One of the most common expectations that parents have is for their children to grow up to be productive citizens. While young people receive their formal education in the classroom, they also can learn many things about life through their experiences outside of school. If children spend most of their extra time watching television or playing video games, they are only passively involved in the world around them. What people learn at a very young age will affect their development and help shape their future. While times have changed and fewer children are expected to work in today’s world, adults who have worked as children will become more productive citizens than those who have not worked during their childhood. Teenage years are a period …show more content…
Child labor could also damage physical growth and education. On the other hand, child work is employment of children at legal age. According to the amendments to the 1933 Act, national law, teenager may not work if they are under 14 but 13 year olds may be able to do work which is approved by local authority by-laws. Child work is good; it develops skills children will need when they grow up, helps them to enhance self-confidence and self-esteem, demonstrate responsibility, and leads them to gain valuable interpersonal and occupational specific skills. Millions of teens under the age of 18 enter the U.S. workforce each year. The majority of teens take positions in retail industry jobs such as fast food restaurants and retail stores, while many others accept positions in the service and agriculture industries. Most of today’s teen workers no longer work in the fields or at the factory to help support their families. Their reasons for working are more personal. They want their own spending money. According to Dawn Castillo, chief of surveillance and field investigations branch and a supervising epidemiologist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health which is known as NIOSH, “Adolescents spend most of their income on discretionary items” (Castillo) or their own individual needs.
Research shows that working during high school may have both positive and negative effects on teenagers. There are many positive aspects for teenagers that work
On the other hand, part-time work may affect the potential of teenagers to become someone much more significant in a society than they are when performing standard operations at McDonald’s or any other fast food restaurant. Due to intensive work most teenagers that
Next, teenagers are constantly running here and there, trying to keep up with their schedules. From school, church activities, work, sports, friends, family, and any other sort of time consuming plans, they’re exhausted. A study done in 2014 showed that over 22% of high school students work a part-time job. They’ve also seen that working more than 15-20 hours per week, can affect their academic performance. Plus teenagers
Many teens work to help their family. For example, teens such as Eddie work to help their parents even though they do not get paid for what he has earned. “Eddie Ramirez, 16, recalls summers when he worked in the tobacco fields. Contractors often take advantage of young workers, he says, recounting times when he wasn't paid what he earned. Yet for four years, he kept going back to help his mother pay the rent” (Potenza 1). They work in many dangerous places just to get some money to help their families out. “Although families may rely on this
When their work do not affect their “health and personal development or interfere with their schooling,” they do not fit the negative notion of child labor (ILO, 1996). Children sometimes assist their parents with housework and take a part in building family businesses without their working hours affecting primary education. This is indeed a beneficial experience for children, because they learn to be productive within their communities. On the other hand, ILO (1996) applies the term child labor when work “is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling by; depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.” When child labor is engaged in enslavement, separation from families, and misplacement of children on the streets, ILO experts refer to it as the most extreme forms of child
For centuries, teenagers have fought with their parents over the amount of freedom they should have. Parents always fight to reel in their child’s freedom, while teens argue that they need more privileges. While parents certainly have an argument in protecting their kids from the big, scary world, ultimately teenagers need to be exposed to the dangers of everyday life in order to prepare them for entering it on their own. If they have no real-life experience, they cannot be expected to handle it well when they leave their parents’ houses. In order to teach kids responsibility and life skills, kids should be allowed freedom to work and be out on their own, but have certain restrictions on a case-to-case basis in terms of curfews and household obligations.
The employment of adolescents are most often very dangerous. Many children are dying from working. “22,000 children a year die from labor.” There are many, many causes from this such as drugs, diseases, mental illnesses, and the owners killing them. Many child slave owners either use them and then kill them or will kill them once they get to weak to work anylonger. A lot of modern day slave owners sell the children's organs once they're dead in order to get even more money from the kids. Slave owners aren’t the only way these kids die, in fact, this is one of the less frequent types of death. Not only do children get diseases and illnesses, while working many children get a drug addiction. Kids get addicted to drugs because they are either forced or think that it will make their lives easier. In some opinions
Jobs won’t only support teens for the things they want, but it can help benefit for the things they need. The first things teens think of for their future are going to college and getting their first car. But, let’s say there’s a well educated thirteen-year-old, raised in a low-income family, who has plans on going to college.
“ 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.
Hundreds of thousands of children under the age of 18 are working in agriculture in the United States. According to The Daily Transcript, “Many young people ages 13 to 16 work 70 to 80 hours a week and risk pesticide poisoning, heat illness, injuries and lifelong disabilities.” With this going on, children are being exposed to harm that they may or may not even be aware of. Child labor is more common in the United States (and all over the world) than one might think. There are laws currently in place dealing with child labor, “…which prohibit 12 and 13-year-olds from working most jobs, except on farms, and also say that youths aged 14 and 15 may not work in hazardous jobs, including construction.” (The Daily Transcript). Although these laws are in place, in 2010, 467 child-labor violations were found and
In Amitai Etzioni’s essay “Working at McDonald’s”, he argues that the jobs teens take up at popular fast food restaurants are detrimental to their education. His proposal was that working at these fast food restaurants negatively affects their education by encouraging teens to be more concerned about earning money than being successful in their studies. He claims that teens are getting these jobs to spend on petty items. Etzioni states that the routine and lack of creativity of the jobs are harmful and the hours in which teens work are long and interfere with students’ abilities to further their studies and complete assignments. He states that teens that have dropped out and are working at these restaurants have fallen into a stagnant condition
Academic obligations are not the only responsibilities for American high school students. One of the responsibilities that many students have is a job. The unemployment rate for teenagers is a mere 9.1 percent. The reasons why students work wildly vary. For some, it’s to earn
In the article Teenagers’ Work Can Have Downsides”by Jerald G Bachman describe how teens who are in high school that have jobs developed poor academic performances “ they're more likely to be involved in a variety of problems ” Jerald began the “Monitoring the Future “ project that monitored teens in high school and from college who had jobs and discovered a drop in the high school teens academics and made connections between long hours and problems behaviors are symptoms of issue like poor adjustments to school and greater interest in short term gratification .They encouraged for student to follow what they call a sweet spot a job that requires relatively few hours per week during the school year fewer hours the better.Student that have
Jobs are very time-consuming. If a teenager works and goes to school, he will probably not have time to join a gang or get into fights. Nowadays more and more employees are getting drug-tested at their jobs. If a teenager likes his job or needs to work, he will not do drugs because he will get fired. Furthermore, if a teenager receives a paycheck he will spend his earned money instead of stealing. A job can lead a teenager to a better lifestyle and a healthier life.
Teenagers love spending money, as they grow older they have more financial needs that their parents may not be able to support. When they are faced with this obstacle they revert to getting a job. The U.S. Census released a report that found about 1 in 4 high school students have jobs. That means about 3.1 million students age 16 and older are working nationwide. There are many benefits and disadvantages by working and going to school full time. Although teenagers have good reasons for working while in high school, but some effects may be unfavorable, such as treating your education, sleep reduction, and missing out on a high school experience.
A childs education is very important. Having a effective and quality education is the key to success. Not having a quality education, could mean a rough path ahead in your life. According to a picture at, nccp.org 66.5% of teens had a job and a college degree. The other 33.5% don’t have a college degree but didn’t have a job according to nccp.org. Having a job as a early teen will give the teen money for education and will educate them on stuff schools don’t teach them. Making this Child Labor law to 13 for non-hazardous jobs will give the teens the education they need for their bright future ahead!