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Nearly 1 in 10 children are subjected to child labour worldwide, with some forced into hazardous work through trafficking.

Economic hardship exacts a toll on millions of families worldwide – and in some places, it comes at the price of a child’s safety.

Roughly  160 million children were subjected to child labour at the beginning of 2020, with 9 million additional children at risk due to the impact of COVID-19. This accounts for nearly 1 in 10 children worldwide. Almost half of them are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health and development.

Children may be driven into work for various reasons. Most often, child labour occurs when families face financial challenges or uncertainty – whether due to poverty, sudden illness of a caregiver, or job loss of a primary wage earner.

The consequences are staggering. Child labour can result in extreme bodily and mental harm, and even death. It can lead to slavery and sexual or economic exploitation. And in nearly every case, it cuts children off from schooling and health care, restricting their fundamental rights.

Migrant and refugee children – many of whom have been uprooted by conflict, disaster or poverty – also risk being forced into work and even trafficked, especially if they are migrating alone or taking irregular routes with their families.

Trafficked children are often subjected to violence, abuse and other human rights violations. For girls, the threat of sexual exploitation looms large, while boys may be exploited by armed forces or groups .

Whatever the cause, child labour compounds social inequality and discrimination. Unlike activities that help children develop, such as contributing to light housework or taking on a job during school holidays, child labour limits access to education and harms a child’s physical, mental and social growth. Especially for girls, the “triple burden” of school, work and household chores heightens their risk of falling behind, making them even more vulnerable to poverty and exclusion.

UNICEF works to prevent and respond to child labour, especially by strengthening the social service workforce . Social service workers play a key role in recognizing, preventing and managing risks that can lead to child labour. Our efforts develop and support the workforce to respond to potential situations of child labour through case management and social protection services, including early identification, registration and interim rehabilitation and referral services.

We also focus on strengthening parenting and community education initiatives to address harmful social norms that perpetuate child labour, while partnering with national and local governments to prevent violence, exploitation and abuse.

With the International Labour Organization (ILO), we help to collect data that make child labour visible to decision makers. These efforts complement our work to strengthen birth registration systems, ensuring that all children possess birth certificates that prove they are under the legal age to work.

Children removed from labour must also be safely returned to school or training. UNICEF supports increased access to quality education and provides comprehensive social services to keep children protected and with their families.

To address child trafficking, we work with United Nations partners and the European Union on initiatives that reach 13 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Learn more about child labour

COVID-19 and child labour

A time of crisis, a time to act

Child labour and responsible business conduct

Guidance to businesses, policy makers and other stakeholders to advance progress towards SDG Target 8.7 on eradicating child labour by 2025

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell's remarks at the World Day Against Child Labour High-Level Side Event

Charting the course

Embedding children's rights in responsible business conduct

Related resources

Action against child labour | case studies, child labour: global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward, child labour: unicef data, inter-agency coordination group against trafficking in persons, unicef child protection advocacy brief: child labour, iom handbook for protection and assistance for migrants vulnerable to violence, exploitation and abuse, guidelines to strengthen the social service workforce for child protection.

Farm work could be hard, but working conditions were not dangerous and at least allowed kids to breath the fresh air. The use of child labor, and the risks and working conditions of children, underwent a enormous change in the 1800's.  Industry developed on an extensive scale and the mechanization of industry resulted in the abuse of children who were forced to work in terrible conditions in factories, mines and mills. This article provides the history of child labor in America during the 1800's, the following links provide facts and information about events that were particularly relevant to the subject of child labor.

Child Labor Causes in America: Inventions and new technology of the Industrial Revolution

Child Labor Causes in America: The Process of Industrialization and the mechanization of industry that led to the building of factories and the factory system

Child Labor Causes in America: The Rise of Big Business and Corporations and the emergence of the ruthless Robber Barons whose unethical, uncaring working practices led to mass production and the depersonalization of workers

Child Labor Causes in America: The need for cheap labor - the power driven machines could be operated by children

Child Labor Causes in America: Urbanization, the movement of millions of people from rural locations to the cities  made possible by new transportation systems

Child Labor Causes in America: Poverty - children were forced to work to help their families

Child Labor Causes in America: Labor Shortages - the massive influx of immigration in the 1800's fed the demand for labor including the extensive employment of immigrant children

Child Labor Causes in America: Lack of government regulation to enforce safety standards, working conditions and working hours. A variety of laws differed from state to state

Child Labor Causes in America: The opposition to Labor Unions prevented workers from protecting children and making it more difficult to improve labor standards and living standards in order to eliminate child labor.

Child Labor Causes in America: Reform movements, who worked to abolish child labor, did not emerge until the 1890's with the start of the Progressive Movement and Progressive Reforms .

● How long did children work and what were they paid? The typical hours of work lasted from sunrise to sunset, 11 or 12 hours per day, six days a week. They had less than one hour break in their working day. ● How much did they earn? They earned an average weekly wage of one dollar. ● How old were the children? Some were employed in child labor as young as five years old and were paid low wages until they reached the age of sixteen ● According to the 1900 US Census, a total of 1,752,187 (about 1 in every 6) children between the ages of 5 and 10 were engaged in "gainful occupations" in the United States of America.

Child Labor jobs and work: Agricultural Industry - Jobs included chasing away birds, sewing and harvesting the crops.

Child Labor jobs and work: Textile Industry - Children worked spinning and weaving cotton and woolen goods in the mills. Bobbin boys were employed in the textile mills bringing bobbins to the women at the looms and collecting the full bobbins.

Child Labor jobs and work: Mining Industry - The mining industry was an extremely dangerous, unpleasant and filthy occupation. Young boys called "Breaker Boys" processed raw coal by breaking it into various sizes for different types of furnaces. Other children were employed as coal bearers, carrying coal in baskets on their shoulders. The smaller children worked as "trappers" who opened trap doors in the mines to move the coal.

Child Labor jobs and work: Manufacturing Industry - The factories were often damp, dark, and dirty with few toilet facilities. The machines and sharp tools used performing various jobs caused many injuries. Glass factories were notorious and boys under 12 where expected to carry loads of hot glass

Child Labor jobs and work: Laboring work - Children were also employed to help the laborers engaged in construction and transportation projects including the railroads and canals. Water Boys were employed to carry water to workers who dug canal beds and railroads

Child Labor jobs and work: Domestic Work - Children performed domestic work in large houses up to 16 hours per day, seven days per week. The hall boys, scullery maids, kitchen girls or drudges performed the worst jobs such as emptying chamber pots. .

Child Labor jobs and work: Sweatshops - Children worked in the dirty tenement sweatshops making clothes and other small items

Child Labor jobs and work: Street Work - Children performed a variety of jobs on the streets and sewers. Ragpickers made a living by rummaging through refuse in the streets collecting items and scraps for salvage including cloth, paper, broken glass and even dead cats and dogs could be skinned to make clothes. Other street jobs included delivery boys and shoeshine boys

● Children had higher rates of injury and death at work than adults and over 50% of child labor was involved in hazardous and dangerous work. ● Many worked in confined spaces and underground in unhealthy environments. ● They were exposed to extreme heat and cold. ● There was no government regulations for health and safety and no state safety regulations existed. ● There were some safety instructions on factory machines but as most workers were completely illiterate these were as good as useless. ● The causes of the most deaths were fires, explosions, cave-ins and train wrecks. ● The main causes of injuries were the factory machines and sharp tools. Children lost fingers, hands were mangled and some were scalped when hair that got caught in the machinery. ● Some children were killed when they fell asleep and fell into factory machines. ● Carrying heavy loads caused lifelong deformities and handicaps. ● Children not only suffered from physical stress they were also subjected to mental stress due to appalling working conditions. ● The health of children suffered working in back-breaking jobs in dark, gloomy environments with poor ventilation. They suffered from lung, ear and eye infections and unsanitary conditions led to terrible diseases and illnesses such as cholera, bronchitis and tuberculosis

1800's Child Labor in America for kids: United States History for Kids - Video of US Presidents The article on Child Labor in America provides detailed facts and a summary of the most important inventions and innovations during the history of the United States - a crash course in American History. The following video will give you additional important facts, history and dates about the personal and political lives of all the US Presidents.

1800's Child Labor in America

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Child Labor and Economic Development

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• First Online: 18 November 2021
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• Eric V. Edmonds 2 &
• Caroline Theoharides 3  

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Two hundred and eighteen million children work in the world today. Seventy percent are in activities classified as child labor under local laws. While in policy circles child labor is often viewed as a rights issue, it is also an economic issue. Working children are both a cause and a consequence of a lack of economic development. Widespread child employment dampers future economic growth through its negative impact on child development and depresses current growth by reducing unskilled wages and discouraging the adoption of skill-intensive technologies. Child employment also appears to result from a lack of economic growth. Rising incomes are associated with improvements in the family’s ability to triage economic shocks without child labor, shifts in production to outside of the home, and greater demand for education and leisure. These factors all lead to declines in the economic activity of children.

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Edmonds, E.V., Theoharides, C. (2021). Child Labor and Economic Development. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_74-1

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Advancing social justice, promoting decent work

Ilo is a specialized agency of the united nations, child labour and domestic work, what is domestic work, what is child domestic work, what does constitute child labour in domestic work, do household chores performed by children in their own homes constitute child domestic work, why is child domestic work a “hidden” phenomenon and why is it so difficult to tackle, what are the root causes of this phenomenon, what are some of the hazards that child domestic workers face, the ilo’s child labour conventions no. 138 and no. 182 and the convention no. 189 concerning decent work for domestic workers, how many children are there in child domestic work and in child labour in domestic work.

