Since America’s rise as a global industrial power, the nation’s use of child labor has only moved in one direction: less of it. Strict regulations and requirements around the jobs and hours minors can work have become the norm in a country where, a little more than a century ago, millions of children labored daily in fields and factories.
Led by state governments, a nation that saw children as necessary participants in the household economy shifted to a nation that saw children as valuable democratic citizens in need of education. And while child labor has never completely disappeared, it has diminished to a supplement of American childhood, not its defining feature.
But is that now beginning to change? For the first time in history, the United States is engaged in a nationwide discussion over relaxing rules around children’s work. States are again leading the way, with legislatures in red and blue states alike debating – and passing – laws expanding the hours and kinds of settings minors can work in. Similar bills have also been proposed in Congress.
— source csmonitor.com | Henry Gass | Jun 6, 2023
