On Monday, the World Day Against Child Labor, Democrats led by Representatives Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Raul Ruiz (D-CA) introduced into Congress the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety, or CARE Act. It seeks to raise the minimum age for farm work from 12 to 14, repairing a carveout from the era of the Jim Crow 1930s that permitted children to work on farms at two years younger than in other sectors.
So parental rights mean kids become forced, cheap labor and end up less educated. Republicans wouldn’t like Denmark, where I’m enjoying a family vacation and marveling at the progressive culture and modern infrastructure. Kids here, or at least in Copenhagen, must learn English and German from a young age. While never worrying about getting shot.
I know this isn’t about the subject matter of today’s letter, but I found this quote from HCR in her political chat to be profound. It’s not often you hear Dr Richardson dig into the common vernacular, but truly, it is the ‘best description’.
“Espionage and The Espionage Act, and the protection of our National Security is really the fundamental job of our government, protecting our safety from other countries, from bad things in the world. And somebody that we put in the White House PISSED THAT AWAY, and with that, pissed away the lives and the work of thousands and thousands of people who have dedicated themselves to our safety… This is an attack on the United States.” – Heather Cox Richardson, politics chat, June 14, 2023.
You worked late into the early morning to finish this well researched and written piece on a subject that is timely and not well enough followed. Thank you.
This seems to be the current goal of the Rethugs..
"... children growing up in factories without education would never have the opportunity to become good citizens, whose education was crucial to a democracy. They would never learn to read or write, leaving them at the mercy of employers, and immigrant children caught in this system would never fully integrate into society."
Democracy can't survive if children have no opportunities for education nor to learn critical thinking.
Thank you, Heather, for your moving reporting of the renewal of child labor and its attendant horrors. I worked on this film about Lewis Hine, with Nina Rosenblum, the director. We went to high school together. It is a wonderful testament to the fight against enslaving children in the early part of the twentieth century. It’s still so sad that people like Sarah Huckabee in Arkansas would renew such barbarity against children and claim to be be “pro-life”.
Thank you for your concise writing. As you have commented, the politicians who support the illiberal model do not see a need for helping all children and adults to become informed democratic voters. They plan to rule without the bother of input from voters.
Child labor is on the rise and once again it’s a repub issue that claims parental rights, when families with lowest incomes, education and employment opportunities, often immigrants, desperately send their children to work to feed families. It’s the parents who need employment opportunities with a living wage. Once again the repubs who claim to be the party of family values, weaken the most vulnerable families and children. Pay a living wage to adults, enforce existing historic child labor laws, and school attendance. Why? As Professor HCR reminds those who question the reasons: “An education would permit them to be upwardly mobile economically, thus lessening the likelihood that they would be tempted by authoritarian leaders who promised to improve their standard of living, and it would guarantee that they would be informed citizens who would work to advance democracy.” And the educated child might grow up to vote blue.
As we slide backward, understanding history can hold the line…if only people would read (you) and learn. Thank you for this perspective. It is heartbreaking.
A few weeks ago, I chose to take my daily walk at a time I don't usually: around half past 3. I walked along a long, straight suburban boulevard and was passed by kids coming home from school. Almost every single one looked unhappy, blase, burned out. All of them were carrying something that looked too heavy for them, one dragged behind him a suitcase on wheels (the kind my Grandma took with her to the airport), and one stood sheepishly blocking the sidewalk, a huge violin case opened up on a low wall of stucco, attempting to adjust the instrument inside while holding on the other pack he was carrying. I could feel myself morphing into a concerned grandpa. In a few minutes I passed by a park and thought, "good lord, why aren't they all *here* instead?" Why aren't all these adorable small little people here smiling, making things out of sticks, using their imaginations and getting into good trouble?