• 17.2 million children are in paid or unpaid domestic work in the home of a third party or employer;
• of these, 11.5 million are in child labour, of which 3.7 million are in hazardous work (21.4% of all child domestic workers);
• and 5.7 million, mostly adolescents, in permissible work but need to be protected from abuse and provided with decent work;
• in addition, undetermined numbers of children are in domestic work as result of forced labour and trafficking. In 2012, the ILO produced Global Estimates on Forced Labour. Of the total number of 20.9 million forced labourers, children aged 17 years and below represent 26% of all forced labour victims (or 5.5 million children). While the specific number of children in forced labour and trafficking for domestic work remains unknown, evidence points to the existence of significant numbers of children in debt bondage, victims of trafficking and in servitude situations;
• 67.1% of all child domestic workers are girls;
• 65.1% of all child domestic workers are below 14 years: 7.4 million aged 5 to 11 and 3.8 million aged 12 to 14;
• child domestic work touches all regions of the world.

Where do the estimates on child domestic work come from?

What is the solution to end child labour in domestic work and to protect young workers of legal working age.

• developing statistical visibility and further enhancing knowledge on child domestic work to better capture child labour and youth employment in domestic work;
• awareness-raising and advocacy to transform social attitudes and to address the widespread acceptance of child labour in domestic work and the beliefs amongst employers and parents that these situations represent a protective and healthy environment for children – especially girls;
• promoting the ratification and implementation of the child labour Conventions No.138, No. 182 and of Convention No.189 concerning decent work for domestic workers;
• setting a clear minimum age for domestic workers not lower than that established for workers generally;
• identifying types of hazardous domestic work for children;
• regulating the working and living conditions of domestic workers, with special attention to the needs of young domestic workers. This should include strict limits on hours of work, the prohibition of night work, restrictions on work that is excessively demanding, and monitoring mechanisms on working and living conditions;
• adoption of appropriate penalties;
• provision of complaint mechanisms;
• facilitation of access to justice and legal redress;
• effective labour inspection that is authorized by law to enter premises in order to enforce provisions applicable to domestic work.
• paying attention to child migrants vulnerability to abusive working conditions in domestic work;
• formalizing the employment relationship in domestic work through written contracts / model employment contracts;
• enhancing the role of the social partners and extending freedom of association and effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining in domestic work, including the recognition to young domestic workers of legal working of the right to join or form unions;
• enlisting the support of employers of domestic workers;
• providing support to child domestic workers against child labour and for decent youth employment;
• supporting the worldwide movement against child labour;
• engaging with child domestic workers as agents for change;
• joining forces to promote decent work for all: Better together.

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Challenges and perspectives of child labor

Amir radfar.

College of Graduate Health Studies, A.T. Still University, Mesa, Arizona, USA

Seyed Ahmad Ahmadi Asgharzadeh

1 Faculty of Medicine, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran

Fernando Quesada

2 Department of Medicine, Universidad de El Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador

Irina Filip

3 Department of Psychiatry, Kaiser Permanente, Fontana, California, USA

Child labor is one of the oldest problems in our society and still an ongoing issue. During the time, child labor evolved from working in agriculture or small handicraft workshops to being forced into work in factories in the urban setting as a result of the industrial revolution. Children were very profitable assets since their pay was very low, were less likely to strike, and were easy to be manipulated. Socioeconomic disparities and lack of access to education are among others contributing to the child labor. Religious and cultural beliefs can be misguiding and concealing in delineating the limits of child labor. Child labor prevents physical, intellectual, and emotional development of children. To date, there is no international agreement to fully enforced child labor. This public health issue demands a multidisciplinary approach from the education of children and their families to development of comprehensive child labor laws and regulations.

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL FACTS

Child labor is an old problem well rooted in human history. Children were exploited to various extents during different periods of time. The problem was common in poor and developing countries. In the 1800's, child labor was part of economic life and industrial growth. Children less than 14 years old worked in agriculture, factories, mining, and as street vendors.[ 1 ] Children from poor families were expected to participate to the family income, and sometimes they worked in dangerous conditions in 12-hour shifts.[ 1 ]

In the 1900's, in England, more than a quarter of poor families lost their children to diseases and death, endangering their extra financial support.[ 1 ] Boys worked in glass factories in high heat in three shifts because the furnaces were kept fired all the time to increase productivity, while girls were forced into prostitution. In 1910, it was estimated that more than two million children in the United States were working.[ 1 ]

With the increase of education, economy, and the emergence of labor laws, child labor decreased. However, child labor is still a widespread problem in many parts of the world in developed and developing countries. With the development of agriculture, children were again forced to be employed mostly by the families rather than factories. The main cause of child labor is the lack of schools and poverty.[ 2 ]

Per International Labor Organization (ILO, 2002), in the world, there are 211 million children laborers, 73 million under 10 years of age, 126 million children work in the worst forms of child labor, and more than 8 million are kept as slaves for domestic work, in trafficking, armed conflict, prostitution, and pornography. More than 20,000 children die yearly due to work-related accidents. Nearly, one-third of the world's children work in Africa.[ 3 ] Countries such as India have made efforts to tackle the worst forms of child labor. Despite this, 56.4% of children aged 5–14 work in agriculture and 33.1% work in industry.[ 4 ] Indian children are forced into labor to pay family debt. They work sometimes in hazardous environments, being forced into commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, or forcibly recruited or kidnapped to be part of terrorist groups.[ 4 ]

Child labor is morally and ethically unacceptable. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was the first international body that signed in 1989 the Convention on the Rights of the Children. It is for the first time in history when children are seen as humans with rights rather than economic assets of their parents. Child labor was defined as labor that harms the health of the children and deprives them of education rights. This law does not exclude children that work for their families.

ETHICAL FACETS OF CHILD LABOR

Child labor has many facets from the ethical point of view. Autonomy, beneficence, justice, nonmaleficence, privacy, and veracity are endangered during child labor.[ 5 ] Utilitarianists would support the idea of child labor as long as they are the sole providers for the family and without their income, the family would not survive and as long as the labor is voluntarily provided. The ends justify the means. Forced child labor is unethical because it is against the autonomy of the children. The consent of the working child is mostly manipulated by the parents. To give consent, a child needs to understand the situation, the consequences, and voluntarily agree to work. Children of young age, who have a less than fully competent capacity, can assent to an action by getting involved in the decision-making process. Children fall easy victims to unfair job conditions, and they do not have the power to stand-up against mistreatments.[ 6 ] The maleficence of this act has long-term physical, psychological, behavioral, and societal consequences. Even if they are lacking the competency of making informed decisions, they are considered individuals with autonomy that should be protected and safeguarded.[ 6 ]

Child labor is more common in developing countries where more than 90% of children live.[ 3 ] Child labor in developing countries affects 211 million children.[ 3 ] The continent with the highest child employment rate is Asia with 61%, followed by Africa and Latin America. Nearly 41% of the children in Africa are below 14 years old, followed by Asia with 22% and Latin America 17%.[ 3 ] India has made progress in reducing the child labor. However, more than 4 million children in India between 5 and 14 years old work more than 6 hours a day, while about 2 million children aged 5–14 work 3–6 months in a year.[ 4 ]

CULTURAL BELIEFS AND CHILD LABOR

Cultural beliefs have an important role in encouraging child labor. In developing countries, people believe that work has a constructive effect on character building and increases skill development in children. There is a tradition in these families, where children follow the parents' footsteps and learn the job from an early age. Some cultural beliefs may contribute to the misguided concept that a girl's education is not as important as a boy's education, and therefore, girls are pushed into child labor as providers of domestic services.[ 7 ] In India, not putting a child to work means the family would not make enough income to sustain their living. Sociocultural aspects such as the cast system, discrimination, and cultural biases against girls contribute to child labor.[ 4 ]

RELIGION AND CHILD LABOR

It is generally accepted that parents have the fundamental right to educate and raise their children. Parents almost always try to act in the child's best interest at the best of their knowledge and beliefs. In doing so, they are reasonably motivated by their intellectual growth, social development, and at times by spiritual salvation. Oftentimes, parents seek guidance in religion to shape the upbringing of their children and to enhance their progress. Hard work is among others, an important religious value to instill from a young age.

Krolikowski found that Christian children were the least likely to work, while Muslim children, children with no religion, and children affiliated with a traditional African religion were more likely to work than Christians.[ 8 ] The 40% higher incidence of child labor among Indian Muslims compared with Indian Hindus is due perhaps to the impoverishment of Muslim community.[ 4 ] Amish people's life is also regulated by religious values. They believe that work and faith bring people closer to God.[ 9 ] Amish children are initiated from childhood into apprenticeship to learn the trade, and beyond eighth grade, they have to provide like an adult for the community. Education of children beyond eighth grade is considered a threat to the community values. The U. S. labor laws forbid children less than 16 years of age to work in hazardous places such as sawmill or woodworking. However, in 2004 an exception was made by the United States Department of Labor, who approved an amendment that allows Amish children between 14 and 18 years old to work.[ 10 ]

POLICIES AND CHILD LABOR

Child labor is rooted in poverty, income insecurity, social injustice, lack of public services, and lack of political will.[ 7 ] Working children are deprived from a proper physical and mental development. The millennium development goals (MDGs), issued in 2001 to implement the Millennium Declaration, set up commitments for poverty reduction, education, and women's empowerment. Persistence of poverty is the major cause of labor. However, child labor also causes poverty because it deprives the children from education and from a normal physical and mental development hampering a prosperous life as adults. The first MDG in addressing poverty is the elimination of child labor.[ 11 ]

The International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) was created by ILO in 1992 to progressively eliminate child labor. The priority addresses the worst forms of child labor such as slavery, prostitution, drug trafficking, and recruitment of children in armed conflicts.[ 12 ] IPEC is working with stakeholders from many countries to increase strengths and promote the fight against child labor. IPEC engage with multiple organizations, international and governmental bodies, community-based organizations, religious groups, private plural form businesses, children and their families.

