Frameworks like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child can be essential tools for protecting children. But the ideas they carry might sometimes do more harm than good.
This was very interesting. I visited Benin, where my husband is from, with my husband and kids last year, and I was very struck by this question. We saw many children working, but when I saw it with my own eyes I did not see it as necessarily a "problem to be solved", and interestingly, my young children also admired it and even expressed envy of it. Of course I don't want to oversimplify it, but it was definitely a sharp counterpoint to the perspective I had internalised that when children need to work to support their families, it is intrinsically a form of oppression or exploitation.
Samuel Okyere, who Afua cites in the interview, wrote an article a couple years ago showing an example of this bias, with CNN journalists seeing children accompanying adults on fishing boats on Lake Volta in Ghana and assuming they were 'enslaved', when actually the vast majority of those situations had nothing to do with trafficking and were just children learning how to fish alongside extended family members/friends. We wouldn't automatically apply the same lens to seeing a young boy in a fishing boat with his uncle in the US. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/18/how-cnn-reported-on-child-slaves-who-were-not-really-enslaved/
That's a great example. And when we think about the versions of this that are socially valued and recognised in 'Western' contexts - say, my ten-year-old cousin selling bracelets or painted seashells on the market on holiday, my sister starting a "business" of buying and reselling stuffed animals at fourteen (which, now I think of it, was just drop shipping), or myself and a friend running a children's birthday party service in middle school - we realise that there might indeed be a cultural and class dimension to when we think children working is cute and empowered and should be encouraged, and when we see it as inherently exploitative.
I guess there's a difference between a child deciding to make a little money for fun, and their labour being an economic necessity for their family - but yes, completely agree that there is a huge amount of classism, and racism, in how these things are viewed. E.g. I always see people on Substack lauding "free range childhood" and giving kids independence for things like going to the store or to a friend's house, but when certain demographics do that then it's very frowned upon (I lived in Nanterre for 5 years and just moved last week, and lots of North African-origin families give their children this kind of independence, but you can be sure it is not admired).
Yes definitely, the economic factors matter a lot (which is why this topic was tricky to write about, the point is not to deny the reality of exploitative child labour). But indeed, even with all things being otherwise equal, perceptions vary massively.
This was very interesting. I visited Benin, where my husband is from, with my husband and kids last year, and I was very struck by this question. We saw many children working, but when I saw it with my own eyes I did not see it as necessarily a "problem to be solved", and interestingly, my young children also admired it and even expressed envy of it. Of course I don't want to oversimplify it, but it was definitely a sharp counterpoint to the perspective I had internalised that when children need to work to support their families, it is intrinsically a form of oppression or exploitation.
Samuel Okyere, who Afua cites in the interview, wrote an article a couple years ago showing an example of this bias, with CNN journalists seeing children accompanying adults on fishing boats on Lake Volta in Ghana and assuming they were 'enslaved', when actually the vast majority of those situations had nothing to do with trafficking and were just children learning how to fish alongside extended family members/friends. We wouldn't automatically apply the same lens to seeing a young boy in a fishing boat with his uncle in the US. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/18/how-cnn-reported-on-child-slaves-who-were-not-really-enslaved/
That's a great example. And when we think about the versions of this that are socially valued and recognised in 'Western' contexts - say, my ten-year-old cousin selling bracelets or painted seashells on the market on holiday, my sister starting a "business" of buying and reselling stuffed animals at fourteen (which, now I think of it, was just drop shipping), or myself and a friend running a children's birthday party service in middle school - we realise that there might indeed be a cultural and class dimension to when we think children working is cute and empowered and should be encouraged, and when we see it as inherently exploitative.
I guess there's a difference between a child deciding to make a little money for fun, and their labour being an economic necessity for their family - but yes, completely agree that there is a huge amount of classism, and racism, in how these things are viewed. E.g. I always see people on Substack lauding "free range childhood" and giving kids independence for things like going to the store or to a friend's house, but when certain demographics do that then it's very frowned upon (I lived in Nanterre for 5 years and just moved last week, and lots of North African-origin families give their children this kind of independence, but you can be sure it is not admired).
Yes definitely, the economic factors matter a lot (which is why this topic was tricky to write about, the point is not to deny the reality of exploitative child labour). But indeed, even with all things being otherwise equal, perceptions vary massively.