Child Labor Essay

"Did you know that over 100 million kids are in severely dangerous situations of child labor? Clearly, child labor is a hotly debated topic that some people believe that is good and it helps kids learn responsibility but others believe that child labor is wrong. Overall child labor is wrong and should not be allowed because it causes kids to lose important parts of their life, the laborers get little to no pay, and kids get out into dangerous situations.

One reason is that kids can lose parts of their life.

For example, by “Fighting Slavery Today” kids as young, as four can get taken away from their family. It is unhealthy for such young kids to be taken away from their family because they don’t know how to defend and protect themselves. They also don’t have anyone to provide them food, clothes, shelter and other necessities. Their family can also teach them how to do the jobs they might be asked to do, but if they are separated they will not know what they are doing which could cause them to hurt themselves. Another example is that they lose their education according to the article “For kids: Children in Slavery.” This is because they are forced to work almost all day, so they barely have time to rest, which also means no time for education. This is bad because if kids never get an education it will be hard for them to understand a lot of things and to succeed later in life. They can also lose their childhood. This can happen because kids are forced to work all day giving them no time to play with other kids or their family. Even after they are done working, they have no time for fun because they need to get as much sleep as possible because they most likely have another day of work ahead of them.

Child labor is also wrong because they get little to no pay for long hours of work. For example most kids and families average pay is less than a dollar for a day of long hours of work according to “Voices from the field:Mexico.” This is clearly unfair because they have to do very hard jobs for almost the entire day trying to support their family so little pay makes it difficult to provide for all their needs. Another example comes from the article “Children's Rights,” and it says “Some work from 6 in the morning until 7 at night for less than 20 cents a day.” This example shows how long the work hours are how the wages do not add up for how much work they put into the tasks they have to do for several long, hard days. Also according to that same article, they work for an average of 12-16 hours a day. This shows how wrong child labor is because kids who go to school only learn for around 7 hours a day while kids in child labor are working for even longer and are not gaining anything from it to help the, later in life.

Kids in child labor are put into highly hazardous situations is the final reason. For example, according to the article “For Kids:Children in Slavery,” a lot of kids in child labor have to work with tools and machinery. This shows that child labor is bad because when little kids have to deal with machinery and tools that most adults would usually use it would put the children who have to use it at risk for injury. Another example is that a lot of kids in child labor work in mining or with chemicals, explosives, and drugs according to “Launch of the Children’s Views of Child Labour Exhibit.” These are all very dangerous things for kids to be using. Because they have such long working hours being surrounding by all of these can majorly harm their health because they inhale dust and chemicals and drugs can enter their body. It also is unsafe for little children to work with explosives because that could easily cost them their life if they don’t know how to do what they are told to.

Also, they have very poor housing and living conditions The article “Voices from the fields: Mexico” shares an example that says “Families build little shacks with no walls next to where they work... They use tree branches, plastic carpets, or tobacco leaves as a roof to protect themselves from the rain and sun."" Another poor condition they deal with according to the article “The Invisible Harvest” is that they usually don’t have clean drinking water. This is harmful because they either choose not to drink it causing the heat in their surroundings to dehydrate them, or they could drink the water and get sick or poisoned from the pesticides and other dangerous things that could be in the water.

Some people say that there should not be a law that prohibits child labor because they want farm kids to be able to help with chores, pass on traditions, and learn responsibility. These reasons are true according to “Ranch Kids get Opportunity to Work”, the article that explains how rural parents believe the importance of their kids having opportunity to work on the farm. But, all in all if a law is not made to ban child labor then over 200 million kids will continue to suffer and tons of lives would continue to be lost to child labor.

In conclusion while some believe that child labor is good for farm kids and that kids can learn responsibility, there are kids out their who are forced into serious child labor. Over-all, child labor is wrong and should be banned because it causes kids to lose important parts of their life, they work long hours for little to no pay, and they are put into dangerous situations. So, would you rather let farm kids do their chores or would you rather save millions of kids lives who are stuck in child labor."

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