While child labor is viewed negatively, apparently child labor and child slavery aren’t the same thing, and child labor though it could still be exploitative/cruel in other ways, can be done voluntarily by the child, and with fair treatment/compensation/etc.
I suppose you could make the argument that any child labor opens itself up to problems, but could it be done responsibly? And if not, then at what age do we draw the line of labor being not ok regardless of consent?
Nope. Children are not able to provide informed consent and thus cannot enter into contracts to sell their labor. Beyond that, there is a wealth of data demonstrating negative outcomes related to child labor, including educational underperformance, increased incidence of poverty, abuse, and crime, as well as the potential of workplace injuries to cause permanent developmental impairment.
There is no such thing as ethical child labor.
I tend to agree, but what about making a child do chores in a family household? Most children don’t want to do it and some don’t get anything in return, the tasks can sometimes be grueling. Would that always be unethical, or only when taken to an excessive degree that severely impacts the child?
Chores are different in that the purpose is training them to be self sufficient adults. Once it deviates from that purpose, it becomes abusive.
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This is likely related to why kids can work in a family owned business to various extents. At least in the US. Not sure about elsewhere.
The problem is that once you make it available for anybody, it becomes a societal pressure and children won’t be given a choice since they can’t make their own decisions for what they do. Hell, how many of us were ‘forced’ to get a summer job as a teenager by our parents?
In Germany children are obligated to help their parents in the household as long as they live with them. This extends to family business. By law the children have no right to be compensated, since they are already compensated by the parents feeding and housing them. Of course, this doesn’t mean parents can just slave their children, there are plenty of health and security laws and what’s generally reasonable for a child of varous ages to do.
So no family sweat shop. but the bottom line is: in Germany kids are obligated to help out the household they live with.
Yeah, it’s essentially similar in the US. I don’t know if kids are legally obligated to do chores, but they can work in certain family businesses without monetary compensation. I just don’t think it should be opened up to the point where you can hire any child. But in any case, pretty sure this is a troll post as their first example was cobalt mining. I mean, I guess there’s a small chance it’s not a troll, but very slim.
Oh, for sure. The exception to family businesses is probably both in Germany and the US rooted in the time the laws were made, where it would’ve been devastating to not allow families to include their children in the family business. And ultimately, there are probably plenty of laws in both countries that would check in on abuse.
It isn’t commercial labor when an adult does their own chores (I think), as it’s more related to the people in a household maintaining their own home. It likely wouldn’t be labor for a child for the same reasons, though I’m not sure.
But it could start to look like labor when it’s something that produces commercial value, for example, it’s more like a ‘chore’ to water the vegetable garden in the backyard, but it’s more like ‘labor’ to tend to 20 acres of farmland.
Excessive chores, though, could be prevented under child abuse law rather than child labor law, depending on how it’s enforced. Doing all the household work voluntarily for no reason other than it’s fun? Almost certainly legal. No video games until you clean the dishes? Probably legal. No food until you sweep, mop, dust, and shine every surface in the house? Probably abuse.
And I mean, I would argue that household chores can be viewed as education. After all, at some point the children have to care for their own household and as such are good to learn routine cleaning, how to do dishes, how to shop and cook, how to crawl into a tiny tunnel to mine for gold and how to keep the garden tidy.
There are some people who are adults who are kinda clueless about some basic things and I think it would’ve been a good part of education to have them make household chores from childhood onwards.
Of course, this needs to be reasonable and age appropriate. So, I agree with the commercial aspect of it.
Chores are largely part of childhood education. Humans need to be able to do things that they may not find fun to both to survive as functional adults and function as a part of society. They also help to teach responsibility and contribution to larger things than themselves, whether a family unit or society at large.
Well, let me play devil’s advocate.
- You don’t need a two-way binding contract to form a labor relationship. You could have a relationship where an employer offers a child some terms, and the child can work whenever they want, leave whenever they want, and get paid for the time they work, or for their output, or something.
- Does the labor cause the poverty, abuse, and crime? I’d imagine that the poverty causes the labor, and the poverty also causes the crime. Abuse might also cause the labor, as parents could force their kids to work, but you could create systems at certified child employers to interview Children and see how their home lives are going. The children might also be using work as an escape—either a temporary one, or a way to save up money to move out as soon as possible.