Yes, what is illustrated in today's letter is another example of two current Americas. There is America that has become so rabidly anti-intellectual that parents would rather deign to use their "rights" and "choice" to put their kids back in the fields and factories before they get their heads corrupted with dirty facts they learn in school, facts that might lead them away from precious dogma. Yet the shiny suburban America that prioritizes education and progressiveness is weighing its children down as well, with outsized expectations and standardized tests and endless after-school extracurriculars and college readiness from the second they can speak onward. We are all missing the point: kids should be kids. You have your whole adult life to be overworked and concerned with matters of responsibility. For the love of God, let them play with some worms until it is time to come in for supper!
Oh, and if you're serious about "protecting innocence," the vagaries of hard labor is a quicker route away from that innocence than the whimsy of drag queen story hour. Jus' sayin'.
If we're serious about changing our laws, the place to begin is wth our lobbying industry. By its nature lobbying is a one sided business. Lobbyists only present their clients' points of view; regulators and legislators are left to resolve their conflicts. This could work if we had a truly representative democtacy but our system of two senators for each state and representatives determined by a heavily gerrymandered system hardly is ideal. Add an inherently biased lobbying system and real democracy is an idealized approximation to reality. Surely we can find a better way to get reliable information to our regulators and legislators than the lobbying system with its notorious perks and, yes, payoffs.
Children should be in school and doing their homework seems to be the theme that makes political sense. Of course children should be able to help out on family farms and in mom & pop business during the summer or on weekends. They should not be employed in factories, big box stores, sweat shops and factory farms to be exploited by anyone. Working in a small family business teaches children responsibility and gives them a sense of value in the family.
There were days my father picked me up from school and took me to his place of work. I'd do my homework and watch what they did. I didn't work there, but I observed how adults did things. It was a learning experience. My children would come to my studio after school and do their homework. On special occasions they would help us wrap cables or charge batteries. When we did a big shoot in the field, my son would sometimes go with us and be in charge of charging batteries...he'd manage that for us. When he started, he was 8 or 9. He loved it...and it lasted 2 or 3 days in the summer. One of my clients requested that he come along on a trip when he was about 12. It was his first plane flight and he worked with the adults. It was good for him for 3-4 days. It's an "apprenticeship". As an adult he has an excellent work ethic. By the time he was 16 we took him out of school for 4-5 days one time to work with us on a movie set. We knew he'd learn more there than in school that week. He got to see how 200 technicians collaborate on a large production...and meet actors he had seen in movies. I'm all for strict child labor laws that keep children from loosing their childhood and being exploited. But there do need to be exceptions that help children learn responsibility and contribute their skills to small family business. In the case of family farms I can't imagine children not being a part of that fabric. It's just natural....and much better than playing video games.
Kids need to be kids. Nothing in this world is more heart lifting than a child's laughter on a playground or engaging in games in a classroom. But nothing is more heart aching than a child oppressed by work that demeans their spirit, their being.
Thank you Professor for enlightening, enriching and enraging our human conscience to this "presumed" evil of the past. It is present and must be addressed again.
Sliding back into the time before strong child labor laws. More revolting proof that Republicans don't give a flying **** about children. (Added to Jon Stewart's brilliant recent takedown of a pro-gun MAGA state senator from OK about THE biggest cause of death for US children...)
well of course the (MAGA) GOP is dismantling child labor laws - they have to make all the little girls they force to give birth have a job for their "growing" families. They also have initiatives in multiple states to allow child marriages. Expect that is their way to "protect" the rapists from having charges filed when a girl turns up pregnant.
Never mind the MAGA GOP are not in favor of a livable wage. Overlook the MAGA GOP intends to cut government agencies that supplement those businesses. Businesses that do not provide benefits to employees nor pay taxes to support those programs and the infrastructure they are taking advantage of. Businesses that want to control (i.e., deny) whether an employee has access to contraception and health care.
The MAGA GOP is holding hearings on gas stoves but NOT on gun violence.
The MAGA GOP associated movement to ban books and push "conservative" lesson plans want people to remain ignorant and not learn to think or empathize. Like Fox viewers, being fed "entertainment" instead of "news;" propaganda on what to be angry and aggrieved by rather than actual reporting on facts and reality.
