Social, Cultural and Economic Background of Child Labour

If we have to understand why child labour today takes the forms that it does, the phenomenon must be set against its social background. Broadly speaking, we may say that child labour persists in in verse relation. The exploitation of children is one of the consequences of complex situations of insufficient progress, not only in most of the developing countries but also in some regions of the developed World. The notion of child labour is rooted in the traditions and attitudes of the regions where it is practiced, as a remnant of the past, a form of resistance to change. As an illustration of this, we may mention the belief, very widely held in the developing countries, that the more children there are in a family, the more hands there are to help to increase the family income. Whether this belief be justified or not, it is merely a tradition, handed down from generation to generation.

Again, in the developing countries the idea that a child who is no longer a baby should be maintained without working is uncommon. This idea stems not so much from poverty as from the traditional belief that there is no point in making any plans beyond those for satisfying the family’s immediate basic needs. It is an idea that betrays an attitude devoid of any impulse for evolution and change. Following the same train of thought, reference is sometimes made to an age-old educational principle that is based only on the need for survival: that if one does not work, one has the option of starving or of stealing. This principle is applied from a very early age. In fact, when the need for survival and the social function of traditional behaviour converge, long-term planning becomes irrelevant: today’s meager incomes, out of which any savings are impossible, cannot be sacrificed in the hope that tomorrow’s incomes and other benefits might be greater.

In such a social setting, whenever a child decides or agrees to work in order to earn his living he thinks he is taking the decision himself. The truth of the matter is that this decision has in effect already been taken for him, through the attitude of his parents and through the influence of the entire social environment in which he lives, that is, he accepts a role which turns him into both the victim and the involuntary accomplice of an unjust situation.

Once this kind of thinking is accepted, it is clear that the parents who benefit directly or indirectly from the exploitation of their children do not consider that they are deliberately acting in a most inhuman manner; rather, they believe that they have a natural right to take advantage of all the family’s resources, which generally amount to little more that the number of hands it has at its disposal. Furthermore, the parents consider that, as in the family undertaking of former times, the child is learning a job that will be of value to him in the future, without their being aware of the harmful effects that certain forms of work at an early age can have on the child. It is not the family that should carry the blame for the fact that the child has to work, since the courses of action open to the family are few in number: it is society as a whole that is at fault.

Like all social problems, child labour is not an isolated phenomenon, nor can it ever be so. Custom and the law usually hold that the work that children do alongside their parents is distinct from the exploitation to which they may be subjected when they work for third parties. Indeed, this is generally so, since parents usually look after their children’s welfare, nevertheless, however much the physical efforts, the hours of work and the boredom inflicted on the child may be reduced and however satisfactory his working environment may be, he will inevitably be concerned in the smooth running of the family undertaking and will inevitably share, with his parents, problems, preoccupations and uncertainties which are not usually the concern of children of his age.