Child Labor Laws

[Traveler]

I am of the mind that we have created a generation in the USA that is anti-work and believes that it is wrong and unethical to work.  I suggest that this is a byproduct of Child Labor Laws that have gone way too far thinking to protect children.  As a result, children have nothing else to do and nothing to accomplish in their life beyond video games and internet influencing.  Many think it is draconian and cruel to prohibit students in K-12 from using their personal devices while attending school classes.

I suggest that children as young as 8 are capable of doing work – not the work of an adult but work and learning to work.  Children are permitted to work in the entertainment industry – why not allow limited work with responsible adult supervision?

I realize that I am an old guy from a very different time – but my first paying job (not home chorus) was when I was 8 years old.  I was expected to purchase my close and help pay for vacations.  As I got older, I delivered newspapers, pricked fruit and vegetables, sold door to door, did grunt work for construction and various industrial companies.  I became a certified welder in high school (extracurricular) to support myself through college and also earned a scholarship. 

I have a student rental in Provo that caters to BYU students and I am amazed how many of them have never had a paying job in their entire life.  They have gone on a mission with someone else paying and are going to college without having ever worked in their life – using grants and loans to pay for school.   There are couples getting married and neither the husband nor wife have ever had a paying job.

I think we should teach everyone that has a right to vote that work is desirable and noble.  That not working is bad and unhelpful to everyone – both the individual and for society.

 

The Traveler

[Ironhold]

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

I am of the mind that we have created a generation in the USA that is anti-work and believes that it is wrong and unethical to work.  I suggest that this is a byproduct of Child Labor Laws that have gone way too far thinking to protect children.  As a result, children have nothing else to do and nothing to accomplish in their life beyond video games and internet influencing.  Many think it is draconian and cruel to prohibit students in K-12 from using their personal devices while attending school classes.

I suggest that children as young as 8 are capable of doing work – not the work of an adult but work and learning to work.  Children are permitted to work in the entertainment industry – why not allow limited work with responsible adult supervision?

I realize that I am an old guy from a very different time – but my first paying job (not home chorus) was when I was 8 years old.  I was expected to purchase my close and help pay for vacations.  As I got older, I delivered newspapers, pricked fruit and vegetables, sold door to door, did grunt work for construction and various industrial companies.  I became a certified welder in high school (extracurricular) to support myself through college and also earned a scholarship. 

I have a student rental in Provo that caters to BYU students and I am amazed how many of them have never had a paying job in their entire life.  They have gone on a mission with someone else paying and are going to college without having ever worked in their life – using grants and loans to pay for school.   There are couples getting married and neither the husband nor wife have ever had a paying job.

I think we should teach everyone that has a right to vote that work is desirable and noble.  That not working is bad and unhelpful to everyone – both the individual and for society.

 

The Traveler

It's not the child labor laws.

I'm 39. When I was growing up, it was common for parents to trust even younger kids to play together unsupervised. This included walking from house to house if the distances were nearby. Play could potentially be rough, and the bruises we sometimes got were testaments. If we had sporting goods, toys, or so forth that we were using, they often got beat up as well.

Over time, however, parents started to be afraid. They feared that their children would be hurt if they were out of eyesight for even a moment. In some jurisdictions, police and child services actually started seeing "kids playing by themselves" as parental neglect and abandonment. 

Things went from there. 

Many children nowadays are the way they are because their parents never let them have the freedom those of my generation had growing up. 

[Just_A_Guy]

Utah passed a “free range parenting” law a couple of years ago, and it’s interesting (since I work with DCFS) how often I’ll be reviewing a case with a caseworker, and I’ll tell them that we can’t file a court petition due to the free range parenting statute, and the caseworkers want to argue with me about it.

Their hearts are in the right places, but I think modern psychological theory drastically underestimates what kids are capable of.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Just_A_Guy

[mikbone]

 

[Ironhold]

By coincidence, I was going through classic installments of the comic strip "Baldo" when I found this one from 2000:

https://www.gocomics.com/baldo/2000/06/25

It shows that even 23 years ago the situation was such that many children were discouraged from actually going outside more often even when their parents insisted they should.