Should Child Labor Be Safer?

Child labor is historically defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development” (Hansan, 2013). Legally, to be considered child labor, work must involve at least one of the following characteristics:

“ In 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16.”(Foner) Child labor is a terrible thing that children have to go through. Although this was not considered a problem because of how normal it was.(Foner.). But due to the work of investigative journalist children today no longer have to worry about working in these dangerous environments.

There have been many major reform movements about child labor since the Industrial Revolution. One of the most important major reforms is the age limit in child labor. During the Industrial Revolution, around 18 percent of American workers were under the age of 16; however, today it’s illegal to employ children under the age of 15 at most workplaces. This is a drastic change due to the fact that young children have been working ever since the start of America. Another important major reform movement is maximum hours for young workers.

Even though child labor is still a problem today the number of children in child labor has decreased over the past few decades. Believe it or not, once there was a time when the United States had child labor going on. In 1870, 750,000 kids in America were in child labor. Then in 1938, Child Labor had stopped in most parts of the US. However outside of the United States, child labor is still a worldwide problem. 11 percent of the children are still stuck in child labor today. During the Industrial Revolution is when the numbers of children in child labor got extremely

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.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution in America, laws that prevented children from working was not established, and this allowed businesses to utilized children as an inexpensive form of labor. By the 1900s there were over one million children working in the labor force. Most of those young workers were from a poor or immigrant family. They were put to work at an early age usually between five to sixteen years old. In the article, “The History of Child Labor During the American Industrial Revolution” by Jennifer Wagner, discusses about how most of these youngsters worked in unsafe conditions in:

This source supports my argument by providing text and images that depict the harsh conditions that children were forced to work in for an vast period of time. The images in this source illustrate the physical damage that the working conditions had on children and how many fell ill or even died as a result. This source contains a lot of statistics regarding the ages of children who worked in factories and how much child labor increased over time. This source not only discusses the difficult circumstances that children endured factories, but in other industries as well such as coal mines. This source also contains information about the

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

Imagine sending your son or daughter to work just to stay out of poverty or just to get by. This is what some brave parents have to do to their children. The Fundamental reason many families in developing nations send children to work is for plain survival. Wages earned by these children can mean the difference between passable subsistence or being absolutely miserable. Although sending children way before the age of 15-16 may seem terrible looking at what children are working with dangerous tools, it's a way to stay out of poverty, and to continue on with life.

In conclusion, children are being put at risk by working in large factories and people should not buy products made by them because of the horrible and dangerous working conditions, the decreased pay, and being deprived from their childhood. Having a child work a such a young age would put their whole life at risk. It is not a good idea at all to make children work so that another child in the United States can have

In my research I will do a survey will include some questions about child labor

The term “child labor” refers to children who work to produce a good or service which is then sold for money in a marketplace. Many of these children were either not paid or paid dismal wages. The exact ages of childhood differ between countries and time periods though it is documented that children as young as four were of idle working age in Britain during the Industrial Revolution (Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution). The two most common forms of children in factories were “Parish apprentice children,” and “free labor children.”

Lastly another reason why child labor still exist is because the lack of enforcement of laws from the government. The government has not done enough to help protect these young children’s. 168 million of children are still involved in child labor, which is a ridiculous amount. 85 million children are still forced to work in a hazardous environment that could either injure or kill them. There are even 21 million children in forced labor, meaning these

In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.

Not true. Though our intentions mean well, we cannot lose our head every time a story involving a helpless child in an uncaring society reaches the news. We must not, in our naiveness and absence of the facts, be brainwashed to believe that ending "child labor" will solve anything. For what Greene forgets to include in her definition is the one element that makes the problem impossible to deal with. For some children, "child labor," with all its abuses and exploitations, is all that stands between life and death. As much as the world's public is now aware of all the corruption behind the productivity of big international corporations, we must also come to realize the other side of the argument. The prohibition of child labor in its entirety is not the solution. It is neither possible nor probable. As long as poverty exists, children will work to stay alive. The complete and utter abolishment of child labor by "more developed countries" may hurt the poverty-stricken children of "less developed countries" more than if absolutely nothing was done.