I didn't read the article BUT my take on chores is that whatever your kids knows when they are 18 and on their own is what they are going to know. So if you don't teach them to cook and clean up after themselves then they are going to be screwed.

Right. Same as waiting until a pet becomes an adult before training. The best time to train is from toddlerhood on. Ask any child prodigy in sports, music, you name it. Some view having a child pick up after himself as "not having a childhood." I say baloney.

It makes it that much harder to reverse ingrained patterns of sloppiness. Odds are your child will not be followed around by a maid and nanny for the rest of his/her life.

Not my way of thinking, or parenting.

And her saying they aren't spoiled brats, usually the parent is the last to know or acknowledge that anyway.

I had to teach a friend literally how to boil water because her mom took this stance. She knows how much of a disservice her mom did to her so she came to me asking for help before she left for college. We were the same age and I'd been cooking free range in the kitchen since I had been 14.

This same friend, last year, came over for dinner and brought a pie. Asked for a knife. I handed her one and ten minutes later she tells me there's something wrong with my knife because it's not cutting very well. She never unsheathed it.

There's a very fine line between letting kids have a responsibility free childhood and turning them into helpless adults.

I went over and over this with DP for the last several years.
The SDs still don't have "chores" and he somehow still expects them to know how to do things w/out being taught or shown how or expected to assist. Like taking out their trash baskets in their rooms. They have no idea how.
It's still mindboggeling.

BUT I have disengaged from that whole mess.
I just personally don't mess with "asking" them to do things.
If necessary I tell them to do it.

For example, last night, SD12 puts her dinner plate and utensils in the sink and walks away (dishwasher is right there...). I let DP know he needs to ask her to please put her stuff into the dishwasher. He sighs out some kind of response. So she comes upstairs again, I immediately say, "SD12, please put your things in the dishwasher." She does with an "Oh! Ok!"
NOT HARD. She helped me do the dishes the other day too, "SD12 come over here and help me with these please." "ok!"
DP would never do this.

We need to wash a bunch of clothes before our trip...I told DP I will expect them to so their own laundry as they know how. I'll be able to monitor but they will do it.

He's so uneasy with telling them do to things; he's told me he doesn't like to be an authortarian parent but I've responded consistently it's not authortarian it's teaching them to be independent.