Another way to look at child labor is to view it as servitude. As an adult I can make my own choice between spending my time preparing for the future (as in going to school) and exploiting my present talents (working). It’s my choice and I get the reward of either choice. But with children it is someone else who either gets the present rewards or chooses to allow the child to prepare himself for the future.
So long as the parent has the best interest of the child at heart, they have a fair chance of making a good decision (which might be to choose work in some cases). If the parent does not have the child’s best interest at heart then the child is an involuntary laborer working on the behalf of others.
The question continues to hover about whether best interest can always be quantified in dollars and cents. Those pesky bugs of economism can’t be easily swatted away once they have been let into the room.
Did you ever have chores? I’m sure in the mind of the child, it is not in their best interest to take out the garbage or to weed the garden and do the dishes.
Does the parent not have the best interest of the child in mind when they insist that they contribute and become productive members of the family and then society?
And what is school? For many of us it was a dozen years of confinement against our wills. Now it's worse.
ML/NJ