This is contextless ragebait. A lot of the outrage in this thread seems to boil down to:
Children are too young to be working because factories. This teenager isn't working in a factory. The reason children were maimed and killed in factories isn't because they were too young to handle the machines; the machines were dangerous. Adults were and are also killed in mines and factories.
Poor children shouldn't have to work to get nice things because people shouldn't be poor. Amazing idea. How soon do you think that can happen? It's not just the poor who need work to afford things.
Children shouldn't have to work to survive because parents. Not always available, and, no, 'put bad parents in jail' isn't a solution. State custody is almost always worse.
Children shouldn't be working in service roles because abuse. I'll touch on this soon.
Children shouldn't be working for strangers because stranger danger. This isn't a problem that disappears just because you hit an arbitrary age, especially if you're a woman.
I'll preface by saying I am antiwork and anticapitalist, and I support youth liberation.
I grew up in a poor household where I was emotionally and physically abused by my parents and siblings. This numbed me to the abuse I would experience in service roles, but also just as frequently in office jobs. When I was 14, both of my parents were permanently disabled and I was ready to get on with the rest of my life when I realised I was never going to have time to be a child. I dropped out of school and started working multiple jobs, on and off the books. My situation was not unique where I grew up. The income allowed me to survive, to escape my 'family', finish and continue my education, and eventually flee the country to get functioning healthcare and a basic standard of living by the age of 18.
This was only possible because I begged, pleaded and humiliated myself to garner enough sympathy from the paternalistic Morality Police who thought I couldn't possibly know what I wanted for myself, and who thought my place was memorising bullshit in school and being confined to the house with my parents. who thought my parents weren't abusing me but that I made that up because I was 'spoiled'(?). It took six years for the ageist remarks to slow down; six years of constantly reäffirming my personhood and defending my intelligence and trying to 'pass' as an adult. Even then, in my twenties, it was 'are you here with your parents?' 'why aren't you studying, partying, travelling or doing drugs?' 'what do you know about [insert line of work]?' Maybe because I'd already been in the industry for ten years and I have bills to pay? Unthinkable, apparently.
I should not have had to go thru any of that, but I wasn't going to wait for the revolution. If I had lived the 'ideal' sheltered life that my lower middle class peers received: my life would have begun suddenly and abruptly — dropped in the deep end — in my mid-to-late twenties with all the skills and worldliness of an infant. Please stop presuming to know everything that is 'good' for young people. Please stop acting like the authority on when and how someone should be allowed to live their life. Under the current system: most people couldn't be said to be full 'adults', but instead permanent adolescents. One could find several things wrong with this image, but the presence of a teenager doesn't even rank in the top ten on that list. Attack the system, not the people trying to live under it.
No one is attacking the child, but the fact that children have to work. If children have to do anything, that's to learn and to have fun. I'm sorry about what you had to go through, but saying that such a situation is wrong is actually attacking the system, not criticizing the people choosing the lesser evils available to them.
I agree children shouldn't have to work. My problem is that the discourse dismisses the agency of children and teenagers, and the solutions given average out to 'prevent them from working'. I see that as an attack on people under the system because it does nothing to solve the problem. I would not have been able to escape my situation without the freedom to seek employment. I didn't have that full freedom, and ultimately did a lot of work that was illegal.
You can attack the system and while you do that, there are people under 18 years old who are just trying to provide for themselves or their dependents and need a job now.
They have adult responsibilities before the age of 18. A lot of the commenters outright refuse to believe that these legal minors could have possibly matured earlier than the law expects, but that really does happen and it really is socially irresponsible to ignore their struggle.
Most commenters are essentially holding this series of positions based on a photo that is out of context: Why does this kid have a job?
The system is bad. Why is the system bad?
Some kids have jobs. How can we stop kids from working?
We should outlaw jobs for kids.
But that series of positions critically fails to account for exceptions where kids become competent before the age of 18, need jobs and want to work.
It ignores that, in reality, many minors have kids of their own or other dependents that they are struggling to support and it does not provide any plan for them, it makes their situation worse while you fight the system.
That is inhumane public policy. Like many areas of law, this is a complicated issue, and we are going to harm people in our communities if we jump to strict authoritarian control for an answer.
This comment deserves an award. Mods should pin it to the top of the thread, because the majority of comments are totally divorced from their neighbors' struggle to survive in our imperfect economy.
I've seen some very small statured people working in big chains here. I don't think Maccas and their ilk would be taking the risk of illegally employing children, at least not in countries like Australia.
Also, if this is a young child, is it not a bit wrong to be sharing their image around like this?..
I remember reading about that. There's actually a woman who looks perpetually 8, but is in her 20's and she was talking about how hard it is for her to find dates because any man she tried to go out with was either actually a pedo, or afraid of being seen as a pedo. I actually kinda feel bad for her, but I also understand how it would be hard for other guys, myself included, to see her as a fully functioning adult.
Nah, you got the wrong end of the stick, this is an uplifting story - it's a kid working hard to provide for his mum's cancer treatment that in any other developed nation would be covered by taxes. Uplifting. Right? So Uplifting. He doesn't need to be with his mum in her time of need, he should be suckin that capitalist dick.