- Generally, when people talk about the age of meaningful consent, there’s a clear line at or near the age of majority. Where’s the line where you can meaningfully consent to labor? Does it depend on the job? Sure, five year olds shouldn’t be allowed to work at all, but what about a fourteen year old who really wants to be a camp counselor during the summer? I worked at a park when I was 16, I mostly sat around all day. I read three books (the ones I had to read for school and one more), I went for a walk every day, I got fresh air, I talked to people. Surely we can agree that that was fine.
- We should definitely talk about the types of job. No kid should be a factory worker or an accountant or a dentist. But working in a park, being a camp counselor, babysitting… There are many traditional jobs that apply to children with no risk of physical injury, jobs that don’t conflict with schoolwork, etc. Do those studies address each form of labor?
Well, let me play devil’s advocate.
Really, there’s no need. It’s already been definitively proven to be harmful both to children and society.
You don’t need a two-way binding contract to form a labor relationship. You could have a relationship where an employer offers a child some terms, and the child can work whenever they want, leave whenever they want, and get paid for the time they work, or for their output, or something.
No, you really do. The power differential is far too great to be able to rely on “they can leave whenever they want”. Adults have significant physical, social, cognitive, financial, and legal ability that can be easily exercised to coerce those who are still developing, even unintentionally.
Does the labor cause the poverty, abuse, and crime? I’d imagine that the poverty causes the labor, and the poverty also causes the crime.
Yes, it is casually connected. Child labor causes time that would spent learning to instead be spent related to labor and recovering from labor. This in turn causes reduced academic performance, increasing the likelihood of poverty, which in turn causes increase in criminal behavior.
Abuse might also cause the labor, as parents could force their kids to work, but you could create systems at certified child employers to interview Children and see how their home lives are going. The children might also be using work as an escape—either a temporary one, or a way to save up money to move out as soon as possible.
That is the role for not-for-profit enterprises dedicated to child welfare, not those looking to exploit children for personal gain. Abuse is also endemic in most areas of current and historical child labor.
Generally, when people talk about the age of meaningful consent, there’s a clear line at or near the age of majority. Where’s the line where you can meaningfully consent to labor? Does it depend on the job? Sure, five year olds shouldn’t be allowed to work at all, but what about a fourteen year old who really wants to be a camp counselor during the summer? I worked at a park when I was 16, I mostly sat around all day. I read three books (the ones I had to read for school and one more), I went for a walk every day, I got fresh air, I talked to people. Surely we can agree that that was fine.
Participating in education with a nonprofit organization with increased oversight and not having profit motive to exploit children when also outside of the usual academic year? Yup. That seems reasonable and a good way to allow them to learn responsibility and contribution to society in a safe environment.
We should definitely talk about the types of job. No kid should be a factory worker or an accountant or a dentist. But working in a park, being a camp counselor, babysitting… There are many traditional jobs that apply to children with no risk of physical injury, jobs that don’t conflict with schoolwork, etc. Do those studies address each form of labor?
Many of the “jobs” that children can participate in without harm are better lines at through the lens of education. They have to be strictly examined to ensure that they are not setup for exploitation and allowing any for-profit activity significantly increases this risk. Arguably, some traditional jobs such as childcare should only be acceptable if matching the going rate for adult childcare workers as, while useful in learning child-rearing skills that may be needed as an adult, it is used to suppress wages of those who do so vocationally.
Yes, it is casually connected. Child labor causes time that would spent learning to instead be spent related to labor and recovering from labor. This in turn causes reduced academic performance, increasing the likelihood of poverty, which in turn causes increase in criminal behavior.
Ah, you meant in the long run, yeah, fair.
I agree that labor by minors is should only be allowed in very specific cases and highly regulated. I’m not sure if I’d limit entirely to non-profit organizations, or entirely to the summer, or whatever, but yeah, it’s not something to take lightly.
Growing up in suburbia, the labor we did have wasn’t a problem… Is the general regulatory scheme around child labor in the US deeply problematic in some way I don’t know about? Are there a lot of states that are way too permissive?
Oh yeah, no way that would ever get abused or exploited 🙄.
That is allowed. Kids are allowed to do small jobs outside school hours, paper rounds, dog walking, babysitting, all fine jobs for teens.
A full time job that denies them an education is exploitative.
