This one is complicated, and I’m not completely sure what I think of it. Start with a piece of context: For years, a dangerous movement on the American political left has sought to remake childhood, proudly suggesting that 12 year-olds should be sexually active and sexually autonomous:
I think the general traditional way of approaching the issue of adolescence and adult activity was to introduce teens as much as possible to mature activities while minimizing anything that would have a permanent or enduring consequence. Young people can get jobs, but not take on debt; they can date, but shouldn’t have sex; they can drive, but not drink (or in some parts, drink but not drive). Soft intoxicants get coded as “experimentation;” their harder cousins “abuse.” In all things the central question should be, ‘are we introducing adult responsibilities without adult levels of commitment and risk?’
Along those lines, mutilation is definitely out, while working evenings at Baskin Robin would be ok. Full-time work that robs teens of the chance to experience family life should also be forbidden. An exception could be made for family businesses, which I think might be more beneficial for some kids than school or athletics. Call it the Gateway to Maturity approach or something like that
Laws and policies have to be made with the most general understanding of applicable conditions, since they apply to whole categories of people and activities. Every minor, unless legally emancipated, has some adult assuming legal responsibility for him, even if it is a state actor. A kid with no blood relations and not inclined to academics would probably benefit from working more and becoming economically self-reliant more than his more fortunate peers. However, I cannot imagine a circumstance where he would benefit from castration.
and i would add that i know in Florida a 14 year old can only work very few hours a week. They require a break every 2 hours. They cant work past a certain time of day. If those safeguards are in place in Iowa, this is not an apples to apples comparison. Its part time job experience for kids to figure out what they do or dont like to do. It teaches responsibility and allows them to save there own money. No assembly line is going to hire a 15 or 16 year old to work full time.
We've been living under the reign of SAFETY FIRST! and treating kids like fine china for at least a generation or 2, and how's that been working out?
Do American kids seem any smarter, stronger, do they have better mental health, better education, better life outcomes? Do they seem competent and confident for the most part or emotionally brittle to the point where disagreement makes most of them run straight into the arms of the nearest authority figure? How many more are afflicted with anxiety and depression?
Someone please ask Robert Reich.
The Culture War has devolved into cross between the Salem witch trials and a game of dodgeball. Nothing can be discussed rationally because the most imporant issue by far was the passionate desire a million drones had to type the words "Republicans Child Labor" in the same sentence/Tweet.
i did all sorts of manual labor with friends, odd hauling jobs etc, starting at 15. was a great way to meet new people, get some exercise, make some money, and be/feel independent. i think it may be the 'independent' part that bothers our benevolent statists.
Before someone gets through to Robert Reich, meanwhile we can ask Simon Sarris instead 😉
🗨 Modern schooling began as a track to be left as soon as you had something worthwhile to do with your life. But it has since morphed into an attempt at systematizing as many years of a child’s life as possible, extending well into their adulthood.[...I]n having so many years of life monopolized, people come to inadvertently believe that skill and knowledge transfer are primarily the domain of school rather than a normal consequence of meaningful work. The ever-longer march through school creates a bizarre barrier separating the student from reality.[...] Instead of making adolescence full of rites of passage where one attempts to master something and accept responsibility, we have made it full of waiting and fake work—for school is work.
🗨 It is difficult to blame young adults for thinking that work is fake and meaningless if we prescribe fake and meaningless work for the first two decades of their existence. When meaningful work is an adult-only activity, it is little wonder that adolescence is a period of great depression.
🗨 This is not the worship of employment, but an observation of fundamentals: it seems that the more you ask of people and the more you have them do, the more they rise up to the task of doing it on their own.
🗨 The purpose of education is to develop agency within a child. Purposeful work and achieving mastery are tools to getting there.
There is a difference between gender-affirming care policies and policies that allow young people the opportunity to gain work experience. Gender-affirming care exploits vulnerable young people to further the goals of radical adults. Policies expanding opportunities for young people to work as described in the article are for the benefit of young people. In contrast, Upton Sinclair style child labor exploited children for the benefit of factory owners. Those jobs were not part of a child’s education, they were in place of one. Today, one set of policies - gender affirming policies - harm vulnerable children. The other is intended to open up opportunities for them.
Farm states. Did you know a 13 year old can get an agricultural husbandry driving permit to operate tractors and some trucks on public roads in Nebraska? School driving permits at age 14? Most farm states have similar age restrictions.
OSHA does not regulate family labor on farms. It doesn't regulate labor on farms that employ ten or less employees. The department of labor, wage and hour, basically exempts employers of farm labor from everything except paying minimum wage and withholding taxes. Slight exaggeration. And of course, farming is one of the nation's most dangerous occupations.
Farm kids work for neighbors, doing all sorts of dangerous things all the time. They always have. Oh yes, the 13 yo driving permit is only required on the public right-of-way. On private property there are no age restrictions. Seven years old and driving a truck in the field. It stills happening.
This is life in rural Dakotas, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, etal. It's not over yet. The rules for town kids never made sense to us.
