “One of my earliest memories,” a middle-aged grandparent recalled, “was having to dust down the stairs with a feather duster when I was three.” The owner of a commercial orchard in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, reports that when Amish families come to pick fruit, the contrast between their children and non-Amish children is dramatic. “Amish children usually keep to the task till the parents are satis- fied that the work is done or else they excuse the children,” he said. “English children, on the other hand, may enthusiastically pick cherries for five to ten minutes till they get bored and end up in cherry fights, tree climbing, or sulking.” For Amish children, work and play often merge into one. Preschoolers milk imaginary cows or rig up rope harnesses on stick horses to plow make-believe fields. Two young children told a visitor about their delight that morning in secretly sweeping the sidewalk and the porch to surprise their mother. When Hostetler and Gertrude Huntington asked a sample of elementary- and junior-high-age Amish and mainstream children to draw a picture of a happy time, many of the Amish drawings portrayed activities such as child care, yard work, cooking, and farm chores.2 Not a single pic- [ Teen Culture: Working Hard and Having Fun { 127 ture from the mainstream children was work related. The cover of an issue of the Diary featured a poem written by a nine-year-old Amish child entitled “Work Is Fun”: In the morning when I get up I make the bed so neat. Then quickly go downstairs And put stockings on my feet. I like to work with Mother And do the dirty dishes. I also like to set the table And clean the house as she wishes. I take good care of the baby And rock her to sleep Or just show her a book Which tells about a baby sheep. I like to sweep the kitchen...