Policy reform was promoted through country-based programs. The capacity building of institutions has been increased to better understand the obstacles and increase the ability of obtaining sustainable measures. These measures were meant to decrease child labor and bring children back in schools. In all these processes, statistical data were collected at the worldwide level, methodologies were set in place, and guidelines were created.

The Child Labor Platform was created as a business-led initiative by ILO in 2012, to identify the obstacles of the implementation of ILO conventions at the community level and to come up with solutions. This platform is a win-win situation for all parties involved: stakeholders as well children and their families. This platform offers training, research, and specialized tools to member companies, so they can carry out activities against child labor. Eliminating child labor is part of the corporates' social responsibility in line with their values and is what the society expects from them. This platform provides information how to get involved and how to find businesses that work collaboratively with the communities to solve the problem. Training and knowledge is a real value added for companies.[ 12 ] The Indian Government implemented a national project deemed to assist population to eradicate child labor, and set in place enforcements of criminal and labor law.[ 4 ]

ARGUMENTS FAVORING CHILD LABOR

Despite all these international and national measures against child labor, there are arguments in favor of child labor. Some argue that poor families would be even poorer without the supplemental financial contribution of children. Lack of money will deprive them of the basic needs of food and shelter which will decrease their survival rate. In addition, an increase in poverty would make children even more susceptible to exploitation.

The supporters of these ideas argue that the benefit of creating a safe workplace and allowing children to work is helpful in certain situations. They also emphasize that child work is not child labor as long as it does not interfere with schooling and children have safe workplace conditions with a limited number of hours per day.[ 13 ]

STAKEHOLDERS’ ROLE AND CHILD LABOR

The stakeholders most directly affected are the children and their families. Children are working at the expense of their education and normal mental development. Education is important not only for the intellectual development but also for the empowerment and acquisition of new skills for adult life. The health of children is endangered by work in hazardous conditions, abuse, exhaustion, malnutrition, or exposure to toxic materials. The psychological harm leads to behavioral problems later on in life.[ 14 ]

Despite the implementation of laws and measurements at the international level, child labor still persists, and it is caused by the same factors as 100 years ago. There is a need to address poverty and access to education. To date, there is no international agreement to define child labor. Every country has different laws and regulations regarding the minimum age for starting working based on the type of labor. The lack of international consensus on child labor makes the limits of child labor very unclear.[ 15 ]

Therefore, it is mandatory to create international policies that adopt a holistic approach to free quality education for all children, including labor children from poor families. Education should be continued beyond the primary school level and should be done in a formal setting. Studies show that nonformal education is a necessary but not a sufficient prerequisite for permanently withdrawing children from work.[ 15 ] The public educational system should be expanded to accommodate laborer children who still do not have access to school. More schools should be built, more teachers should be trained, and more educational materials should be available. A special attention should be given to children living in exceptional geographical conditions and mobility should be provided at the cost of the community. Children who dropped out of school should receive adequate guidance and support, and a smooth reentry should be facilitated. The development of schools in the rural areas would decrease the load of children in urban schools. This will allow parents to accommodate children's needs without having to migrate in big cities.

Another phenomenon that should be addressed is the social exclusion. Children engaged in the worst forms of child labor come from the lowest strata of the society. International Labor Organization launched a project on Indigen and tribal people, who are the most targeted by social exclusion. This project promotes their rights and encourages building capacity among their community.[ 15 ] Proper enforcement of child labor policies and the focus on education can break the cycle of poverty that drives the children into labor.

Child labor is a public health issue with negative outcomes that demands special attention. A multidisciplinary approach is needed to tackle child labor issues. Per ILO, poverty is a major single cause behind child labor. Lack of affordable schools and affordable education is another major factor to force children to work. Certain cultural beliefs rationalize this practice and encourage child labor as character building and skill development for children. Some cultural traditions encourage child labor as footsteps to their parents' jobs. Socioeconomic disparities, poor governance, and poor implementation of international agreements are among major causes of child labor. Macroeconomic factors also encourage child labor by the growth of low pay informal economy. Child labor prevents the normal well-being including physical, intellectual, and emotional psychosocial development of children. This public health issue cannot be eliminated by only enforcement of child labor laws and regulations. Any comprehensive policies should engulf a holistic approach on the education of children and their families, investment in early childhood development programs, establishing public education task forces in rural areas, implementing policies with focus on increasing adult wages, and discouraging consumers to buy products made by forced child labor. As such, ethical practice requires protection of all rights of children and protective policies and procedures which support the provisions of ILO's standards.

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Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank the University Writing Center at A.T. Still University for assistance with this manuscript.

The ECLT Foundation works directly with communities in 6 countries.

Child Work, Child Labour

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1 in 10 children worldwide are in child labour, putting their health, safety, education or development at risk, often to support themselves and their families. 71% of child labour is in agriculture, most of which is hazardous

What is child labour?

Child labour is work that is harmful to children. Not all work done by children under the age of 18 is child labour. There are many factors to take into account:

According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC ), the most widely accepted international human rights treaty in history, "children have the right to be protected from work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."

Some light work may be done by children between 13 and 15 years old so long as it is not dangerous or interfering with their education. The ILO says that this “can be a normal part of growing up in a rural environment” . Helping around the house, in a safe way that does not prevent children from going to school or developing, can also be an important part of childhood.

Acceptable Work for Children

It’s important to support farmers and families, so they can distinguish between child labour and appropriate child work. When working with farmers and families in ECLT project countries, the Foundation often discusses questions with parents and farmers to help determine if the work is acceptable. Some of these questions include:

• Would this work take up too much time and prevent the child from going to school?
• Would this work make the child too tired to go to school or do homework?
• Would the child still have time to play and participate in social/family activities?
• How does the child feel emotionally while doing the work? Does any part of the work make the child feel unsafe, excluded or threatened?
• How does the child feel physically while doing the work? After doing the work?
• Does this work involve using or being around chemicals, like fertilisers, heavy machinery or sharp tools?
• Is any part of this work illegal?

The Worst Forms of Child Labour

Slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labour, children in armed conflict, and children working in illegal activities are considered to be some of the worst forms of child labour. Hazardous work is also one of the worst forms of child labour. It should not be done any child under 18 years old, even if he or she is over the legal minimum working age.

Child labour which is considered hazardous “is work that is performed by children in dangerous and unhealthy conditions" (ILO). This means that the work is unsafe by nature, and inappropriate for children under 18 years-old regardless of the conditions or the safety equipment. Some examples of work that is hazardous by nature include handling dangerous chemicals or operating heavy machinery.

What causes child labour?

Child labour is a complex and systemic problem. It is impossible to point to one single cause. Poverty, natural disasters, conflict, lack of quality education, remoteness and tradition are some of the most common push factors, driving children into child labour.

Most child labour in agriculture is on family farms , with children working alongside their parents. If farmers are not able to send their children to school or hire adult workers, they often have their children work with them. Farmers may not be aware of the risks that child labour poses to their children, leading to negative consequences on their health and futures.

What are the consequences of child labour?

Being involved in child labour can have physical, mental, developmental and economic effects on children and their families . Children who work in agriculture can be injured from using dangerous equipment without proper health and safety, experience back problems from carrying heavy loads, suffer from a mental delay from being exposed to pesticides and fertilisers, be vulnerable to parasites or dangerous reptiles by working barefoot in fields.

Often the effects of child labour are carried through to adulthood: poor health and low literacy rates make it harder for ex-child labourers to access decent work and a better livelihood. As poverty is the driver of child labour , adults who were involved in child labour are more likely to send their children into the fields to work help feed, shelter and clothe their families.

What can be done?

Tackling the root causes of child labour by improving awareness, health and safety in the work place, quality education, livelihoods, and access to decent work; plays a crucial role in the fight against child labour. The ILO stated that “Rather than focus specifically on supply chains, area-based approaches address factors driving all types of child labour in a given geographic area. This broader approach helps prevent children simply moving from one supply chain to another, or into a more hidden form of child labour”.

To do this ECLT works to ensure that all of our projects work with children, farmers, families and communities. We support activities focused on: raising awareness on child labour and the dangers it poses to children; building capacities in communities to improve family livelihoods; and increasing access to quality education and skills training for children and youth.

Engaging many stakeholders helps to make sustainable change. ECLT works in collaboration with governments, companies, Unions, NGOs, community leaders and children themselves. This helps to change attidudes, leverage resources and support strong policies and practices so that our work goes beyond our project areas benefit all children and families in the countries where we work.

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Homework Bound

By Michael Winerip

• Jan. 3, 1999

Heidi Lehman was always an academic achiever. She finished high school a year early, went through college in three and a half years and then earned a law degree. But nothing in those 18 1/2 years of formal education prepared the 36-year-old lawyer for her daughter Carly's first-grade homework.