I remember, not so many years ago, when there was a hue and cry because kids down to age 8 were working seven-day-weeks in sweat shops in Asia producing fancy apparel and foot ware for the American market.
It reminded me of Dickens’ and Marx/Engels’ accounts of the early Industrial Revolution: very young kids were working incredible hours in coal mines and factories.
In the early years of the 20th century, the Supreme Court balked at child labor laws.
Gradually, more and more child labor laws were enacted. There seemed to be a broad acceptance that American children should be spared forced labor from an early age and should have the opportunity oF education. In recent years I recall exposes in which children were exploited in the Imperial Valley and elsewhere.
I am appalled (but not astonished) that Republicans in a number of red states are supporting legislation that would legalize kids working in dangerous environments and for extended hours that would seem deleterious to their health and their ‘growing up years.’ I wonder how many of these Republican legislators would want their children subjected to the Katie-bar-the-door labor laws that already have been passed in some states.
I remember, as a kid, working around the existing labor laws. At the age of 14 and 15, too young to qualify for my Social Security ‘work permit,’ over Christmas vacation I worked in a hardware store six days a week from 8-to-6 pm, including Christmas Eve. Not onerous and the working conditions were pleasant.
At 16 I could legally be paid for working in the summer in the industrial cafeteria of a Westinghouse factory. The working conditions were not ideal—-up-to-120-degrees in the kitchen and I would have to clean the freezer rooms in my sweaty uniform. [Weekly $32 gross, $24.57 net with ‘volunteer’ overtime.]
My ‘kid labor’ was a breeze compared to what Republican legislators are rendering legal. I remember the scandal about kids working in meat packing plants during the Covid years. Now, as I read the legislation, protection for young kids in the work place is being trashed in an increasing number of states.
SHAME ON REPUBLICANS WHO SEEK TO TREAT OUR KIDS ON A PAR WITH EXPLOITED KIDS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES.
So parental rights mean kids become forced, cheap labor and end up less educated. Republicans wouldn’t like Denmark, where I’m enjoying a family vacation and marveling at the progressive culture and modern infrastructure. Kids here, or at least in Copenhagen, must learn English and German from a young age. While never worrying about getting shot.
I know this isn’t about the subject matter of today’s letter, but I found this quote from HCR in her political chat to be profound. It’s not often you hear Dr Richardson dig into the common vernacular, but truly, it is the ‘best description’.
“Espionage and The Espionage Act, and the protection of our National Security is really the fundamental job of our government, protecting our safety from other countries, from bad things in the world. And somebody that we put in the White House PISSED THAT AWAY, and with that, pissed away the lives and the work of thousands and thousands of people who have dedicated themselves to our safety… This is an attack on the United States.” – Heather Cox Richardson, politics chat, June 14, 2023.
(Small edit - I’m not the best secretary.)
You worked late into the early morning to finish this well researched and written piece on a subject that is timely and not well enough followed. Thank you.
So it's like EVERY. Single. Aspect. of our democracy is under attack. Years of hard work being thrown out. So depressing.
This seems to be the current goal of the Rethugs..
"... children growing up in factories without education would never have the opportunity to become good citizens, whose education was crucial to a democracy. They would never learn to read or write, leaving them at the mercy of employers, and immigrant children caught in this system would never fully integrate into society."
Democracy can't survive if children have no opportunities for education nor to learn critical thinking.
America and Lewis Hine https://g.co/kgs/KZqo6E
Thank you, Heather, for your moving reporting of the renewal of child labor and its attendant horrors. I worked on this film about Lewis Hine, with Nina Rosenblum, the director. We went to high school together. It is a wonderful testament to the fight against enslaving children in the early part of the twentieth century. It’s still so sad that people like Sarah Huckabee in Arkansas would renew such barbarity against children and claim to be be “pro-life”.
