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Child Labor

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Clarissa

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On my favorite show Shark Tank I often see kids aged between 7 and 17 who “own businesses” and whose parents gush happily over how the kids work all day long making money. There are also articles such as these:

The child savant is a hot ticket, evident in the gush over Flynn McGarry, the 15-year-old Los Angeles cooking prodigy, whose pop-up dinners are sell-outs. In Silicon Valley, competition for young talent is now so intense that interns as young as 13 are scouted; Facebook flies in kids with their parents to meet Mark Zuckerberg. It’s not uncommon for some to make a year’s salary in a summer, or receive a $100,000 grant.

What I don’t get is this: isn’t child labor against the law? I always thought that one of the greatest achievements of organized labor was outlawing the practice of making children work. Isn’t that still true? What is the deal with 13-year-old interns and 9-year-old “business owners”? These kids have their childhoods stolen from them and nobody bats and eye-lash. 

13 responses to “Child Labor”

  1. el Avatar
    el

    I think it’s also a matter of class. If you receive a $100,000 grant, you are a child savant and your parents are congratulated on TV. If you do simple jobs to help your poor parents feed the family, it’s child labor and your parents may appear only in “a case of child neglect / exploitation” news segment.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “If you do simple jobs to help your poor parents feed the family, it’s child labor and your parents may appear only in “a case of child neglect / exploitation” news segment.”

      – As they well should. It is SO not the responsibility of a child to feed the adults or other children.

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  2. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Most talk of generations is an outgrowth of marketing constructs. That entire article is a perfect example. “Our babies’ brains are actually different than ours!” “Let’s salivate some more over the marketing insights these children can give us with their innate knowledge of the technology.” FFS, “child entrepreneur” is a marketing concept as well as “baby heroes of capitalism”. It’s just the technological version of owning a lemonade stand but with more technology. The kid does not work like an entrepreneur with entrepreneur hours but owns the company on paper for tax reasons. None of those kids’ parents depend on their labor to survive; and the kids who do work under the table or at mundane jobs aren’t getting written up in some stupid magazine.

    Furthermore FLSA didn’t abolish child labor. It merely restricted the scope and hours of employment.

    I think of the entertainment business as an exception that’s been around for a while and kids are exploited.

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    1. Shakti Avatar
      Shakti

      ETA: the kids who do work under the table or at mundane jobs aren’t getting written up in some stupid magazine as laudatory heroes of capitalism.

      Plus all of these generalizations about “generations” tend to focus only on specific parts of “generations.”
      Case in point: How Your Birth Year Affects Your Voting Patterns The model falls apart for anyone who isn’t white, or an immigrant but hey let’s generalize about “generations” and “birth years”.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “None of those kids’ parents depend on their labor to survive”

      – Nor should they.

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  3. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Sorry Clarissa, this article is perfect storm of irritation. I just get this whole “golden goose” wankery wafting off the entire article. I suppose people reading it get this vicarious fantasy of living through their genius technological golden goose children. I don’t get the sense that labor laws are being violated — I get the sense that these adults are cannibalizing their kids’ youth. Bleagh.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “I don’t get the sense that labor laws are being violated — I get the sense that these adults are cannibalizing their kids’ youth. ”

      – Oh, exactly. I agree with everything you say completely. But I know it’s useless to appeal to such folks’ consciousness, so I’m trying to appeal to labor laws instead. It is so sad to see these poor Wunderkinder turned into little adults by parents when they should be running around playing with their Barbie dolls and transformers.

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  4. Crystallizing Chaos Avatar
    Crystallizing Chaos

    What do you think about child actors? I’ve never been able to make up my mind about that.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Acting is a very difficult profession. Extremely demanding and stressful. Of course, somebody has got to do it but the ones who end up doing it are not children of loving parents.

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    2. twicerandomly Avatar
      twicerandomly

      I heard an interview with Sarah Polley several years ago, which really stuck with me. She spoke about how emotionally intense it was, how it was often very upsetting, required maturity children just didn’t have. I haven’t found a transcript of it, but here is a snippet from another interview of hers.
      Sarah Polley: What’s bewildering to me is, I get asked by parents about their kids going into film – and when I suggest that it was anything but positive, you see their eyes glaze over. They’re not interested in hearing the truth. Their response is always, ‘But my child wants to do this.’ But kids want to be firemen, doctors, acrobats, a lot of things! And generally the rule is, you go through school and then you join the world of adults and decide. It’s not like, ‘Well, let’s do it now, because you want to and I can’t say no.’

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        “And generally the rule is, you go through school and then you join the world of adults and decide. It’s not like, ‘Well, let’s do it now, because you want to and I can’t say no.’”

        – Exactly! One has to spend decades of one’s life, trying to make money, competing in the job place, trying to develop professionally but there is such a short time to be a child who can afford not to care about these things.

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  5. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    A business is a quicker way to full personhood than waiting for your 21th birthday.

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  6. N G Avatar
    N G

    Don’t you know that child labor laws are market distortions? Ask any neo-liberal economist.

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/31/154895/gop-loves-child-labor

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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