''The teachers said it should take just 20 minutes,'' Ms. Lehman recalled. ''Right! These are little kids -- they get frustrated, they're tired, they're working hard all day in school. It'd stretch out for an hour, easy. We'd have tears, screaming, kicking the table. Then there'd be lots of hugs and kisses and I'd say, 'Don't do it, Carly. It's not worth it.' I never had homework myself in elementary school. Carly would scream, 'I have to do it, Mom!' ''

And if Carly didn't do it? Shame and scorn. The mother has saved Carly's first spelling test from first grade with the words unable to spell at this time written in large letters at the top by the teacher. First graders in Millburn, N.J., don't just have regular spelling lists for homework; they also get a challenge list and a superchallenge list.

''We're told only the boys and girls who want to do it should do it,'' Ms. Lehman said. ''Is that pressure or what?'' Among the first-grade superchallenge words: ''experiment,'' ''observation,'' ''measuring.''

''First grade!'' Ms. Lehman said. ''And there are kids who can do this. You say to yourself, 'Is that natural or not?' ''

Carly survived first grade, is now a third grader and has grown used to the homework life. One recent day, she came home from school at 3:05, hoisted her backpack onto the kitchen table and by 3:10 was doing her homework. ''You want a snack?'' her Mom asked. ''You want to watch a little TV first?''

''Mom,'' Carly said. ''I have to do my homework!''

''Carly has a notebook for all her homework assignments,'' Ms. Lehman said. ''I don't remember being so organized like this at this age -- they have to be organized!''

Ms. Lehman is right when it comes to measuring the gross tonnage of today's homework: American schools are giving more and more to younger and younger children. A national survey by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan showed that in 1981 6- to 8-year-olds spent an average of 44 minutes a week on homework (about 9 minutes a school night). By 1997, homework for first to third graders had nearly tripled, to 123 minutes a week (or 25 minutes a night).

While Millburn has long been a high-powered suburban district, ranking at the top of national academic surveys, it has not always been a heavy homework district. Pat Romano is one of the first-grade teachers at Deerfield Elementary School in Millburn assigning the alleged 20 minutes of homework each night. But in the 1970's, when Ms. Romano's two children attended elementary school in Millburn, they had no homework until fifth or sixth grade, she said. And they did just fine: her son graduated from Brown University in engineering; her daughter got a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University. So it seemed natural to ask her, ''Do you really think it's necessary for first graders to have so much homework?''

''I could say a lot,'' Ms. Romano said, ''but I don't want to comment.'' She felt that mandatory homework was too controversial to discuss on the record.

Martin Burne, the principal of Deerfield, said the school really has no choice -- it must assign homework. ''This is what's demanded to stay competitive in a global market,'' he said. ''There's a feeling that somehow all of this extra work and early discipline builds up to give us an edge in standardized testing.'' But there is a trade-off, he acknowledged. ''To do this, we are taking away some of the years of adolescence and childhood.''

For her part, Ms. Lehman keeps wondering if this generation of little children will burn out by high school. She remembers a second-grade homework assignment that required Carly to pick a country and write a report on it. Then parents were invited to school to hear the reports and sample foods from the various countries. ''This kid did his report on France,'' Ms. Lehman said. ''Then he put it down and said, 'I did a second report on another country.' My reaction was, 'Would you just shut up!' ''

There is an assumption that the trend today to give more homework sooner is a return to traditional values, but that is not the case. As Brian Gill and Steven Schlossman pointed out in their 1996 article in the American Journal of Education, for much of this century leading educators have deplored assigning homework at a young age. As early as the 1890's, a muckraking doctor, Joseph Mayer Rice, attacked the homework ''spelling grind.''

''Is it not our duty to save the child from this grind?'' he wrote in 1897.

In 1900, the Commissioner of Education, William Torrey Harris, testified before Congress that there should be no homework before age 12. In the 20 years before World War I, The Ladies' Home Journal led a national crusade against homework. Teachers wrote the magazine to thank the editor, Edward Bok, for speaking out, saying they were afraid if they criticized mandatory homework practices they would lose their jobs. Newspapers like The New York Times editorialized against homework, and in 1930, the American Child Health Association classified homework as a form of child labor. During the 1920's and 30's, New York City public schools banned homework until fourth grade; San Diego banned it through eighth grade; and Sacramento had a prohibition on elementary-school homework for 45 years, until 1961. In extreme cases, homework was seen as causing crooked spines, night terrors and nervous breakdowns in children. ''Drill and kill,'' they called it.

But whenever the nation has felt an external threat, said Mr. Gill, a researcher at the Rand Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., educators have manned the barricades by piling on homework. Homework grew in popularity in the 50's, after the Russians launched Sputnik, and continued in favor until the late 60's, but lost ground in the anti-Vietnam counterculture years. Then, in the early 80's, with the American economy in recession, the Japanese in ascent and the publication of the study ''A Nation at Risk,'' maintaining that our educational system was lagging behind other industrialized nations', homework returned to fashion and has kept its popularity right through the global economy years.

In these last 15 years, the biggest increase in homework has fallen mainly on the youngest citizens; at the high-school level, homework has stayed fairly constant. University of Michigan researchers have found that the amount of homework the typical high-school senior does has remained virtually unchanged since 1976 -- between six and seven hours a week.

Once the pendulum swings one way, it takes a long time to reverse direction, but there are signs that heaping on homework for young children is taking its toll, at least in the supercharged suburban districts. Dee Shepherd-Look, a psychologist with a family practice in suburban Los Angeles, said that in her 28 years as a therapist she has never treated so many young children for homework-related anxieties. It started 10 years ago, she said, but has become pronounced in the last five.

''I see a lot of school phobias,'' she said. ''I just got off the phone with the mother of a 9-year-old who's a wreck because he can't remember his Shakespeare lines.''

Dr. Shepherd-Look does not blame the schools. ''I think it's the parents who push the schools,'' she said, adding that more parents are working longer hours, they are on call in the evenings and weekends for their jobs and they are doing the same thing to their children.

I had a 5-year-old, she didn't want to go to school,'' Dr. Shepherd-Look added. ''But it wasn't just school -- every day she had some different activity after school. They are what I call resume kids.''

This generation's parents are caught in a trap of their own making: they are pushing their children and their schools to be more competitive, even as they have less time to help with homework and activities.

Picking up on the homework angst, Newsweek did a cover story last spring headlined ''Why Homework Doesn't Help.'' The article was based in part on the research of Harris Cooper of the University of Missouri, considered a leading homework scholar. In 1989, Dr. Cooper did a landmark survey of more than 100 homework studies and concluded that, while children who do substantial amounts of homework perform better on standardized tests at the junior-high and high-school level, it does not seem to make a difference for elementary-age students.

''For elementary-school students, the effect of homework on achievement is trivial, if it exists at all,'' Dr. Cooper concluded.

This would be of great comfort, of course, to all those overwrought parents of young children tormented by superchallenge words, but others question his theory. If scores on standardized tests are going to be used to measure performance -- and such testing has never been more important in American society than it is today -- the proper headline, sadly, may be ''Why Homework Does Matter.''

Joyce Epstein, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University and also a leading expert on homework, has done studies showing that elementary-school homework improves school performance. She also suspects it improves performance on standardized tests. And it may be that Carol Huntsinger, an education professor at the College of Lake County in suburban Chicago, has produced a new study that demonstrates just that.

In the mid-1980's, Dr. Huntsinger was running a nursery school in an upper-middle-class North Shore suburb. She noticed how parents of her Chinese-American students began formal home study earlier than Euro-American parents did. This was not just creative play; this was sitting at the kitchen table each night doing exercises in phonics and math. And so she devised a research project contrasting the home-study habits of 40 well-educated Chinese-American North Shore families with the habits of 40 similarly prosperous Euro-American families. The typical Chinese-American parents came to this country from Taiwan in their early 20's to attend graduate school, became citizens and had children here. All Euro-American parents, except one, were American-born.

Dr. Huntsinger did her first assessment of the children in the early 90's, when they were in pre-kindergarten or in kindergarten, and has revisited the families every two years since. The Chinese-Americans, she found, brought the cultural practice of doing more homework earlier from their native land.

Olivia Hsiao, a chemist born in Taiwan, would sit with her 4-year-old son, Ronald, each night doing exercises she had devised. She taught numbers and then moved on to addition and subtraction by using objects like playing cards and dice. Before Ronald was in first grade, Ms. Hsiao spent 10 to 15 minutes a day with him on math and the same on phonics. ''He'd count with his fingers and toes,'' she recalled. ''One time I gave him a problem, the answer was more than 10 -- he had to take off his shoes, his fingers weren't enough.''

Before first grade, the Chinese-American children were spending an average of 54 minutes a day in this formal home study, while Euro-Americans spent 6 minutes. The difference continued as the children got older and the homework was provided by schools. At first and second grade, the Chinese-American families averaged 31 minutes on homework versus 11 for the Euro-Americans.

The result was a substantial difference in standardized test results, Dr. Huntsinger found. Typically in math, the Chinese-Americans scored a grade level ahead of the Euro-Americans. But the effect of the home-study habits was even more substantial regarding tests measuring English vocabulary skills. Typically, the Chinese-American children started behind -- their parents spoke Chinese at home. But Dr. Huntsinger found that parents did things like assign an extra 15 English vocabulary words to master each week. Over time it got results. While the children were a year behind the Euro-Americans on the English test in kindergarten, they were a year ahead by fourth grade.

Nor does Dr. Huntsinger think the results can be explained by ethnic differences. There were a few Euro-American families who had a similar approach to homework, and their children had test results similar to the Chinese-Americans'.