Thank you for your concise writing. As you have commented, the politicians who support the illiberal model do not see a need for helping all children and adults to become informed democratic voters. They plan to rule without the bother of input from voters.
Child labor is on the rise and once again it’s a repub issue that claims parental rights, when families with lowest incomes, education and employment opportunities, often immigrants, desperately send their children to work to feed families. It’s the parents who need employment opportunities with a living wage. Once again the repubs who claim to be the party of family values, weaken the most vulnerable families and children. Pay a living wage to adults, enforce existing historic child labor laws, and school attendance. Why? As Professor HCR reminds those who question the reasons: “An education would permit them to be upwardly mobile economically, thus lessening the likelihood that they would be tempted by authoritarian leaders who promised to improve their standard of living, and it would guarantee that they would be informed citizens who would work to advance democracy.” And the educated child might grow up to vote blue.
As we slide backward, understanding history can hold the line…if only people would read (you) and learn. Thank you for this perspective. It is heartbreaking.
Kids should get to be kids.
A few weeks ago, I chose to take my daily walk at a time I don't usually: around half past 3. I walked along a long, straight suburban boulevard and was passed by kids coming home from school. Almost every single one looked unhappy, blase, burned out. All of them were carrying something that looked too heavy for them, one dragged behind him a suitcase on wheels (the kind my Grandma took with her to the airport), and one stood sheepishly blocking the sidewalk, a huge violin case opened up on a low wall of stucco, attempting to adjust the instrument inside while holding on the other pack he was carrying. I could feel myself morphing into a concerned grandpa. In a few minutes I passed by a park and thought, "good lord, why aren't they all *here* instead?" Why aren't all these adorable small little people here smiling, making things out of sticks, using their imaginations and getting into good trouble?
Yes, what is illustrated in today's letter is another example of two current Americas. There is America that has become so rabidly anti-intellectual that parents would rather deign to use their "rights" and "choice" to put their kids back in the fields and factories before they get their heads corrupted with dirty facts they learn in school, facts that might lead them away from precious dogma. Yet the shiny suburban America that prioritizes education and progressiveness is weighing its children down as well, with outsized expectations and standardized tests and endless after-school extracurriculars and college readiness from the second they can speak onward. We are all missing the point: kids should be kids. You have your whole adult life to be overworked and concerned with matters of responsibility. For the love of God, let them play with some worms until it is time to come in for supper!
Oh, and if you're serious about "protecting innocence," the vagaries of hard labor is a quicker route away from that innocence than the whimsy of drag queen story hour. Jus' sayin'.
If we're serious about changing our laws, the place to begin is wth our lobbying industry. By its nature lobbying is a one sided business. Lobbyists only present their clients' points of view; regulators and legislators are left to resolve their conflicts. This could work if we had a truly representative democtacy but our system of two senators for each state and representatives determined by a heavily gerrymandered system hardly is ideal. Add an inherently biased lobbying system and real democracy is an idealized approximation to reality. Surely we can find a better way to get reliable information to our regulators and legislators than the lobbying system with its notorious perks and, yes, payoffs.
Children should be in school and doing their homework seems to be the theme that makes political sense. Of course children should be able to help out on family farms and in mom & pop business during the summer or on weekends. They should not be employed in factories, big box stores, sweat shops and factory farms to be exploited by anyone. Working in a small family business teaches children responsibility and gives them a sense of value in the family.
There were days my father picked me up from school and took me to his place of work. I'd do my homework and watch what they did. I didn't work there, but I observed how adults did things. It was a learning experience. My children would come to my studio after school and do their homework. On special occasions they would help us wrap cables or charge batteries. When we did a big shoot in the field, my son would sometimes go with us and be in charge of charging batteries...he'd manage that for us. When he started, he was 8 or 9. He loved it...and it lasted 2 or 3 days in the summer. One of my clients requested that he come along on a trip when he was about 12. It was his first plane flight and he worked with the adults. It was good for him for 3-4 days. It's an "apprenticeship". As an adult he has an excellent work ethic. By the time he was 16 we took him out of school for 4-5 days one time to work with us on a movie set. We knew he'd learn more there than in school that week. He got to see how 200 technicians collaborate on a large production...and meet actors he had seen in movies. I'm all for strict child labor laws that keep children from loosing their childhood and being exploited. But there do need to be exceptions that help children learn responsibility and contribute their skills to small family business. In the case of family farms I can't imagine children not being a part of that fabric. It's just natural....and much better than playing video games.