Legal working age of 15 1/2 (in my state) plus a kid who looks young for their age - may not be the most appealing situation, bit this probably completely above board.
No age restrictions if family owned business, that's a federal law no state can bypass, but I doubt the owner of Culver's needs their kids to work to support the family.
That's a federal law aimed at farm families from back in the day. And farm kids are still helping and working along side Grandpa and Dad. And where I live, in the middle of a forest, they also help and work along side in logging families also.
Growing up on a farm, my earliest memory in life is walking behind a tractor pulling a 'stoneboat' and picking up rocks in the fields along side my father and grandfather. I was driving a tractor pulling wagons and hay trailers by 8 years old and by 12 I was driving trucks hauling grain from the field to storage bins and unloading them. Plus getting up a 5AM to help milk cows every morning and again at 5PM. It was absolutely crucial when my Grandfather got sick with "Farmer's Lung" and couldn't work much anymore. I pretty much started running his farm at 14.
When I was 13 I was 'encouraged' by my family to get a job. I had no interest. They pulled some strings and I began illegally working (14 was the legal age) for a small family diner. At this time I just wanted to fiddle on my tech as I was very nerdy, but my family didn't want me to "stay in my room all the time," so pointless labour it was.
I did appreciate the liberation I gained from my family, even if I didn't have the knowledge of what to do with it; How to expand upon it. Probably for the best imo. I spent my whole first paycheck on some games that me and my homies would play in the garage and made great memories. If there was a life lesson to be learned during this whole experience, I never understood it at the time. Eventually I was let go from work since no-one taught me how to perform my job duties well enough. That's life, though!
By luck, one of my caring high-school teachers managed to slip-in his own curriculum. He taught a class of ~15 students some important financial skills... how mortgages work... how to create and manage savings... credit building... Bunch of important life stuff that I would consider essential knowledge in our society was an optional course I learned through word-of-mouth/happenstance.
???
why
Meanwhile and my ultimate gripe with this thread and tying this back into a dystopian - I see some people mention they learned valuable life lessons and a bunch of other copium. Witness me and your kin around you. Is the knowledge you gained - the wisdom acquired through action and experience - is it gained through labour? No. I didn't and others didn't either. Can it be taught safely without forcing children with a young developing brain into dangerous work environments? Yes. I gained such wisdom later from the safety and comfort of my school. And we rest on the final point with a question:
How many opportunities in the common layman eye are there for children to receive education on the matter?
If your experience had 1 or more, I'd love for you to share such experiences here as it's eye-opening to those who received and did not receive such privilege. I'm certainly interested! :)
As someone who was pulled out of school at 14 and sent to work rebuilding old houses and breaking my back for $100 a week, education is where it’s at.
Appalachia is a whole different world (especially 25-30 years ago, the internet is changing it though).
The dude I worked for was molesting little girls and using the boys to stand up for him in court later to talk about how great he was. Unfortunately (for him that is) he made some mistakes and didn’t get our support, but boy he tried.
I remember one time he took us to the lake. He said, “I’m psychic, you know. I know things that no one else knows.” I replied, “there’s no such thing. Prove it.” He said, “Ok, when you and Regina sat on the train tracks and you ate her pussy and she sucked your dick. I just seen that in my mind.” He blew my mind in that moment.
I grew up and realized, Regina put my penis in her mouth because someone was teaching her that shit. I put my mouth on her vagina because she instructed me to do it. She did so because someone taught her this stuff. We were 11 and 9.
I know that’s disturbing and I’m sorry.
Kids shouldn’t be handed over to strange adults to work. If I’m not proof of that I don’t know what is.
This kid is way too young to be taking verbal abuse from customers. I remember being 19-but-looked-15 and grown-ass adult customers calling me stupid and useless, and generally speaking to and looking at me like I was a piece of dung stuck to the bottom of their shoe. People who thought I was a literal child behaved this way. Not to mention all the perverts. Kids shouldn’t be working customer service, not in a world where adults have such disgusting behavior.
I'm sorry that this all happened to you. I know this happened in the past, but you deserve a little hug. I hope things are better for you on a day to day basis. ♥
Thanks, that's sweet of you. <3 Things are much better for me now that I'm out of that line of work, so I do my best to stand up to trashy customers on behalf of the people who can't.
I was at a tim Hortons in Canada. Had this experience seeing a youngin' working, except it literally seemed like the whole staff was this age. It was enough kids to prompt us to ask what the working age was in Canada. The young lady informed us it was 13 or so
I worked at a Timmie's when I was 13 as well. I hated it, only good thing was I got free coffee for me and my family. I worked by choice because I wanted some spending money but that's cause my family has always been poor and I couldn't get spending money by doing chores around the house the way my friends did. Sucked not being able to hang out with my buddies and play games cause I had to go to work. Again, it was my choice but it fucking sucks that I had to make that choice just to have some pocket money.
The manager was a cunt as well. Would berate me for having the audacity to not be available 7 days a week after school since I also played hockey at the time.