Dr. Cooper has not seen this new study, but says that the Chinese-American kindergartners were not technically doing homework because the parents were initiating it. But Dr. Huntsinger countered that American schools could give such exercises for homework at this earlier age, if that were society's priority.

And while this may sound like cruel and unusual punishment for little people, consider that 20 years ago it would have seemed equally harsh to assign first graders homework. Today it is standard practice.

The more homework is assigned at an earlier age, the more the parent is forced to get involved. ''The kids are supposed to do it on their own,'' Ms. Lehman of Millburn said. ''Then they come home with pages of homework sheets with instructions that are full of huge words.''

As Karen Sokoloff, a Millburn parent of two elementary-school children, said: ''They don't just disappear into their rooms to emerge an hour later with everything done, their backpacks zipped up. My husband, Andy, and I split up -- I say, 'You take Eric, I'll take David.' '' Ms. Sokoloff's least favorite homework was second-grade spelling; the children were supposed to write the words three times, using a different-colored marker every time. ''They'd have 20, 25 words, picking up the marker, putting it down, picking up the marker,'' she said. ''It was torture to watch.''

So-called creative homework may be even worse. Foods from around the world -- you think second graders are cooking up those Hungarian goulashes? All over America at this moment, mothers are frantically digging through old shoe boxes to find nine photos of their child, one from each year, so they can begin their third grader's time-line project.

But what of the boy or girl who doesn't have that support at home? The more important that homework becomes in school, the more a child can fall behind. Etta Kralovec, the director of teacher education at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, worked on a state-financed study there in the early 90's, interviewing dropouts about why they quit school. She was amazed that every single person in her survey mentioned the inability to keep up with homework as a major factor. ''These were children from poor families who got no help at home,'' Ms. Kralovec said. ''They fell farther and farther behind until they gave up and dropped out.''

Shawn Courchene, 23, was one of those students interviewed in the survey. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he works in a coffee factory. Growing up, he said, his father didn't live with the family, and his mother didn't have time to help. ''She was too busy or she was working,'' he said. ''There's no one you can ask questions. You can't get the answers you need.'' By sixth grade, he said, he was lost. ''To hide it, I turned myself into a class clown. Teachers felt I was a lost cause.''

To make up for such inequities, Ms. Kralovec proposes getting rid of homework altogether, and she is writing a book, ''Clearing the Kitchen Table: Homework and the American Dream,'' with that message. Sounding very much like the reformers from the first half of this century, she complains that homework creates a long workday for children, robs them of playtime and cuts into important creative time with the family.

Given the highly competitive spirit of the nation at this moment, however, Americans may not be ready for such a radical change.

But there are efforts under way to counter some of these inequities. Dr. Epstein of Johns Hopkins has developed a series of interactive homework assignments with clearly written instructions for parents and children. The worksheets are meant to insure the tasks can actually be done by a child, and they are being used in schools nationwide. Other school systems have returned to a popular 1930's reform -- supervised study within school. Children who may not get support at home are given help with their homework at school.

In Quincy, Mass., a blue-collar suburb of Boston, middle schools have before- and after-school programs where children get homework assistance from local college students volunteering their time. Teachers like Eileen Sadof in Quincy are aware that many of her students won't get help at home, so she often starts homework projects in class. Ms. Sadof, who teaches English at Broad Meadows Middle School, said: ''I tell them, 'You can have free reading time now.' They think they're taking advantage of me, but a lot don't have a quiet place at home to read. I'm just trying to hook them on the book in class so they'll be more likely to find a way to do it at home on their own.''

The Baltimore schools are applying this approach even earlier. Eight elementary schools have a three-hour after-school program geared to helping children with their homework and preparing them for the state standardized tests. At Dr. Bernard Harris Elementary, a school where 90 percent of the children receive free lunches, nearly half the students attend the after-school program. It is costly to run, $135,000 a year, which mainly pays the salaries of the 14 teachers who spend the extra three hours at school each day.

The program is highly structured; an hour is spent doing a creative project (during a recent session, Claude Morris, a third grader, correctly calculated that it would take 8 centimeters of root-beer soda to make ice cream in an ice cream float, float); an hour of club time (for geography, reading or board games); and a half-hour reviewing homework. At the homework session, the teacher, Denise Norfleet, had the children go over that night's reading assignment, a story about Violet Hill Whyte, Baltimore's first African-American police officer.

''Do I want you guessing?'' Ms. Norfleet said at one point. ''Where do you go for the answer?''

''Back to the story!'' they called out.

Mary Brown, who has custody of her grandson Christopher, says the program has been a godsend. It is divided into three sessions a year. ''Last year, he took one,'' she said. ''This year, we're going to take all three.''

Christopher smiled. ''Good news,'' he said.

The Baltimore program has melded two of the major trends in American education today -- more homework and more standardized testing. At Dr. Bernard Harris, there is no subtlety about it -- teachers are now spending the entire school year teaching for the standardized tests: the California Achievement Tests that the children are given each fall, and the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, or MSPAP, test they take in the spring. There are lists of MSPAP vocabulary words posted in all the classrooms, along with lists of MSPAP test hints. And weekly homework packets have been written specifically to drill the children on what is on each test. The homework packets geared for the California test require the children to answer questions by filling in the right bubble, just as they will have to do on the actual test. The MSPAP homework uses MSPAP vocabulary words.

''I have MSPAP on the brain,'' said Mae Williams, a Baltimore third-grade teacher. ''But their scores went up this last time, so it's worth it.''

There are many ways to measure a successful school -- the creativity of the students, their happiness, their hunger to learn new things, their love for reading. But at this point in American history, the most important measure, the one that gets printed in all the newspapers, the one that individual schools and entire school districts are measured by and all the politicians talk about, is performance on standardized tests. And as long as that is true, those backpacks are likely to be full each night starting in grade 1 and maybe earlier.

What the pendulum will swing back on homework is certain, but to change things it will likely take a major cultural shift impossible to envision right now.

Concerned that the Millburn schools were giving too much homework too soon, a parents' group helped pay to fly Dr. Cooper, the University of Missouri expert, to New Jersey in October. Dr. Cooper explained to 150 parents and teachers that little children have a limited attention span, and he recommended just 10 minutes of homework a night starting in first grade and adding 10 minutes to that time each year after, through high school.

''If it's a different type of community,'' he said, meaning a high-pressured suburban district, ''I would raise it to 15 minutes.''

Dr. Cooper has found that despite his recommendations, most suburbs don't lighten their homework load after he visits, and, indeed, Deerfield Elementary still assigns the alleged 20 minutes of homework to its first graders. Parents in places like Millburn may feel in their hearts that their children have too much homework, but as long as everyone else is doing it, there's pressure to do it.

When Phyllis Catz, the assistant superintendent of Millburn schools, was asked during an interview whether she felt elementary students had too much homework in her district, she said no, that it built good study habits and discipline for future years.

''Of course,'' said Dr. Catz, who has been an educator for 35 years, ''if you talked to me in the 1970's, I'd have given you a different answer.''

How can we prevent child labour amongst homeworkers?

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Child labour is a red button issue for most companies, as it is for their customers, and as a result is, thankfully, rarely to be found in factories.  The same is not true for informal production which can be taking place in small workshops and homes.  But what should a company do if it finds children working in this context?  They cannot ban children from the home, so what is a sustainable solution?

ETI's new Base Code Guidance: Child labour - practical guidance for brands and retailers.

Since 2012 Traidcraft has been working with partners in India on an action-research project to develop a sustainable and scalable solution to the presence of child labour amongst homeworkers servicing craft supply-chains in the national capital region of New Delhi and parts of Uttar Pradesh where child labour amongst homeworkers is common. 

Their team on the ground has been testing and refining approaches to tackling and preventing the issue.  This work was complemented in 2014 when  Homeworkers Worldwide  were commissioned to research the strategies other companies and organisations have used, and how effective these have been. We interviewed key practitioners from major retail chains, including ETI member companies, Fair Trade companies, development NGOs and unions.  The findings were fascinating and in many cases encouraging – real progress is being made on this complex issue.  The findings were shared at various forums including ETI, where a request was made by companies for more practical guidance.  In response HWW and Traidcraft have put together a ‘ Practical Toolkit for Businesses ’.

The Toolkit outlines seven practical steps businesses can take to prevent and deal with the risk of child labour amongst homeworkers servicing their craft supply-chains.  These are supported by model policies and practical and tested tools available to download from the HWW website.  The toolkit also discusses some of the complex issues that surround child labour to which there are no ready-made solutions and explores five underlying principles which will help businesses navigate these, providing guidance from the experience of other organisations and questions to prompt discussion. 

At the Toolkit’s heart is the recognition that children are compelled to work when their parents’ income is insufficient and/or unpredictable, and when local opportunities for education are inadequate.  Our research on the ground and with major brands and fair trade organisations demonstrates that simple and low-cost adjustments to sourcing and buying practices can make a substantial difference to homeworkers’ earnings.  At the same time engagement with relevant local organisations ensures that remediation is effective in the local context and keeps the child’s best interests at heart.  The seven steps presented in the toolkit are illustrated with quotations from businesses themselves illustrating how these initiatives have really worked for them.

One of the strongest messages from our research with companies and NGOs is the advantage of working collaboratively.  Our Toolkit itself was conceived in this spirit, stemming from a direct request from businesses for further practical guidance and our desire to bring together learning from businesses and organisations that have made real progress on this issue.  There’s no doubt that preventing child labour amongst homeworkers is complex; we do not claim that our Toolkit provides a complete solution.  However, we are confident that it can provide businesses with a firm foundation from which to tackle this issue in their supply-chains, and hope it will provide a starting-point for future constructive collaborations.  By working together, we feel certain that our efforts as businesses and NGOs will be more effective and make a meaningful difference to the lives of children in homeworker households. 

