Workers and helpers: Perspectives on children's labour 1899-1999

Children's work has become, over the last century, proscribed by law and cu stom. Both in domestic and external settings, labour is held to damage the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of children. Adults who collud e in or tolerate children's labour are subject to judicial penalties and mo ral condemnation. The social history of childhood proposes an upwards tempo ral incline from barbarity to humanity. Children's exclusion from the labou r market is a key factor in this trajectory. Work by children, including ca re for siblings and parents, has become part of the same moral universe as child abuse. It is proposed here that this proposition may be applied too i ndiscriminately and, furthermore, that condemnation of children's labour is associated with wider social needs and has not arisen solely as a result o f philanthropy. The past, it is suggested, has been disproportionately demo nized, partly in order to promote certain political goals. While this does not imply that child labour, external or domestic, is unproblematic, it is argued that the same historic mechanisms which have resulted in the distort ion of children's labour experience have the capacity to bias our understan ding of contemporary work undertaken by children.