I run a small business. My kids have responsibilities at a very young age. They help clean tools, put them away, maintain them, clean the work van, etc. from the time they're 6-7 years old. Three of my sons, ages 15, 18, 22, are on the job site daily with me right now. I am constantly told by customers how kind, considerate, hard working, and mature my boys are. Some seem genuinely surprised. Haha, I'm not bragging about my kids or my parenting skills, (if anything my wife gets all the credit), but working and being part of the family business gives them a certain pride in a job well done. Corporate labor is an entirely different universe to be sure, but done correctly it could have the same advantages for kids.
These on-farm jobs mean rural kids can be more sophisticated than urban kids in some ways. Certainly driving vehicles and machinery, while their counterparts have no plans to get a driver's license at 16, 17, even 18.
I don’t know what the laws are like now, but as a farm kid in Indiana in the 1970s I had a limited driving permit at 14; before that I had been driving tractors and combines off road since my feet would reach the clutch. My first off-farm job, at the age of 16, was in a nursing home. I fed, bathed, dressed, and medicated elderly patients too frail to care for themselves; I talked to them, sang to them, comforted them, and on a few occasions sat at their bedsides holding their hands until they passed over to the next life. Not only did none of that have anything to do with premature sexualization; the confidence and feeling of mastery I gained by being entrusted to do these mature activities empowered me to stand up for myself in situations where I could have been taken advantage of. I also parlayed the nursing home paycheck into a seriously kickass Macintosh stereo setup. This article feels like the fretting of anxious upper middle class suburbia.
Indeed. Your pairing of the labor laws along with the current efforts to sexualize children exposes just how different the concept of “growing up” really is across the schizophrenic divide of nurture and abuse today. Freakin’ Clownworld.
You wrote an article juxtaposing legislative efforts to normalize and expand employment opportunities for mid-adolescents in a framework that gives input to parents vis a vis legislative efforts to forbid mid-adolescents from making irreversible medical decisions with no input from parents. Presenting same as "troubling" evidence that the pro-work advocates were hypocrites. Expect some pushback from those of us who had positive experience of being valued employees when we were 15 years old.
I described an argument that is being made, which doesn't mean that it's my argument. Look for the place after the block quote from the organization arguing for the value of teen labor where I say, "And I agree with every word of that, but then I have questions." The words "I agree with every word of that" should communicate something.
I haven't argued for hypocrisy AT ALL. I've argued that there's room to argue over degree among people who agree on principle, and I've argued that leftists who are trying to sexualize childhood are going to use "child labor" often and loudly to try to delegitimize efforts to protect children: If you say that 14 year-olds are mature enough to do X, then you have to admit that they're mature enough to do Y. That equivalency is already being advanced. It's specious, but you absolutely will see it more and more often.
So when conservative legislators advance teen labor bills, they have to think about limits and boundaries, and avoid handing political weapons to people who are trying to destroy childhood. In Iowa, preserving parental permission serves some of that purpose.
Childhood is under attack. The political context for *any* discussion about childhood has traps and dangers.
Edited to add that you've put the word "troubling" in quotes, and I haven't used that word. I haven't said at all that teen labor is "troubling." I've said the opposite, several times.
After re-reading your original article and my replies, I believe I have done you a disservice. I think I so profoundly disagree with the conclusion you have reached that I was unable to allow myself to consider your argument clearly and with charity. I apologize. I still think you're wrong, but I wasn't being fair to your rhetoric.
thats the problem, framing everything in a political light, instead of doing what you think is right. Worrying about your opponents spinning and twisting what you do is partly why we are what we are. Nobody has a spine to stand by what they believe, even if politically it may hurt them. Allowing kids to possibly get a jump start in a trade, or learn a little responsibility, is the opposite of all these gender mutilation bills. If worrying about a bunch of twitter and news bots guides your decisions, this side of the argument is screwed, because everything they propose gets the same response. Something you have eloquently pointed out via this substack since its inception.
Jim, I agree with everything you've said, but with politicians debating possible legislation, politics obviously is the #1 concern. I want the legislators on my side to hone their arguments and be prepared for the inevitable onslaught of distortions, lies and hypocrisy.
Farm and ranch kids have been helping out their families with chores since time immemorial. Up until the last two generations, helping out in a family business of any kind was the norm. If we want kids to mature at a normal pace we need to give them graduated responsibilities from an early age. They can handle it. Should we put them in sweatshops or give them high risk, dangerous jobs? Obviously not. Everything is a matter of judgment, which will be outlawed any day now, since it’s not yet controlled by the highly credentialed people who think pooping on the sidewalk, meth addiction, and shoplifting are forms of artistic expression.
In case you hadn’t noticed, people seem to be extending adolescence further and further out. Adulthood hits around 40ish now. This is not a positive for society. It is a positive for the sociopaths in power cultivating dependency and a permanent state of neurotic anxiety.
My wife’s grandfather worked as a dishwasher during his summer vacation at the age of 15 - on a steamship from NYC to Cuba, traveling solo. That was 1936. His parents would go to prison for that these days, unless he was transitioning genders in which case they’d be given Cabinet posts.