Whether it happens in a factory or in a home, Child labour is unacceptable and we all have a responsibility to address and prevent it. We hope that this Toolkit helps us meet this responsibility more effectively. Please let us know what you think of the Toolkit, if and how it has been helpful to your organisation and how it can be improved.

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Op/Ed: Homework Is a Form of Child Slavery

Rodney Jones , Staff Writer | May 1, 2017

Homework is arguably the worst punishment inflicted upon the student body. It affects many age groups, and is the number one killer of a good time in America. While it holds some actual value in earlier age groups for fundamentals like reading and math, it becomes a nuisance for those who have already developed these skills.

“Practice makes perfect” sounds great, until a student notices that it may not be necessary.

In my experience, homework is just tedious, implementing the repetition of tasks to establish memory of the material. In some studies, this tedious repetition has only been proven beneficial for math and reading. I personally found truth in this because my best subjects were Earth Science and Biology in high school.

Neither teacher gave homework until they had students in later years that performed poorly due to a lack of attention paid during class. The belief that “practice makes perfect” was thwarted by my lack of efforts still leading to success.

My problem was actually homework being a hindrance. I didn’t want to do homework, but in subjects as simple as English, it wasn’t difficult to pass the tests without outside assignments. Homework could, however, hold between ten and twenty percent of your grade depending on the teacher, so this could cause a large drop in grades regardless of actual mastery of the subject matter.

Homework takes away from free time that could be used for entertainment, work, or family time, but these are not the only negatives provided by this after school punishment.

In some cases, excessive homework can lead to heightened anxiety and depression, including all groups that are exposed to it, such as children. If children were raised in a manner that was somewhat more hands on, the homework struggle may not be required.

For example, I was taught to read aloud one night when my mother gave me a book, had me start on a random page and begin reading. If I messed up a sentence, I would start it over. If I messed up three times on one page, I would start the page over.

I was about six years old, and it taught me early on how to read aloud efficiently. Homework could be abolished if parents took some time to help students develop.

When the facts are considered, children experience nearly year-round work. They are in school from September to June, and even during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break, they are given work packets that are giant.

These packets are plenty of work, and honestly disrespectful of free time during the holidays, and yet teachers would likely feel disrespected if the students didn’t do the work.

What is even funnier is when a teacher won’t grade tests because they claim they are busy with “grading the holiday work,” but it is holiday work that they went out of their way to assign.

And once a long year in school has come to a close, students get to look forward to a summer break as a reward for their hard work- after they do their summer reading assignment, that is. Then it’s back to school in September for the cycle to begin again, until they graduate or drop out.

High school and college are a bit different in time frames. Even here at Mercy, the standard class lecture is about two hours and fifty minutes, and meets once a week. One high school class alone spans forty five minutes, and typically meets all five days of the school week, with multiple subjects meeting per day.

These classes are better designed for learning in the high school set up, as the human mind is designed for 42 – 45 minutes of learning before a needed break, not almost three hours. That and meeting multiple times a week in short increments leads to better retention of information.

Meeting five times a week for 45 minutes results in three hours and forty five minutes of learning, and again, a college class has three total hours of learning once a week. Either way I look at it, I have trouble arguing in favor of homework. If a teacher has three hours or more to get their point across, how am I the problem for not wanting to spend more time on it when I get home?

I personally don’t think it’s my problem anymore.

Homework is a vile, blatant disregard for the social lives, or lack thereof in America. It is the legal form of child labor, and should be stopped. While beneficial in some cases, like developing fundamentals such as math and reading, in later life, it is a constricting element on the everyday lives of students everywhere.

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America is divided over major efforts to rewrite child labor laws

At least 16 states have one or more bills to weaken their child labor laws, while 13 are seeking to strengthen them.

As child labor violations soar across the country , dozens of states are ramping up efforts to update child labor laws — with widespread efforts to weaken laws, but some to bolster them as well.

The push for changes to those laws arrives as employers — particularly in restaurants and other service-providing industries — have grappled with labor shortages since the beginning of the pandemic, and hired more teenagers , whose wages are typically lower than adults’.

Labor experts attribute the spike in child labor violations — which, a Post analysis shows, have tripled in 10 years — to a tight labor market that has prompted employers to hire more teens, as well as migrant children arriving from Latin America. In 2023, teens ages 16 to 19 were working or looking for work at the highest annual rate since 2009, according to Labor Department data.

That has led to the largest effort in years to change the patchwork of state laws that regulate child labor, with major implications for the country’s youths and the labor market. At least 16 states have one or more bills that would weaken their child labor laws and at least 13 are seeking to strengthen them, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute and other sources. Among these states, there are 43 bill proposals.

Since 2022, 14 states have passed or enacted new child labor laws.

Federal law forbids all minors from working in jobs deemed hazardous, including those in manufacturing, roofing, meatpacking and demolition. Fourteen- and 15-year-olds are not allowed to work past 7 p.m. on school nights or 9 p.m. on weekends.

Most states have laws that are tougher than federal rules, although an effort is underway, led by Republican lawmakers, to undo those restrictions, which is supported by restaurant associations, liquor associations and home builders associations.

A Florida-based lobbying group, the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has fought to promote conservative interests such as restricting access to anti-poverty programs, drafted or lobbied for recent bills to strip child labor protections in at least six states.

Among them is Indiana’s new law enacted in March, repealing all work-hour restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, who previously couldn’t work past 10 p.m. or before 6 a.m. on school days. The law also extends legal work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds.

Indiana legislators sparred over the bill, with state Sen. Mike Gaskill (R) saying at a hearing in March, “Do not for a second think that this is about the evil employers trying to manipulate and take advantage of kids.” But state Sen. Andrea Hunley (D) called the bill an “irresponsible and dystopian” way of “responding to our workforce shortage.”

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law changes that allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work seven days in a row . It also removes all hour restrictions for teens in online school or home-school, effectively permitting them to work overnight shifts.

Some states have reported soaring numbers of child-labor violations over the past year, with investigators uncovering violations in fast-food restaurants , but also in dangerous jobs in meatpacking , manufacturing and construction, where federal law prohibits minors from working. The Labor Department alleged in a lawsuit in February that a sanitation company, Fayette Janitorial Service, employed children as young as 13 to clean head splitters and other kill-floor equipment at slaughterhouses on overnight shifts in Virginia and Iowa.

Despite such findings, an Iowa law signed last year by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) allows minors in that state to work in jobs previously deemed too hazardous, including in industrial laundries, light manufacturing, demolition, roofing and excavation, but not slaughterhouses. Separately, West Virginia enacted a law this month that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to work some roofing jobs as part of an apprenticeship program.

Six more states are evaluating bills to lift restrictions preventing minors from working jobs considered dangerous. A Georgia bill would allow 14-year-olds to work in landscaping on factory grounds and other prohibited work sites. Florida’s legislature has passed a law, drafted by the state’s construction industry association, that would allow teens to work certain jobs in residential construction. It is awaiting approval from DeSantis.

Carol Bowen, chief lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, testified in February that the state “has one of the largest skilled-work shortages in recent history” and that the construction industry needs to identify the “next generation.”

Bowen said the bill limits work for 16- and 17-year-olds to home construction projects, adding that teens wouldn’t be able to work on anything higher than six feet.

In Kentucky, the House has passed a bill that prevents the state from having child labor laws that are stricter than federal protections, in effect removing all limitations on when 16- and 17-year-olds can work.

Meanwhile, Alabama, West Virginia, Missouri and Georgia are considering bills this year that would eliminate work permit requirements for minors, verifying age or parental or school permission to work. Most states require these permits. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a similar bill into law last year.

Republican lawmakers often say they are trying to increase opportunities or bring requirements in line with federal standards when they push to loosen child labor laws. They say that lowering restrictions helps employers fill labor shortages, while improving teenagers’ work ethic and reducing their screen time. Another common refrain is that permitting later work hours allows high school students opportunities similar to those for varsity athletes whose games often go later than state law allows teens to work.

“These are youth workers that are driving automobiles. They are not children,” said state Rep. Linda Chaney (R), sponsor of the Florida bill expanding work hours for 16- and 17-year-olds, during a hearing in December.

Indiana state Sen. Andy Zay (R), who supported the state’s new law extending work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds, told The Washington Post that as a father of five children, including a son who plays high school basketball, he felt saddened by criticism that teens could be exploited into working later hours under this law.

“I don’t see that, and I don’t feel that. And certainly they would have the freedom to move on,” Zay said.

But the spike in child labor violations and the recent deaths of minors illegally employed in dangerous jobs have also prompted a push by labor advocates to strengthen state laws.

The Virginia legislature unanimously approved a bill in recent weeks that would increase employer penalties for child labor violations from $1,000 to $2,500 for routine violations. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) approved the measure Wednesday.

The bill’s sponsor, Del. Holly M. Seibold (D-Fairfax), told The Post that she was “shocked and horrified” to read recently about poultry plants in Virginia illegally employing migrant children and wrote legislation to raise the penalties.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado also are pushing to raise employer penalties for child labor violations, with lawmakers calling them outdated and not substantial enough to deter employers from breaking the law. For example, Iowa fines employers $2,500 for a serious but nonfatal injury of a minor illegally working in a hazardous industry and $500 if there is no serious injury. The new bill proposes an additional $5,000 penalty for an injury that leads to a workers’ compensation case.

