Parents have always looked for creative ways to motivate their children, and a growing number are now extending the allowance system beyond household chores to include something more unexpected: paying kids for self-care activities like reading, exercising, and studying. It is a well-intentioned approach, but psychologists are raising important questions about what this kind of incentive structure actually teaches children about the relationship between effort and reward, according to reporting from Parents.
The scale of the trend is significant enough to show up in data. Financial app Greenlight reported that in 2025, children completed 73 million household tasks across its platform, with families paying out a combined $242 million in allowances. Reading alone accounted for roughly 7 percent of all tasks logged, adding up to about 4.9 million reading sessions. Nearly 40,000 children also received payment for activities like exercising, playing a musical instrument, or studying a new language, totaling 1.6 million tasks across those categories.
Licensed psychologist Anne Josephson acknowledges that teaching children to understand the value of money is genuinely useful and can benefit them throughout their lives. Her concern is more specific: paying children for self-care activities introduces an external reward for things that ideally carry their own internal motivation. Reading is her go-to example for explaining why this distinction matters. “The very idea of learning about others through books, or escaping your everyday world for a little while, is appealing to many kids all on its own,” she explains. “Reading is also one of the first skills children master on their educational journey, which is an exciting experience that hopefully encourages them to keep going.” The risk, she argues, is that once money enters the picture, the child begins to associate reading with obligation and earning rather than with pleasure and curiosity.
Emily Bly, clinical director at Psychology Partners Group, raises a related concern about the message this sends beyond the specific activity. She worries that attaching payment to something like meditation, for example, implicitly communicates to children that sitting quietly with one’s own thoughts is a hardship worth compensating. “When you pay a child for, say, meditation, you are sending a message that being alone with your thoughts and feelings is hard work,” she explains. “Or that reading and brushing your teeth are habits they will only maintain if prompted or paid.” The goal of healthy habit formation, she suggests, is for children to eventually experience the behaviors themselves as the reward. “We want to raise children who not only can tolerate discomfort, but learn that they have the power to change how they feel and that taking steps to feel better is its own reward.” Introducing payment into that equation, she says, complicates that understanding.
Clinical psychologist Emma Basch echoes these concerns from a slightly different angle, noting that tying self-care to an allowance undermines the whole concept of looking after oneself. She argues that the goal is to raise children who understand that self-care is not a job for which they will one day be paid, but rather a reflection of respect and genuine care for themselves. When it comes to household chores specifically, Basch points out that paying for them can reduce children’s sense of shared family responsibility. “This can undermine intrinsic motivation and send the message that participating in household tasks is a job rather than a shared family responsibility,” she says.
All three experts suggest there are better paths toward both financial literacy and healthy habits. A weekly allowance paired with regular conversations about saving, spending goals, and financial thinking can build money skills without entangling them with self-care activities. For motivation, Josephson suggests that specific praise, meaningful privileges like choosing the family movie or staying up a little later, or skipping a particularly dreaded minor chore can serve as effective alternatives to cash. She also suggests a token economy approach for younger children, where they collect stickers or clips toward a chart for completing daily reading and then exchange a full chart for a small treat or toy. “You are still using reinforcement,” she notes, “but the system is one step removed from direct payment.”
Research on what psychologists call the “overjustification effect” has been replicated in dozens of studies since the 1970s and consistently shows the same pattern: when people are paid for activities they already find intrinsically rewarding, their enjoyment of those activities tends to drop once the payment is removed. The implication for reading, in particular, is that cash rewards for books may produce short-term results while actually eroding the love of reading that most parents are hoping to build.
Do you pay your kids for chores or other activities? Share your approach in the comments.
