Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work

3. Children’s Work in Historical and Comparative Perspective

Some children, certainly, have no choice about whether or not to work nor about what kind of work they must undertake. Their work may bring them no material benefits or pleasure, indeed they may thoroughly dislike it. Chapter 6 points out that some children work under duress and would like to stop working altogether, although these appear to be a minority. In chapter 8, we comment on children’s many complaints about their work situations, and express concern about children in various kinds of forced and harmful labor. The following sections of this chapter focus on children who exercise, or feel they exercise , some choice in decisions about work, and who see positive aspects in their experience of work. Children Work for Income, and the Pleasures of Having and Sharing Income The need for or desire of income is the most common primary motive that children report for seeking employment. They often say that their financial contributions , over and beyond the basic needs they help meet, generate for themselves greater respect and higher standing in their families. They often take great personal satisfaction in being considered a provider. Children also regularly report valuing the bit of independence they gain from having their own income. In an Indonesian tobacco-growing region, one child commented on work in the tobacco industry: “I like to save money for buying clothes and snacks. We want to earn money to help out our parents. When we need to spend money, we can spend our own money and not ask for it from our parents” (Amigó, 2005, 198–199). Where work is an optional part-time activity, children value it for entertainment and luxury goods, such as fashionable clothing and electronic gadgets. While these items are not strictly necessary, young people clearly enjoy them, and may feel pressure from peers and advertisers to spend in this consumerist way, even occasionally to the detriment of schoolwork (Lavalette, 2005, 156; Mizen, et al., 2001, 45–49; B. White, 1996, 830–831; Zelizer, 2002). Some children value paid employment, particularly if it is away from home, as a means for renegotiating their relationships with adults in their families, moving toward adult status while maintaining good relations through their contributions. The girls in Méknès reported motives of this type for working, which they saw as a way to enter modern society without causing a rupture in their far more traditional families. A study of children who had migrated from hill villages to work in carpet factories in Kathmandu, Nepal, showed the boys would prefer to be at home but that girls were happy to be there since factory work was easier than work at home (Johnson, et al., 1995, 57, 65). In Kenya, children , and particularly children who have been orphaned, have gained autonomy and influence in their families by earning money and remitting some of it home (Nyambedha and Aagaard-Hansen, 2003, 171). Child workers in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Scotland claim to value their work and income for relieving them from dependence on others and giving them a degree of RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF CHILDREN’S WORK 36 independence and control over their own lives (Liebel, 2001b, 61–62). In a survey of working children in Thailand, a little over half reported economic pressure as their main reason for working, and a little under half said their main reason was to achieve the autonomy of a separate income (Banpasirichote, 2000, 13). Children Work for Social Access and Status Some children work for reasons that are more social than economic. One reason young people give for taking up their jobs is to keep the company of their friends or expand social ties. Another is for social status and respect. In rural Nigeria, hawking is a way for girls approaching marriage age to be visible to prospective suitors, as these girls may legitimately be approached while selling by non-kin males in public (Robson, 2004, 206). Working children in South America argued that their work kept them from getting involved in criminal activities or begging, and allowed them to live a decent life in spite of their conditions of poverty (Liebel, 2001b, 60–61). In other ways, work may contribute to a young person finding a place in society: work enables them to be “someone in life” (Liebel, 2001b, 60). Children who are deprived of the opportunity to earn feel a loss in status. When asked what he thought was the biggest change brought about by a...