Terri Gerstein, director of the Wagner Labor Initiative at New York University, said that the focus on increasing penalties is “good, but, alone, is not good enough,” given that many states have very minimal resources dedicated to enforcing laws.

This year, Colorado legislators have introduced the strongest package to crack down on employers that break child labor laws. The legislation would raise fines for violations and deposit them into a fund for enforcement. Lawmakers are also seeking to make information on companies that violate child labor laws publicly available; in many states, such information is off-limits to the public. Colorado would also legally protect parents of minors who are employed illegally, as some have faced criminal charges for child abuse.

Colorado state Rep. Sheila Lieder (D), who introduced the bill, told The Post that Colorado’s child labor laws aren’t punitive enough to dissuade employers from violating the laws, with just a $20 penalty per offense.

“The fine in Colorado is like a couple cups of coffee at a brand-name coffee store,” Lieder said. “I was just, like, there’s something more that has to be done.”

Jacqueline Aguilar, a 21-year-old college student in Alamosa, Colo., who supports the bill, worked in the lettuce and potato fields on Colorado’s Eastern Plains from the time she was 13, alongside her immigrant parents, to buy school clothes.

“Laws have to be stricter because a lot of people don’t report” violations, said Aguilar, who worked 12-hour shifts in the fields starting at 4:30 a.m. growing up. She said she had no knowledge of her labor rights at the time. “Once I started getting older and my mom became disabled because of the job, it changed my perspective on children working.”

In Kentucky, the House-passed bill that prevents the state from enacting child labor laws stricter than federal protections but does not also repeal requirements for meal and rest breaks for minors. A previous version said that the bill would repeal breaks for minors.

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Evers vetoes a Republican bill that would have allowed teens to work without parental consent

FILE - Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers addresses a joint session of the state Legislature in the Assembly chambers during his State of the State speech at the state Capitol, Jan. 22, 2019, in Madison, Wis. Gov. Evers has vetoed a Republican bill that would have allowed 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin to work without getting consent from their parents or a state permit. Evers vetoed the bill Monday, April 8, 2024 that passed the Legislature with all Republicans in support and Democrats against. (AP Photo/Andy Manis, File)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Monday vetoed a Republican bill that would have allowed 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin to work without getting consent from their parents or a state permit.

Evers vetoed the bill that passed the Legislature with all Republicans in support and Democrats against it.

The proposal came amid a wider push by state lawmakers to roll back child labor laws and despite the efforts of federal investigators to crack down on a surge in child labor violations nationally.

“Asking more kids to work is not a serious plan or solution to address our statewide workforce issues,” Evers said in his veto message.

Evers said he vetoed the bill because he objected to eliminating a process that ensures children are protected from employers who may exploit them or subject them to dangerous conditions. Republicans don’t have the votes to override the veto.

Republican supporters said the change would have eliminated red tape for employers and teenage job applicants and bolster the state’s workforce. But opponents, including organized labor, said that without a work permit system, there is no way for the state to help protect the health and safety of children who wish to work.

The proposal would not have changed state law governing how many hours minors can work or prohibiting them from working dangerous jobs.

Evers vetoed the bill at a meeting of the Wisconsin State Council of Machinists in Madison.

Stephanie Bloomingdale, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, praised the veto.

“The important work permit process for 14- and 15-year-olds keeps parents’ rights intact and helps kids stay safe on the job,” she said in a statement. “The dangerous push to weaken child labor law in Wisconsin and across the country comes at a time when more children are harmed at work or work hazardous jobs.”

In 2017, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill passed by fellow Republicans in the Legislature that eliminated the work permit requirements for 16- and 17-year-olds. The bill Evers vetoed would have expanded the exemption to 14- and 15-year-olds.

Evers also vetoed a bill last year that would have let 14- and 15-year-olds work later hours during the summer.

Federal labor investigators say L.A. poultry plant used child labor and tried to cover it up

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A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Monday to block a poultry processing plant in the city of Irwindale from using “oppressive” child labor.

The order came after investigators with the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit on Saturday alleging the poultry processor and its affiliated companies illegally employed children under the age of 18 to debone raw meat with sharp knives.

This L.A. firm hired kids to debone poultry with sharp knives, drive fork lifts, Labor Department says

Grocery supplier Exclusive Poultry must pay nearly $3.8 million after an investigation found it employed children as young as 14 in dangerous jobs, the agency said.

Dec. 5, 2023

The department is seeking action forcing involved companies to forfeit money they made from selling products processed in facilities where minors were allegedly made to work in dangerous conditions.

The judge’s order involves three companies in the San Gabriel Valley — L & Y Food, Moon Poultry and JRC Culinary Group — that are all either owned, operated or managed by Fu Qian Chen Lu, who is also named in the lawsuit.

The Labor Department said in court documents that the companies continued to deliver and sell products even after agreeing to voluntarily refrain from shipping products following accusations of their use of child labor, and refused to provide information to investigators.

The companies hid 794 boxes of processed chicken and seven 1500-pound bins of chicken from investigators visiting the Irwindale facility, according to the court filings .

Federal officials and the poultry companies have presented dueling narratives of the child labor allegations.

Gregory W. Patterson, an attorney representing Chen Lu and other defendants named in the suit, accuses the Labor Department of planting an underage worker in the facility as part of its investigation, a claim the department has dismissed as “baseless.”

The crackdown by federal investigators comes as some of the country’s biggest consumer brands have come under broad scrutiny for child labor in their domestic supply chains amid revelations that children are working throughout American manufacturing and food production.

Investigators discovered children deboning poultry at the plant after visiting the facility in the city of Irwindale on Mar. 20 for a civil search warrant, the lawsuit said. Operators of the facility continued to process products, even after the Labor Department raised objections during its search warrant, in violation of federal laws prohibiting sale of products “tainted by child labor,” according to the lawsuit.

The “hot goods” provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits companies from selling products from locations flagged for child labor use in the prior 30 days.

U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II in his Monday decision issued a temporary restraining order requiring the businesses to stop using child labor, provide the Labor Department with information it is requesting related to its investigation, and refrain from shipping any poultry from facilities accused of employing child labor.

“In light of the immediacy of irreparable harm pending the Court’s review of this action, the Court finds a temporary restraining order warranted,” Wright wrote in his order on Monday.

Barring immediate action, he said, companies named in the lawsuit “will continue to employ oppressive child labor to the risk of minors’ life and limb; hot goods may enter the stream of commerce; and Defendants will continue to thwart Plaintiff’s investigation.”

Patterson, the attorney representing Chen Lu and other defendants, said in an emailed statement that the labor department had a 17-year-old “gain employment with Moon Poultry under false pretenses by presenting a fake government identification” and “directed this person to work in a hazardous area of the Moon Poultry facility in Irwindale.”

Patterson alleged that the Labor Department aimed to manufacture a child labor claim to “strengthen its negotiating hand” in an investigation about overtime wages that had not been paid to workers.

“The defense counsel’s allegations are false. The Labor Department has previously responded to the defense counsel on this issue, but he has nevertheless chosen to press his baseless claims,” said Marc Pilotin, regional solicitor for the Labor Department, in an emailed statement.

The Labor Department has investigated other poultry processing plants in California in recent months.

In December, federal investigators found grueling working conditions at two poultry plants in City of Industry and La Puente operated by Exclusive Poultry Inc. as well as other “front companies” owned by Tony Elvis Bran.

Children as young as 14 stood for long hours cutting and deboned poultry and operating heavy machinery, the labor department said. The workers came primarily from Indigenous communities in Guatemala.

The poultry processor, which supplies grocery stores including Ralphs and Aldi, was ordered to pay nearly $3.8 million in fines and back wages.

An investigation published in early February by the Fresno Bee detailed dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions for primarily Latino immigrant workers at Pitman Farms in the Central Valley, which produces the Mary’s Free Range Chicken brand.

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One year of Germany's Supply Chain Act — some progress made

A year ago, the German Supply Chain Act came into effect to combat child labor, starvation wages, and environmental destruction that consumers benefit from. Has it worked?

Chopping cacao beans with machetes. Carrying heavy sacks during harvest — all tasks that school-age boys and girls in Ghana and elsewhere should not to be doing. Yet an in-depth investigation by US TV network CBS and Swiss public broadcaster SRF recently revealed that the chocolate manufacturer Mars and the Swiss company Lindt & Sprüngli may be using child labor in Ghana. Studies suggest that around 700,000 children continue to work in the cocoa industry in Ghana. 

The problem clearly affects the entire global retail industry: Major German companies have also been accused of benefiting from child labor. The non-profit Oxfam alleges that suppliers of German supermarket chains Edeka and Rewe have violated environmental and human rights. And, according to a joint investigation by German media outlets NDR, WDR, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung , a supplier for auto giant BMW is also suspected of environmental pollution.

All these cases are potential violations of the Supply Chain Act , which has been in effect in Germany since the start of 2023. The aim of the law is to ensure that raw materials are sourced and exported from countries in the so-called Global South without violating human rights, employing child labor, or destroying the environment. 

Germany's Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze insisted that the German Supply Chain Act had already brought some success: "We hear from many partner countries that trade unions are being taken more seriously, that complaints offices are being set up, and that there have been some changes in local working conditions," she told DW.

The Supply Chain Act explained

The law stipulates that German companies with more than 1,000 employees must now take a close look at whether their goods and services meet the law's requirements. The German Labor Ministry lays out companies' obligations like this: "These obligations apply to their own business operations, to the actions of any contractual partners, and to the actions of other (indirect) suppliers," the ministry said. "This means that the responsibility of companies no longer ends at their own factory gates but extends along the entire supply chain."