We can’t even trust employers to not steal wages, sexually harass, or be decent humans to adult workers. There’s no way a literal child should be expected to hold their own in an employee/employer relationship.
Labor: No. Consent doesn’t matter.
Doing jobs / working as a kid is perfectly alright if it contributes to their education, teaches them skills for life or helps them learn how to become an independent individual. But within limits. They also need time to grow, have fun and go to school.
Other than that, children will consensually work if the alternative is seeing their little sister starve. Help contribute to the family income or happily skip school if able. Under a certain age, children are regarded as not very wise, unable to consent and easily manipulable. For example by cruel or stupid parents.
That is why it needs to be banned to a certain (and arguable) age. Instead, the state/society needs to provide for poor children, and protect them. Sometimes even from their parents and themselves. Until they’re grown enough to make their own decisions.
Other than that, children will consensually work if the alternative is seeing their little sister starve
I’m not sure I would call that “consent.” It’s coercion.
It’s kind of a slippery slope altogether.
If the money involved is enough to ensure they are not poor and legal protections exist, should there still be such a ban?
Adults paid minimum wage without other sources of income are poor. What you’re implying is a system that pays children a living wage that is above the current minimum wage. What employer is going to pay someone more than minimum when they are a child who will have major limitations and liabilities as an employee, and when they could potentially pay a full grown adult to do more work with less liability for less pay?
The only reality where that happens is when it is a job that a child can do more easily than a full sized adult, and that is exactly the kind of work that made child labor illegal in the first place—those little hands can sure reach deep into those factory machines, can’t they?
If these protections work 100% and the kids are for sure not being manipulated and it doesn’t take away from their education… And we’re sure they don’t ‘not know better’. I’m not sure if we’d need that ban.
Let’s say you’re Harry Potter. Or Hermione Granger and you’re 11 yo and you have people to make sure you don’t suffer from working. I’m okay with that. And I think they got paid more than minimum wage. I didn’t watch the documentary so I don’t know if it worked out alright for them. But starring in movies reportedly is hard work.
We have decided as a nation that children under a certain age are incapable of consenting to anything.
What age is that? Unless they’re really young, isn’t that somewhat denying their ability to make their own decisions? What if they truly want to work and make money or get experience at a younger age?
isn’t that somewhat denying their ability to make their own decisions?
Somewhat, yes, and that’s by design.
Kids under a certain age should not be held responsible for making all of their own life decisions. When kids grow up, if their parents doesn’t suck, they get succesively more agency and responsibility, not making all of your own decisions is just part of being a kid.I mean this with all due respect, but are you under the age of 21? Your posts sound a lot like my opinions when I was younger.
I grew up thinking a lot of the rules surrounding childhood consent were dumb—I considered myself intelligent and mentally complete, so I figured the rules existed for some other type of kid. Then I got to 25 and realized that I had profoundly evolved mentally over the previous decade, and finally realized what adults had been saying all those years ago. I have had another one of those revelations recently, and it has been about another 10 years.
I realize now that my confidence as a teenager was primarily an expression of immaturity and inexperience. Yes, school sucks, but work does too. There is no magic freedom with adulthood, there is responsibility. Expanded choices also bring expanded consequences, and failure is most definitely possible.
If I could do it all again, I would enjoy those younger years for what they are, and not try to move too fast. You’ll have plenty of long decades as an adult to decide how you feel about it. My guess is that you’ll feel differently than you do now.
Agree, op honestly sounds like someone who was offered something and is upset that they are too young to accept it.
I was like that, I worked fast food and they offered me a trainer position, but I was “stuck in school” and “wasn’t allowed to speak for myself”. I honestly thought about dropping out for a while.
If I had done that my life would have been so so so fucked. Unless you’re literally inheriting a company it’s not worth it, and even then I don’t know what dad would pass on a company before the child finished school.
Let’s see. If I had accepted that job and not waited to finish school I’d be making… 8 times less than I do right now according to my quick napkin math. Trust me, school is more important OP
And yet kids are given gender-affirming care without parental consent, meaning only the medical practitioner is giving consent for the treatment. How do we square that with the wider discussion of the ethics of childhood consent and labor?
