Information AboutChild Labor |
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| history of youth | |
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Child labor or '''labour''' is the term for the Employment of Children . The term can have a connotation of systematic Exploitation of children for their labor, with little compensation or consideration for their Personal Development , Safety , Education , Health , and prospects of their future years. ISSUES OF INFORMED CONSENT In some poor countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a Child below a certain age works, excluding Household Chores , School Work or Agricultural -based work. An Employer is often not allowed to hire a child below a certain age. This minimum age depends on the country such as in the United States the minimum age to work in an establishment without parents consent and restrictions is age 17. Other forms of work include helping in the parents' business or having one's own Small Business , either selling small items or doing Odd Job s. Some children work as a guide for Tourists , sometimes combined with working for owners of shops and Restaurant s, bringing tourists to these businesses. More controversial forms of work include the Military Use Of Children , Child Prostitution and Illegal Drug Trade , illegal trade involving Copyright Violation s such as facilitation of Piracy , and Child Actor s and Child Singer s. According to a UNICEF study, it is a myth that most child laborer is in Sweatshop s that export goods to the rich countries. Most child labor is in the "informal sector" --"selling on the street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses — far from the reach of official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny." {Link without Title} The Consent of the child to do such work of such work may vary greatly for many reasons. An example of this consent to work would be if a child says he or she wants to work, such as because the earnings are attractive or if the child hates school, because such consent may not necessarily be Informed Consent . However, the workplace it may still be an undesirable situation for the child in the long run. Some Youth Rights groups, however, feel that prohibiting work below a certain age violates Human Rights such as the right to a childhood as well. The use of children as laborers is now considered by wealthy countries as a Human Rights Violation , and outlawed, while poorer countries may allow it, as families often rely on the labors of their children for survival and sometimes it is the only source of income. This type of work is often hidden away because it is not in employment in the industrial sector. Child labor is employment in substance agriculture in the household, or in the urban informal sector. There is no evidence that this work would be less physically or mentally exhausting than employment, particularly because it is unpaid. A related problem is that children are often more preoccupied with the long-term survival and well-being of their families than with their own direct, short term interests. Child labor prohibition has to address the dual challenge of providing children with both short-term income and long-term prospects for a sustainable future. Individuals, corporations, nations, and other entities can often be active in a deliberate, systematic, use of children for their labor, while others will ignore such abuse. Industrial Revolution In the west, during the , a series of Factory Act s were passed to restrict gradually the hours that children were allowed to work, and to improve safety. It is widely argued that the industrial revolution increased hardship for children. Historian E. P. Thompson notes in The Making Of The English Working Class that child labor was not new, and had been "an intrinsic part of the agricultural and industrial economy economy before 1780", however he argues that "there was a drastic increase in the intensity of exploitation of child labour between 1780 and 1840, and every historian acquainted with the sources knows this is so. This was true in the mines, both in inefficient small-scale pits where the roadways were sometimes so narrow that children could not easily pass through them; where - as the coal face drew furher away from the shaft - children were in demand as 'hurreyers' and to operate the ventilation ports. In the mills, the child and juvenile labour force grew yearly; and in several of the out-worker or 'dishonourable' trades the hours of labour became longer and work more intense.''" Some historians have disagreed with this verdict. Economic historian Robert Hessen says :"''claims of increased misery... {Link without Title} based on ignorance of how squalid life actually had been earlier. Before children began earning money working in factories, they had been sent to live in parish poorhouses, apprenticed as unpaid household servants, rented out for backbreaking agricultural labor, or became beggars, vagrants, thieves, and prostitutes (Nutten) . The precapitalist "good old days" simply never existed''" Laws were passed to prohibit child labor in the industrialized countries, however it is unclear whether this legislation the principal cause of the decline in levels of juvenile employment. Research by Clark Nardinelli suggests that child labor was already decreasing in the United States and Western Europe prior to the passage of legislation, due to an increasing demand for educated and literate adults brought about by an increasing technological sophistication of industry. The demand for educated workers also provided an incentive for children to stay in school to meet the new demands of industry. Boycotts International concern has recently been raised in connection to an implied morality complicity of the buying public with child exploitation, through the purchase of products assembled or otherwise manufactured with child labor in developing countries. However, some express concerns that boycotting products manufactured through child labor may force these children to turn to more dangerous professions due to necessity, such as prostitution or Agriculture . For example, a UNICEF study found that that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepal ese children turned to prostitution after the United States banned that country's Carpet exports in the 1990s . Also, after the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh , leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution," --"all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment production" according to a UNICEF study. {Link without Title} The study says that boycotts are "blunt instruments with long-term consequences that can actually harm rather than help the children involved." ECONOMICS OF CHILD LABOR Children's participation in economic activity was commonplace prior to the Industrial Revolution as children performed labor on their Farm s or for their families. Economists such as Milton Friedman argue that the Industrial Revolution saw a net decline in child labor, rather than an increase. According to this view, children began to work in factories, but greater numbers of children stopped working in agriculture. Whilst accepting this overall child labor declined in this period, other commentators draw a qualitative distinction between domestic work and participation in the wider (waged) labor-market. The usefulness of the experience of the industrial revolution in making predictions about current trends has been disputed. Economic historian Hugh Cunningham notes that: "Fifty years ago it might have been assumed that, just as child labour had declined in the developed world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so it would also, in a trickle-down fashion, in the rest of the world. Its failure to do that, and its re-emergence in the developed world, raise questions about its role in any economy, whether national or global." |
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