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?
We have decided as a nation that children under a certain age are incapable of consenting to anything.
How do you know you’re from the same nation as OP?
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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 suppose I’d call one form of that “household chores”
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 ?
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?
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.
I try to stay civil outside hexbear, but this post is testing my resolve on that. Are you really so treat-brained that you’re ok with forcing children to mine cobalt so you can have a smartphone?
You should take some time and think about whether that’s really the kind of person you want to be
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.
You wrote this ten minutes after being reminded that “consent” by children is nonsense, in what is still the most approved comment.
If you want to be a successful troll, you are going to have to learn to be less obvious. If you want to discuss topics in good faith, you are going to have to learn that this “just asking questions” approach makes you look like a troll.
What…? No. Definitely not.
Having children perform manual labor in a mine is not going to be ethical at any point.
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.
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.
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.
Bait, lmao. Why do you keep wasting everyones time?
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.
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
Child should get education and not work. The government should support financially families so kids and student don’t need to work
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.
If the money involved is enough to ensure they are not poor and legal protections exist, should there still be such a ban?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
give some examples of such careers
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?
No career can be started by a child. None that would be worthwhile to get a head start in.
I don’t see myself saying so. I don’t even agree with the existence of mandatory school most of the time.
It was historically and still is in some places, today.
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.