This is about child labor, and I feel that getting drug into a discussion about gender affirming care is a distraction from the main point. If you were honestly seeking my opinion and not trying to derail the conversation, then I will just state briefly that one is considered a medical correction that is intended to improve the person’s life, and the other is work, which by its very design is meant to be exploitative.
No, I’m being 100% serious. Why can’t we, as a society, be consistent around the concept of childhood consent? Either they’re adults capable of consent, or they’re children who require a parent or guardian to give consent for them. I don’t understand how anything can be a gray area.
You would need to look at Federal/State/Local laws to confirm, the one that is more strict would apply, in most cases. Working for your parent has other rules.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/youthrules/parents
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/youthrules
As a general rule, the FLSA sets 14 years old as the minimum age for employment, and limits the number of hours worked by minors under the age of 16.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/agerequirements
Employment/Age Certificate per state
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/age-certificates#Texas
How do you know you’re from the same nation as OP?
Consentually… Sounds like a great way for a corporation to groom individuals into people who accept less than a liveable wage.
I don’t see anything that helps capitalism being done “responsibly”. It’s all done in the pursuit of all the money, and as soon as possible. Only rule is don’t break laws that have consequences higher than the profits gained.
Consent aside, it will never be acceptable in a place where there’s free education, since educating a child is almost guaranteed to increase their quality of life and production in society
What if they worked outside of school hours/while still maintaining their education? Depending on the job, it could help start their career and benefit them that way as well.
It will still impact their education. They’ll be too tired to focus at school.
I guess education might be worth prioritizing over making an early start on their career, but I don’t know, I could see a career move potentially even being more important if it’s a good opportunity.
The kinds of jobs you get even as a teenager are not growth careers. They don’t get these ‘good opportunities’ that you speak of.
Exactly the jobs you’d offer a teenager are not careers, but if you’re exploiting children you’d want to think they’re careers. A low laying fast food job can seem like a career if you dangle a meaningless promotion in front of them
What kind of work do you think these kids are doing? Like are you picturing a 12 year old getting a leg-up on their adult “competition” because they started their career as a literal child?
give some examples of such careers
No career can be started by a child. None that would be worthwhile to get a head start in.
Let children be children.
At least in the US, we don’t need child labor. We can get by just fine without it. So there is no reason.
Children should be children. They shouldn’t need to earn an income. Education and fun should be a priority. Have the rest of their lives to be miserable
Being imprisoned in school in name of education is already miserable though
Are you a child ?
Why, am I being too controversial? I don’t believe the only possible alternative to child labor is schooling and definitely not in the way it is done today.
So you are a child. Good to know. You haven’t experienced decades of adult life. Impossible to compare. Your opinion matters but so does others that have decades of research. Schooling is likely the best it’s been in thousands of years. Do you get beaten ?
I moved out at 14, so I’m gonna go with yes, but I’ll caveat that I got a pretty heavy bias on the issue :)
I will say that parental consent is a shit answer. The kids capable of working consensually likely won’t need it.
Isn’t 14 already a legal age to work (though admittedly some caveats)?
Edit: in the US at least.
Yes, when it’s the product of apprenticeship, where there is a clear gain, without loss in other areas of education. As to the amount of time it takes from childhood, the matter is less clear, as it is within societies that permit cram schools. But if you allow one, then you can allow the other.
What do you have in mind?
I was wondering if the cobalt mined for smartphones could be done ethically, even if they still needed to use children for it. What if the children clearly consent to working and are treated well in good conditions and paid fairly?
What…? No. Definitely not.
Having children perform manual labor in a mine is not going to be ethical at any point.
Literally advocating for XIX century-style Dickensian child labor.
Yeah Imma go with troll as wellWell, that doesn’t work for sexual consent, and I guess it would be similar regarding this issue. Informed consent requires the person to be of such an age that their consent is valid. I’m no expert, that was just my initial thought.
Ok, this has to be trolling now. This is the career you want them in a headstart in? A dangerous job? All mining has health implications.
Great point OP. Really makes you wonder why we don’t have more kindergartners working the oil rigs, or fighting as mercenaries in the Middle East.
I suppose I’d call one form of that “household chores”
Child should get education and not work. The government should support financially families so kids and student don’t need to work
It was historically and still is in some places, today.
kids should not work nor “have to” work. they should have fun, get educated and well… be kids. they have more than 40 years down the road to suffer in a cubicle