Germany's Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Hubertus Heil had long been an advocate of the law, and claims that Germany is now a pioneer. Despite much criticism from companies, there are also businesses that have made special efforts "because they don't want to be pilloried," he told DW at a recent trade conference.

Police uncover slave-like conditions on Brazil's plantations

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Criticism from businesses and NGOs

In Germany, the federal agency responsible for monitoring the Supply Chain Act is the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), which also assesses arms exports. Although there have been some initial audits and complaints about noncompliance with the law, no fines or penalties have yet been imposed.

Perhaps for this reason, the requirements of the Supply Chain Act do not go far enough for many NGOs. Business associations, on the other hand, have complained about too much bureaucracy and the cost of extensive documentation. Siegfried Russwurm, chairman of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), told DW, "The implementation of the German Supply Chain Act has resulted in many negative and unintended effects along with heavy bureaucratic hurdles."

The environmental and human rights organization Germanwatch had cautious praise for the new regulations, but business responsibilities specialist Finn Schufft also told DW: "There are still shortcomings. One of them is the fact that companies cannot be held liable under civil law."

Ninja Charbonneau of the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF called the law a "milestone," but said she would have liked to see a more explicit reference to children's rights, and: "in the long run, it would be good if it applied to all companies."

An EU Supply Chain Act is now due to get the green light in April . This is similar to the German law, but is also stricter in some respects. For example, it will apply to companies with as few as 500 employees, rather than 1,000, and if companies violate the EU requirements, they could be sued for damages.

However, it will still take a few years before all the bureaucratic hurdles can be overcome and the EU law comes into force. Heil said that the German law will continue to apply until then. Now, he added, we have two years to implement the EU directives. "Without the German regulation, there would not have been the impetus for the European solution," he said.

This article was originally written in German.

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Poland’s children rejoice as homework is banned. The rest of the world watches on for results

O la Kozak is celebrating. The 11-year-old, who loves music and drawing, expects to have more free time for her hobbies after Poland ’s government ordered strict limits on the amount of homework in the lower grades.

“I am happy,” said the fifth grader, who lives in a Warsaw suburb with her parents and younger siblings. The lilac-colored walls in her bedroom are covered in her art, and on her desk she keeps a framed picture she drew of Kurt Cobain.

“Most people in my class in the morning would copy the work off someone who had done the homework or would copy it from the internet. So it didn’t make sense,” she said.

The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk enacted the ban against required homework this month amid a broad discussion about the need to modernise Poland's education system, which critics say puts too much emphasis on rote learning and homework, and not enough on critical thinking and creativity.

Under the decree, teachers are no longer to give required homework to kids in the first to third grades. In grades four to eight, homework is now optional and doesn't count towards a grade.

Not everyone likes the change – and even Ola’s parents are divided.

“If there is something that will make students enjoy school more, then it will probably be good both for the students and for the school,” said her father, Pawel Kozak.

His wife, Magda Kozak, was skeptical. “I am not pleased, because (homework) is a way to consolidate what was learned,” she said. “It helps stay on top of what the child has really learned and what’s going on at school.”

(Ola's brother Julian, a third grader, says he sees both sides.)

Debates over the proper amount of homework are common around the globe. While some studies have shown little benefit to homework for young learners, other experts say it can help them learn how to develop study habits and academic concepts.

The rest of the world will be watching Poland’s results closely.

Poland's educational system has undergone a number of controversial overhauls. Almost every new government has tried to make changes — something many teachers and parents say has left them confused and discouraged. For example, after communism was thrown off, middle schools were introduced. Then under the last government, the previous system was brought back. More controversy came in recent years when ultra-conservative views were pushed in new textbooks.

For years, teachers have been fleeing the system due to low wages and political pressure. The current government is trying to increase teacher salaries and has promised other changes that teachers approve of.

But Sławomir Broniarz, the head of the Polish Teachers' Union, said that while he recognized the need to ease burdens on students, the new homework rules are another case of change imposed from above without adequate consultation with educators.

“In general, the teachers think that this happened too quickly, too hastily,” he said.

He argued that removing homework could widen the educational gaps between kids who have strong support at home and those from poorer families with less support and lower expectations. Instead, he urged wider changes to the entire curriculum.

The homework rules gained impetus in the runup to parliamentary elections last year, when a 14-year-old boy, Maciek Matuszewski, stood up at a campaign rally and told Tusk before a national audience that children “had no time to rest.” The boy said their rights were being violated with so much homework on weekends and so many tests on Mondays.

Tusk has since featured Matuszewski in social media videos and made him the face of the sudden change.

Education Minister Barbara Nowacka said she was prompted by research on children’s mental health. Of the various stresses children face, she said, "the one that could be removed fastest was the burden of homework.”

Pasi Sahlberg, a prominent Finnish educator and author, said the value of homework depends on what it is and how it is linked to overall learning. The need for homework can be “very individual and contextual.”

“We need to trust our teachers to decide what is good for each child,” Sahlberg said.

In South Korea, homework limits were set for elementary schools in 2017 amid concerns that kids were under too much pressure. However, teenagers in the education-obsessed country often cram long into the night and get tutoring to meet the requirements of demanding school and university admission tests.

In the US, teachers and parents decide for themselves how much homework to assign. Some elementary schools have done away with homework entirely to give children more time to play, participate in activities and spend time with families.

A guideline circulated by teachers unions in the US recommends about 10 minutes of homework per grade. So, 10 minutes in first grade, 20 minutes in second grade and so on.

The COVID-19 pandemic and a crisis around youth mental health have complicated debates around homework. In the US, extended school closures in some places were accompanied by steep losses in learning, which were often addressed with tutoring and other interventions paid for with federal pandemic relief money. At the same time, increased attention to student wellbeing led some teachers to consider alternate approaches including reduced or optional homework.

It's important for children to learn that mastering something "usually requires practice, a lot of practice,” said Sahlberg, in Finland. If reducing homework leads kids and parents to think school expectations for excellence will be lowered, “things will go wrong.”

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Labour urged to end two-child benefits cap as research reveals policy pushing families into poverty

New data shows families with disabled children, and single parents with offspring under the age of three facing financial hardship

Keir Starmer is facing new calls to end the controversial two-child limit on benefits if Labour comes to power – as new data shows it is pushing large numbers of families with disabled children, and single parents with offspring under the age of three, into poverty.

The limit restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households and means families cannot claim benefits worth well over £3,000 a year per extra child after the second.

The policy was introduced by the Conservative government led by David Cameron and George Osborne as part of their drive to cut welfare spending. It had been promoted by Iain Duncan Smith , the then work and pensions secretary, who believed it would discourage people struggling with their finances from having more children. But new data uncovered by the End Child Poverty Coalition (ECPC) shows that it is hitting single parents with very young children, as well as many parents with at least one disabled child.

Analysis of official data by the ECPC reveals that 25% of all households affected by the two-child limit are currently single-parent households with a child under three years old. About 106,000 families fall into this category. The ECPC says these are parents who would not be required to work under universal credit rules.

The analysis also shows that 20% of households affected by the policy have at least one disabled child. While there are exceptions if the third or subsequent children are disabled, there are no provisions in place for the disability of other children. About 87,500 families with a disabled child are affected.

The findings will place particular pressure on Starmer to end the cap, if and when his party comes to power. The vast majority of constituencies with very high numbers of children in poverty and children affected by the cap are held by Labour MPs.

Over recent years, several shadow cabinet ministers have been severely critical of the cap. Jonathan Ashworth, when shadow work and pensions secretary, said last year: “We are very, very aware that this is one of the single most heinous elements of the system which is pushing children and families into poverty today.”

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, described it as “obscene and inhumane”, while in 2020 Starmer himself tweeted: “We must … scrap punitive sanctions, two-child limit and benefit caps.”

But in a BBC interview last summer, Starmer said he was “not changing that policy” if Labour won power. After a backlash from the party he defended his position, saying “we have to take the tough decisions”.

Some Labour MPs with high number of constituents affected are growing increasingly impatient.

The former minister Liam Byrne, the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, which has the third highest proportion of children affected by the cap (26%), said: “If we want to make food banks history, then bluntly, some way, somehow, we have to end the ­appalling two-child cap – or risk losing an entire generation to the horror of child poverty.”

Clive Efford, the Labour MP for Eltham, added: “I fully understand that we can’t make commitments on financial priorities until we see the full state of the country’s finances but it is inconceivable that a Labour government would not want to address something that is such a roadblock to tackling child poverty.”

Joseph Howes, chair of the ECPC, said: “These new figures clearly show that the two-child limit is a policy which pushes single parents, and families with disabled children, into poverty – the very families that our benefit system should be helping. In this election year, scrapping this cruel policy should be the top priority for every political party.”

Across the UK, about 422,000 households who claim benefits have them reduced by the cap. One in 10 children – 1.5 million – live in a household affected by the policy. Removing the cap is widely recognised by economists and thinktanks as the most effective way to reduce child poverty. To do so would cost well under £2bn, according to most estimates. The ECPC says doing so would lift 300,000 children out of poverty and mean 800,000 would be in less deep poverty.

A government spokesperson said: “The two-child policy is about fairness, asking families on benefits to make the same financial decisions as families supporting themselves solely through work, and safeguards are in place to protect people in the most vulnerable circumstances.

“We know work is the best route out of poverty, and with over 4 million more people in work and 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty since 2010 it’s clear our plan is working.”

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