cHild Labor

Sandra Penado

Professor Ghaffari

English 101

January 28, 2014

Affects Of Child Labor

"Of an estimated 215 child laborers around the globe: approximately 114 million (53%) are in Asia and the Pacific; 14 million (7%) live in Latin America; and 65 million (30%) live in sub-Saharan Africa." (Clark-Bennett, Hodne, and Sherer). What is child labor exactly? Child Labor is children who are employed from the ages of five to seventeen, who make little or no money due to high levels of poverty. Being that said, these children don't make that much money, and are forced to work in very harsh conditions such as mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and domestic services. Some children even work in illicit activities like drug trading and prostitution just to help themselves and their families financially (Clark-Bennett, Hodne, and Sherer). For this reason, children are being affected mentally, physically, and socially, due to the harsh environments and experiences of child labor.

Two girls protesting child labour (by calling it c...

English: Children gathering potatoes on a large fa...

Child labor, can't we try to stop it?

That being the case, children who are being affected mentally by child labor tend to not go to school. This is a problem because they do not develop the necessary cognitive skills in order to succeed in the real world. Children around the ages of seven to twelve develop operational thinking, which makes them have the ability to perform reversible mental actions. During this stage children learn how to solve problems on their own in different systematic ways. An example of operational thinking is learning how to memorize and match things. Another example is predicting, counting, and integrating skills. Children need to have mastered these skills by the age of fourteen so that their cognitive skills can be in the same level as other children (Dukes). Those who do not reach this goal tend to perform 12% lower than the...