Prohibition of Child Labour: Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire?
This week, 26 children workers were arrested, removed from three textile factories, and put in state “child welfare homes” by the Save the Childhood Movement.
The rhetoric used in the article is “rescued.” But what are they being rescued from and how? The article reports that many ran away — escaped — and that those who were captured were in tears. Are they being taken out of the frying pan and put into the fire?
No one wants to advocate for child labour, especially for children to work in hard or dangerous conditions. But where significant poverty exists, anti-child labour laws and programs do not necessarily improve the welfare of children. One has to distinguish between good intentions and the actual results of policies.
People (families and children) do what they do because they do not have, or are not aware of, preferable alternatives. Very often families believe that the income the child brings is preferable to the benefits of available schooling or alternative employment. Are they always wrong? generally wrong? To bar the option they choose (i.e., work) by force can make them worse off.
Making child employment illegal in an environment where parents and children are desperate to improve their lives and where people are willing to hire them merely drives the process underground. The article above cites that some 50,000 children are believed to be working in factories. Can all their parents be heartless, forcing their children to work rather than allowing them to have happy, free childhoods? The consequences of illegality are predictable. There is less oversight, less open information and less competition among potential employers and in terms of pay and working conditions. Such competition was, in fact, the main force in ending child labour in England (see “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children,” by Robert Hessen from Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal). If better options are removed by law, really destitute families may be more likely to have their children work in secluded, illegal establishments or to be garbage pickers and prostitutes. Can this be better for children in poor families? (The logic of this argument is similar to that of sweatshops. See this video made by LearnLiberty.com.)
One example of the problems created by illegality (cited in the article), is that some children’s work is paid for in advance to the parents, making them effective slaves. Open legal work could enable us to outlaw slavery-type arrangements and protect the rights of children as free, wage-earning employees.
Next, consider what happens to children who are “rescued.” Are state child welfare homes wholesome places for children to be? Is it better that children be separated from their families to be taken care of by potentially indifferent government employees than to work in factories? The answer is far from clear.
A final element is that children are often treated as if they are overly vulnerable, have no judgement or are incapable of making decisions for themselves. Given responsibility, however, children can be highly productive, creative, and self-directing. See what these children have achieved:
It’s not clear to me that forced juvenilization and effective compulsory incarceration of children in (often) bad schools is preferable to learning how to work and be independent in the real world.
I am not arguing that children working in harsh and dangerous conditions is desirable. But instead of using force to remove the option they have chosen, potentially making them worse off, we should work on creating environments that generate and offer ever better alternatives for them to choose from. Why don’t we allow parents and children to make decisions for themselves about what is most useful to their lives? If we think we have a better option for them (schools, welfare homes, etc.) let’s create it, offer it, and try to persuade others to adopt it instead of arrogantly presuming that we can make people better off through the use of force.
