Seems like guillotine season has started.
For me personally that did work. However I was 18-19 when I had kinda shitty factory job for a while before starting at university (of sorts), not 10 years old. Also I appreciate the experience of that shitty job, at least for me it was a good lesson on life, but again I was not a freaking toddler at the time.
Cool Hogwarts scene in the image.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/11/in-defence-of-child-labour/
As much as I despise the Torygraph, the article isn’t actually as sensationalist as the headline and accompanying imagery makes it seem.
it’s probably a better idea to call it “part-time youth employment” than the Dickensian-sounding “child labour”. But it’s very clearly a brilliant thing in the right setting: for them, and for the country.
What the author is arguing for is that teenagers should do part time work as it provides both an economic benefit (to the employer and prospective employee) and a social one as well
Within reason, kids doing part-time jobs will teach them about the world. The grimmer the work they do, the more incentivised they’ll feel to work hard at school so they can avoid a rubbish job. Alternatively, they’ll find what they want to do early in life and have a head start.
We don’t need to start chopping heads off just yet (at least not for this one specific article, there’s plenty of other things in that rag to get upset over).
That “within reason” is doing enough heavy lifting to give a kid a hernia.
And you bet that ‘within reason’ goes flying out the door as soon as they find a reason to hide behind. ‘We have a shortage of strawberry pickers, increase the child labour hours!’
Besides, do we need a bigger labor force when AI is firing people left and right?
I fail to see any issue with teenagers doing appropriate part time work. Waiting tables, serving in shops, domestic work, garden maintenance etc.
I hate to be one of those people, but I knew it would happen eventually, I worked from the age of 14 doing a newspaper round and washing dishes in a kitchen and it was the best thing that happened to me.
Its not for everyone I agree but in general it should he encouraged, especially because it gives you an early understanding of how exploitative the world of casual labour is and how to avoid getting trapped there long term.
“Being exploited for profit as a child gave me an early understanding of how exploitative the world of casual labour is. I think other children should be exploited too because it teaches them how to escape exploitation, like I did. Huh? selection bias? What’s that?”
Wow. Hey, I have an idea. Touching a hot stove teaches kids not to touch a hot stove, therefore we should make kids touch hot stoves. It’s genius!
Problem is that the work will in many cases not be appropriate. Young people generally don’t have the knowledge and experience to know their workers’ rights, which employers are quick to take advantage of. They can easily be coerced into taking on tasks they shouldn’t, or keep quiet about various violations in the workplace, and this is plenty reason enough in addition to all the other obvious reasons that children shouldn’t be working. You’re basically saying that exploitation should exist in the job market to teach kids a lesson. Are you bonkers?
First, we’re not talking about enforcing children to go work down the mines, the article is talking about a teenager working in a food truck, no matter how click and rage baity the headline is.
All labour is inherently exploitative and learning that and the degrees with which you personally can or can’t accept is a valuable life lesson whether you learn it as a teenager when you have a familial safety net or when you’re living hand to mouth and can’t afford to speak up.
I have no moral or ethical problem with allowing a teenager who wants to working a job for which it is appropriate for them to do. Issues we may or may have with the nature of capitalist society or lack of regulation doesn’t change that.
People like you are why generations are indoctrinated, depressed and doomed.
The article is trying to manufacture consent for something sinister and you’re out here defending as if they won’t be exploited to maximize profit.
Children should be doing children stuff. Full STOP!
Fuck right off
This is still absolutely shit take.
We should be aiming for no one to have a grim job. Not kids nor adults that didn’t ‘work hard at school’. First, he’s basically proposing torturing kids into studying harder which is simply stupid. Kids need time to rest. Sending them to work part time will just make studying harder for them. Second they are shifting the blame for poverty on people ‘not working hard enough’ while we know shit education system and lack of opportunities is the main reason people are stuck in grim jobs.
And he’s basing all this on a case of a kid that wants to be a cook and works… as a cook. How is that ‘grim job motivating him to work hard’? The kid apparently loves it. Can he find an example of a kid that worked in a shitty factory, hated it and got motivated to study hard and get out of poverty? I would love to see it and compare it with all the kids that had to work and abandoned education altogether. Want to bet which outcome is more common?
I had a shit job in high school. This led me to think all jobs suck, bosses are cruel and out of touch and the corporate system doesn’t give a shit about you. I didn’t work harder at school and every entry level job I took as I progressed my education continued to, in part, reaffirm this early and naive conclusion.
This quote is just a general failure in reasoning and imagination. It has a view of work and teenagers that is just true enough that they can quickly look at it and feel alright about thinking this way. But anyone who spends any time with either knows how weird and complicated both can be.
