Family Life Merit Badge

Start requirement 3 today

Five regular home duties, done for ninety days, with a record of how often you did each one. That is the whole shape of this badge. Every other requirement here can be finished in an afternoon or a conversation; this one cannot be hurried, and it cannot be written up from memory afterwards, because what it asks for is a record kept as you went.

If you take one thing from this page: agree your five chores with your parent or guardian tonight and start the record tomorrow. Then work through everything else while the ninety days run.

What this page is

The Family Life merit badge, laid out so the long thing is visible first. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.

How a merit badge is earned at all is a separate page, How to Earn a Merit Badge.

Two projects, and they are not the same project

This catches people out. Requirement 4 is a project you do around the home that benefits your family. Requirement 5 is a project that your family takes part in. One is individual, one is collective, and doing one good project does not meet both.

The family meetings are a conversation, not a form

Requirement 6 asks you to plan a family meeting, prepare an agenda covering seven subjects, review it with your parent or guardian, and then hold one or more meetings. The badge notes that some of these subjects are personal and that they will very likely run over more than one meeting: addictions and mental health, bodily changes, family finances, a crisis in the family.

Treat the number of meetings as whatever the subjects need. A single evening that ticks all seven has probably not done what the requirement is for.