Thanks for the article. It has some good points. Child labor was legal for most of the history of the U.S. Children were expected to work. They learned valuable lessons with that.
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.
Years ago the government passed laws to prevent children (other than family members working in a family business) less than 17 years old from working.
The first casualty was paper routes, then grocery store sacker/stackers, then all other jobs we used to work as kids.
Next came our lazy generation who normally was never exposed to work until after they graduated from high school or college. Worse yet, college graduates expected to start in the middle, not at the bottom.
In the interim, the kids sat around playing video games and other forms of entertainment and when presented with their first job, had no idea what-so-ever what the statement “8 hours work for 8 hours pay” or the phrase “work ethic.”
The whole reason for the summer break from school was so kids could work on farm in growing season. Kids SHOULD work for their money. Its just a great thing that they no longer have work to contribute to the family income!
I was born in 1959. I had a part time job at 14 1/2 years of age.
Today’s “labor” laws would not have let me work in those days because most of the hours were on “school nights”.