Kids need to be kids. Nothing in this world is more heart lifting than a child's laughter on a playground or engaging in games in a classroom. But nothing is more heart aching than a child oppressed by work that demeans their spirit, their being.
Thank you Professor for enlightening, enriching and enraging our human conscience to this "presumed" evil of the past. It is present and must be addressed again.
Sliding back into the time before strong child labor laws. More revolting proof that Republicans don't give a flying **** about children. (Added to Jon Stewart's brilliant recent takedown of a pro-gun MAGA state senator from OK about THE biggest cause of death for US children...)
well of course the (MAGA) GOP is dismantling child labor laws - they have to make all the little girls they force to give birth have a job for their "growing" families. They also have initiatives in multiple states to allow child marriages. Expect that is their way to "protect" the rapists from having charges filed when a girl turns up pregnant.
Never mind the MAGA GOP are not in favor of a livable wage. Overlook the MAGA GOP intends to cut government agencies that supplement those businesses. Businesses that do not provide benefits to employees nor pay taxes to support those programs and the infrastructure they are taking advantage of. Businesses that want to control (i.e., deny) whether an employee has access to contraception and health care.
The MAGA GOP is holding hearings on gas stoves but NOT on gun violence.
The MAGA GOP associated movement to ban books and push "conservative" lesson plans want people to remain ignorant and not learn to think or empathize. Like Fox viewers, being fed "entertainment" instead of "news;" propaganda on what to be angry and aggrieved by rather than actual reporting on facts and reality.
That's how democracy dies.
Sorry for the rant.
I remember, not so many years ago, when there was a hue and cry because kids down to age 8 were working seven-day-weeks in sweat shops in Asia producing fancy apparel and foot ware for the American market.
It reminded me of Dickens’ and Marx/Engels’ accounts of the early Industrial Revolution: very young kids were working incredible hours in coal mines and factories.
In the early years of the 20th century, the Supreme Court balked at child labor laws.
Gradually, more and more child labor laws were enacted. There seemed to be a broad acceptance that American children should be spared forced labor from an early age and should have the opportunity oF education. In recent years I recall exposes in which children were exploited in the Imperial Valley and elsewhere.
I am appalled (but not astonished) that Republicans in a number of red states are supporting legislation that would legalize kids working in dangerous environments and for extended hours that would seem deleterious to their health and their ‘growing up years.’ I wonder how many of these Republican legislators would want their children subjected to the Katie-bar-the-door labor laws that already have been passed in some states.
I remember, as a kid, working around the existing labor laws. At the age of 14 and 15, too young to qualify for my Social Security ‘work permit,’ over Christmas vacation I worked in a hardware store six days a week from 8-to-6 pm, including Christmas Eve. Not onerous and the working conditions were pleasant.
At 16 I could legally be paid for working in the summer in the industrial cafeteria of a Westinghouse factory. The working conditions were not ideal—-up-to-120-degrees in the kitchen and I would have to clean the freezer rooms in my sweaty uniform. [Weekly $32 gross, $24.57 net with ‘volunteer’ overtime.]
My ‘kid labor’ was a breeze compared to what Republican legislators are rendering legal. I remember the scandal about kids working in meat packing plants during the Covid years. Now, as I read the legislation, protection for young kids in the work place is being trashed in an increasing number of states.
SHAME ON REPUBLICANS WHO SEEK TO TREAT OUR KIDS ON A PAR WITH EXPLOITED KIDS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES.