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Child Labor: A Big Problem In The US

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Child Labor: A Big Problem In The US
Child Labor Child Labor is a fairly big problem in the U.S. as well as many other countries. Children all over are being forced to work in factories or other harmful environments and so to put an end to it, our government created a law determining the age required for children to be able to start working in order to protect them. Except there is one problem with the new law. Children are now not capable of applying for a job, no matter how much they aspire to get one. If children were allowed to get a job at an age, they feel ready, then they would most likely grow up as hard workers because they would have been taught earlier how to work hard. Child Labor was a huge problem back in the twentieth century and earlier centuries which is why …show more content…
Some parents forced their child to get a job for their own selfish reasons, but there were also parents who forced their child to get a job because they really needed the money. Some families, especially since this was going on in the twentieth century and earlier, were not financially stable and they needed another income even if it meant making their child work. The families that forced their child to work for selfish reasons, most likely just wanted to use the kids money to buy alcohol or something else. Which is why the communities that had families like this “had a slow consideration of the practice being a social evil” (Allen Pusey, 1). Then again, there were those families that did not need money and they were not being selfish, but they still forced their child to get a job. This is what is known as tough love. The parents were most likely teaching their kids how to make a living and what life was going to be like when they got older. There is an actual difference between making a child work for selfish reasons and making a child work out of love. Many children, not matter if they were forced to get a job or they chose to get a job, eventually ended up learning what life was going to be like for them as they got older. They learned how hard it may become to make a …show more content…
In order to keep children active and hopefully give them motivation to get a job, the age requirement for getting a job needs to be lowered. Many children are forced by their parents to pay for their own car, but if they can not have a job to make the money they need for that, then the kid will not be able to get a car when they are ready. Lowering the age requirement for jobs to thirteen year olds, gives children three years of getting paid minimum wage to save for whatever vehicle they want to buy, plus what kid does not want any money to spend? Thirteen seems like it would be a good age to start working because of the fact that children can be easily influenced which will allow for the employer to influence them to do the work right. Getting a job at a younger age would give the child a chance to learn more life skills that they need to become a hard worker. Children are capable of being easily influenced to do the right thing and not make bad choices. There is only one thing needed to allow that to happen, repealing the child labor law and allowing kids to choose when they are ready to start working. Most kids start to want a job at a younger age anyways, as it seems in today’s

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