THE LEGAL ABANDONMENT OF AMERICAN YOUTH IN THE WORKPLACE
Nashelle Leaks
Introduction
In the United States there are up to 1.5 million children from the ages of five to fifteen work in harsh conditions in the United States' agriculture industry. Agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupations for workers in the United States1. These children sometimes worked twelve-hour days, they would do hard and tough physical labor, and these children would risk heat illness, exposure to pesticides, serious injuries, and permanent disabilities. Working in these conditions would their life expectancy to only about forty-nine years of age. “Forty-five percent of these children drop out of school and are sentenced to a lifetime …show more content…
Often children in the agriculture industry are not doing chores on the family farm. They are working in an industry ruled by huge businesses that hire them as cheap laborers. To say that shows that there are few laws in the United States to protect children working in agriculture. Former President William Clinton tried to raise hopes by which the United States would change the policies that allow children to work in the hazardous conditions of the agriculture industry.
History
There were many forms of child labor such as indentured servitude and child slavery that have existed throughout American history. As industrialization in the U.S. began workers moved from farms and small towns, into cities areas for work. They came to factory work children were preferred because factory owners seem them as more manageable, cheaper, …show more content…
It is known and assumed that these laws were a result from the agitation of well-intentioned reformers who wanted to protect children from abuses of employers and parents and from peoples all knowing ignorance. ‘While the historical background to this legislation and the reinforcing social attitudes are important to the understanding of current policies, the historical motivation or intent should not prevent their periodic reevaluation”5. It is best to say that from the information in this study is not aimed at children at all, but it is aimed at the impact of child labor laws on teenagers, mainly in regards to labor market options. The current picture age of a teenager is under eighteen someone whose major occupation is a student. There are many teens under the age of eighteen looking for work and that are will to work anywhere just to make some money. There is clearly his is not a perception that would have been popular one hundred years or more ago. Even the ideas of teenager as someone “between childhood and adulthood might have seemed somewhat peculiar then”5. Most teenagers of high school age, one hundred years ago, would not have been enrolled in high school; only about 2% of the high school-age of teen population completed high school. Those teenagers would have been doing some sort of hard work activities. “One hundred years ago,