Helicopter mommies protecting their sweethearts from everything are one part, stupid state laws limiting the ages one can begin working are another. It’s 16 or 17 in Maryland. Insane. I was earning money at 12 and a real paycheck at 14.
We are doing a lot of work to the house we bought in the Idaho Panhandle a year ago. Every single contractor I’ve spoken to says he could put ten more GOOD people to work right now (general contractors, carpenters, roofers, electricians, landscapers). They hire teens and they typically last no more than two weeks. They often just stop showing up or they complain “You want me to work THAT HARD all the time? For THAT pay?” Then they come in late, complain about the pay WHILE working and the boss in earshot, and won’t put their phones down. “What do you mean I can’t bring my phone onto the site?”
The business owners are incredibly hard working and put in long hours. But not their employees.
It is not a pretty picture. You’d think this “last outpost” in CONUS would still have a good work ethic, but not the case.
Child labor laws were — at least theoretically — made to keep kids out of coal mine and away from dangerous machines in textile mills.
In my opinion, they serve basically no purpose today. Let the kids work at anything they are capable of doing, if they are willing to do it.
Real colleges (as opposed to the jokes currently out there) would make a solid work record of at least one year’s worth of real work) a requirement to get into any creditable academic major.
Without knowing how many there are between the ages of 14&18 this story makes no sense.
People are having fewer kids and the increase in population may be people from out of State moving there and they may not be or have kids.
“Entitlement Attitudes,”
Has the lower age at which kids can legally be employed changed?
Here in Cali, when I was a kid, I went to work in the summers at age 12. Worked digging irrigation ditches and clearing weeds in the potato fields.
Then the laws changed and it was illegal to work before age 16.
Us kids still went to work, we were just paid under the table. It beat the heck out of sitting on our arses all summer, bored to death, and we had spending money for the school year.
Why should they work? Mom & Dad will give them whatever they want, or they’ll steal it. When Mom & Dad won’t do it any more, they’ll just steal it. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, Ozzie & Harriet are OVER. So much for libtard rearing and educating of children.
You’re missing a stat in there....how many 14-18 year olds were there in 1998 as compared to today.
Two words: Financial Aid.
Even in the Trump Miracle Economy it’s not easy to find jobs that you can do from mom’s cellar with both hands wrapped around a smart phone or a game controller.
If a high school students wants to go to college and get into a good college he/she must do hundreds of hours of volunteer work. Plus they need to either play a sport, play in the band or orchestra, take AP and honors classes and keep their grades up. It’s hard for them to work and do all the volunteer work too.
Because their parents want to be their friends rather than their parents.
Because they can’t get their noses out of their phones long enough to work.
There is no reason to work when Mom & Dad give you everything. In my day you wanted a car you had to earn the money to buy a used jalopy and then to gas it. If you were lucky dad would add you to the insurance.
Also in my day you could work for a year and full summers at minimum wage or with tips and save and make a substantial dent in college tuition. Now there is no motivation to do that because school have jacked tuition to $50k per year so a part time job doesn’t earn much beyond pocket spending money. So why bother?
When I was 16 I wanted to work. Kept up the rusty used car, money for clothes, albums, entertainment and other assorted stuff. Sponging off my widowed Mom for anything wasn’t even a thought. No work= no money, simple as that, end of story.
Growing up in Virginia in the 1960s, I had a work permit at age 14. I helped install TV antennas and deliver washers and dryers for a local appliance company. Now, you have to be 18 to do such “dangerous” jobs. Before that, I had a newspaper route and mowed lawns. Today, in my neighborhood newspapers are delivered by adults driving cars, and homeowners contract with landscaping services. Teenage girls have it a bit easier, as there are still some babysitting gigs, but today there are many fewer babies that need sitting!
Not strictly on topic but I actually saw one of the t shirts on a female college student in Michigan :
(Map of state of Idaho on shirt)
Under it: Idaho?
No. You da ho.
My first job was with the city of Rockville MD when I was 11. $1.41 an hour to keep a pool locker room clean
In 1933, no one, from a working family, was born in a hospital... Generally the old woman who came around and delivered babies was paid about $5 to $10... For me the part I hated most was that after just get off the cord and with eyes just getting into focus, that bitch slapped a wash rag into my hands and told me to clean up the mess...
It was all down hill after that... What pisses me off, now, was that social security wasn't invented and collected at that time... By the time I was 6 or 7 I should have had a small fortune put into the "lock box" for me in my (now) later years...
Where have the teens been for the last ten years ..... ?
Oh yeah ...
PUBLIC SCHOOL !