The Importance Of Child Labor Laws

Child Labor, once known as the practice of employing young children in factories, now it's used as a term for the employment of minors in general, especially in work that would interfere with their education or endanger their health. Throughout history and in all cultures children would work in the fields with their parents, or in the marketplace and young girls in the home until they were old enough to perform simple tasks. The use of child labor was not a problem until the Factory System. The Factory System is a working arrangement where a number of people cooperate to produce articles of consumption. Some form of Factory system has existed even since ancient times.

In 1900, children as young as nine years old were once expected to work sixteen hours a day in harsh conditions. They were useful because of their small size and the owners being able to pay low wages. Child labor laws exist because brave men, women, and children fought for these rights. The conditions of the children’s working environment caused Lewis Hine and the newsies to act upon it.

Child labor is very demanding throughout many countries around the world, especially those were the economic status is not doing so well at the time. As in the United States there are some very strict laws and guidelines that the employers has to follow or they will get fined. The fines that the company may get are not cheap and increase each time they violate the law. As in fines, if the employers violates these laws that are put into place to protect children then can either get fined or even imprisonment if the Justice Department sees fit to do so. These laws and guidelines will help the individual child themselves, the economy and society down the road later on. In this paper we will see what child labor is, some laws that protect the

“If we can’t begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of child labor, then we are not ready to march forward into the future,” – Alexis Herman, Secretary of Labor. We cannot advance to the future if we still have child labor. It is wrong. Children have been servants throughout a lot of history, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, child labor skyrocketed. During the Great Depression, it went down. Everyone wanted the jobs to go to adults. Child labor hurts children, they get trafficked and they stay in poverty.

It is estimated that one in six of the world’s children are working in unacceptable conditions and that's about 180 million children worldwide (Kilcullen 218). That is a great deal of children that are exposed to harm or exploitation. The opposing side believes that these poor countries need child labor to survive, that it is alright to pay children low wages for the work they do, and do not believe that schooling is as important as work. By regulating child labor laws, governments would be able to enforce safer working conditions, increase wages to meet the cost of living, and mandate education for better opportunities even though the opposing side disputes these reasons and stance.

When one hears the term “Child Labor”, an image of children making low quality clothing in some dingy third world sweatshop inevitably comes to mind. While this imagery is unfortunately founded in fact, the third world is not the only area complicit with this heinous practice. Truthfully, we, as a nation are also guilty of propagating this heinous practice. For over a century, this nation’s youth were subjugated to exploitation and abuse at the hands of captains of industry in the hopes of extracting every ounce of profit they could. Fortunately, sympathetic individuals recognized the children’s need for advocacy and rose to their defense in the form of organized dissent that appealed to the highest powers of this country to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. In this paper, we will look at what exactly child labor is, the circumstances that gave rise to the widespread acceptance of child labor usage, what working condition these children experienced, and how the United States eventually made its use illegal.

Since the early 19th century child labor has always been socially accepted and tolerated. Often times it was enforced by parents in order to sustain a way of living for families, but at the turn of the century the Industrial Revolution only made it more apparent that forcing children to perform manual labor would be considered unethical. In fact, thee issue of child labor has never been extensively researched or viewed as detrimental until recently. However, this issue of child labor isn’t just a violation of ethics, or as the author of Child Labor In Human Rights Law and Policy Perspective, Burns H. Weston, states, “it is undeniable and indisputable that child labor is a human rights problem, with increasing recognition all over the world

The United States of America has always been deeply ideologically split on the idea of child labor. On the one side, many people believe that children benefit from long hard hours at work because it prepares them for the real world unlike the ability of school. Along with the growth of the child, they also believe that it would create large economical growth throughout the nation. Among the many people that believe this are two of hour founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. On the other side of the argument, many people feel that children are to innocent to work for these long hours. They also tend to express how school and learning is much more vital to the child than manual labor, for it will help them much more in the long run. For example, in U.S. Supreme Court Case, Prince v. Massachusetts, the court defended child labor laws based on these exact reasons. The question as to which of these opinions is more valid is still commonly contemplated to this very day. In my opinion, the child should not be forced to work if they would rather spend their time studying, however a child that wants to work should not be lawfully unable to do so.

The first industrial revolution paved the way for new ideals, complex machinery, and scientific thought which helped to invent everyday items which we still use today. For hundreds of years, scientific thought has been used to create and restore inventions as well as plan for future ones. Its many aspects have helped to debunk theories thousands of years ago, and come up with new ones. These hundreds of theories have given the human race a reason as to why and how Earth has survived all of this time. This helps us to understand the many ways that we are able to adapt and incorporate new things into our lives. Another aspect of the industrial revolutions is the child labor and work laws. These laws were put in place to protect our children,

There are million of working children all around the world, for example, “Asia has the highest incidence of child labor (152.5 million), followed by Africa (80 million) and Latin America (17.5 million). Measured in proportional terms approximately 40 percent of African children work, while 20 percent of children work in Asia and Latin America respectively.” (Palley) ”The worldwide population of children under fourteen who work full-time is thought to exceed 200 million”. Obviously if most children participate in child labor, then there needs to be more laws regulating it and a better way of enforcing the laws. “The general minimum age was at the first 14 years, later raised to 15, and 16 for specific dangerous environments and night work”(. There are laws on the general age someone can be to work, but there are still many children who work.

I’m going to write about child labor because in my opinion every child has the right to a childhood free of hard labor. In addition I think it’s a considerable issue that most countries discuss until these days as child labor is one of the many different types of child abuse. What I’m going to investigate and to concern about is to search about child labor law, what is their rights while working and see what the reasons to work in early age. Large numbers of children work in commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, and domestic service. Millions of children are involved in work that, under any circumstance, is considered unacceptable for children.

Many people tried all sorts of methods to prohibit child labor. I am glad that child labor is banned because many children suffered injuries and long hours in the factories. I could understand them in their perspective. However, not many understand the families’ perspective. Their children were their source of income. They only survived with the money their child earned. People shouldn’t just ban child labor, and forget about the indigent families. The cause of child labor was the fact that families were poor. If it weren’t for money, people would rather send their children to school. To help both the family and the children, people could have offered more

Child labor laws were created for a reason. Children should not be allowed to work at their age. A child should be is at school, learning and broadening their mines not working. In reading the post by Bruce D., I was stunned to know that this man would have rather enlisted in the army or take on a job as a child instead of going to school. I do not agree with the concept of children working, their palace at that age is going to school and enjoying their adolescence.

Child labour is a very real problem in the world today, and although it is declining, progress is happening at a slow and unequal pace. Child labour by the International Labour Organization is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development (Diallo, Etienne, & Mehran, 2013, p. 2).” In the most extreme forms of child labour it could account for child enslavement, separation from their families, exposure to serious hazards and illnesses and being left to fend for themselves on the streets (Dinopoulos & Zhao, 2007). In order for certain types of work to be included as “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type of work,

Child labor is considered as deplorable in the current production that I fit in. The potential exposure to catching diseases, sharp equipments, and blood-borne microorganisms creates the working settings to hazardous for kids. This, again, is mostly because kids lawfully