We were just in coastal Maine, famously home of the Protestant work ethic, fisherman, loggers, shipbuilders, farmers etc. and nobody wants to work according to locals. Restaurants can’t find help. Either can hotels. Shops have shorter hours. We needed to have a disposal fixed at the vacation rental. The landlord said it would take a month to get a plumber. A month?
Some restaurants had kids from Europe working. I saw a lot of immigrant Latinos who I’m sure were doing manual labor that others wouldn’t do. The trend of not working hard is bad. It’s nationally enervating. We used to be the country that built everything. Not any more.
Work is good for you. It’s a healthy habit. It feels good to accomplish something, doesn’t matter what it is. There is dignity in the effort. It’s the difference between a wild animal that fends for itself and a house pet. We love our pets, but generally they can’t take care of themselves. They’re helpless. Learned helplessness is what we have too much of now. We need to reverse that trend. Democrats, as usual, want exactly the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
While this bill has various ramifications the one thing I didn’t read was the parent’s involvement in the decision of their child working . If the child is mature. Gets good grades. Likes to keep busy. has a close relationship with the family and a PT weekend job would only make the child more prepared for life , could be okay. Both of my daughters worked at summer camps at 15 And have worked ever since. They developed a work ethic and the love of a paycheck !!! 🙏🏻🇺🇸
Each child is different and Where are the parents in this equation???? !!!!!!
Thanks for your subtlety on this issue. You are absolutely correct that it is complicated. Starting from 11 years old I did things to make money for myself: selling stuff door to door, doing yard work, painting houses, etc. I think apart from the money it did me a world of good. I grew up in a middle class household, but if I wanted money of my own to spend , I had to hustle for it.
My thoughts are very similar to yours. From the age of 16, I worked 20-25 hours a week bagging groceries while going to school and being a two-sport athlete. Somehow I managed a girlfriend and decent social life while still getting good grades. I would have jumped at a chance to get work better paying but labor laws limited me.
One nuance in all of this is that work does not necessarily convey adult responsibility. So-called gender affirmation is a decision with lifelong consequences and likely cuts 20 years off of life expectancy. Working may result in an injury but the benefits of developing a good work ethic outweigh the possibilities. It is a fact the puberty blockers will ruin fertility and raises the risks of debilitating illnesses in old age by statistically significant factors (men should not get osteoporosis in their 40s, if at all, but trannies will). Working in factories and plants may even lead to good employment as an adult.
I desperately wanted to work at a "real job" instead of "just babysitting." I lived in a small town and unless you had the right connections, you babysat. Babysitting was usually lots of fun but you couldn't make much money doing that back in the dark ages - the pay was just awful. The younger you were, the worse the pay was. But there were snacks! And color TV! And some of those kids had great toys. I earned more than some because I played with the kids. Once they went to bed, it got boring. Somehow Tonka trucks aren't any fun without the kids there to play, too.
But it is not that different. It's working with and for the neighbor and the hired men, it's not just mom and dad. It's also working alone. Which is the most dangerous type of work there is.
Look my grandson has worked in a machine shop for three summers. He graduated from high school this May. With twenty or so employees, is it a family business or a corporation? It's not his family's business. He's going to take precision machining at one of the best vo-tech school's in the country at Southeast Nebraska. With his grades and ACT scores he could go to college absolutely anywhere if his skin were darker. He can still go most anywhere. Both Princeton and Harvard recruited him by mail.
But why go there? What does Wokedom offer that he wants? He'll be making right at $100,000 in two years at the machine shop. His grants and scholarships pay for everything. He got a better education during the last three summers working, making parts, than he did at his high school.
There is enough time for a part time job and doing well in school, and sports, and music lessons. Actually, too much time can be spent doing any one of those things. Sports can be all encompassing and rushing through dinner to get a kid to another practice can be unproductive. But it should be POSSIBLE for a kid to get a job. Not everyone is into sports or music, and they can do well in school and still learn a skill and work a parttime job after school and in the summers and still have time to sit with the family during dinner.
My family is proof it is possible. I raised 5 kids and they all had part time jobs after school and in the summers. They also played some sports, hung out with their friends and family, and played an instrument. We also went on camping trips together. If they wanted a driver's license and a vehicle, they had to pay for it themselves, including the insurance, gas, etc. Why shouldn't they?
Equating the sex reassignment surgeries and taking harmful hormone medications is NOT the same thing with being mature enough to work and getting good grades in school.
Valid and thought-provoking take. I would say, that for "Jo" and Robert Reich and those like them, their blind spot is the world is binary to them. It's Team R and Team D and nothing else.
For me, both can be harmful and I can say that without any fear of hypocrisy because I don't identify as Team R or Team D.
My siblings and I all started working summers when we 14. I wanted to work! However, under the age of 16 kids should be very limited as to where they work and how many hours. My parents never would have let me work in an adult setting or factory at that age. Also, if you can’t legally drink in a State, you should not be serving alcohol. We’re either protecting kids or we’re not. Much of this legislation is probably being pushed by corporations/business owners who want to young people to work for less money or can’t find adults to work and of course politicians go along with it and justify it. In my opinion, most republicans are just as useless and corrupt as democrats.
Thanks Chris! You have me thinking now. There are two sides to every coin. I believe the option to work is good for kids who want to experience what it is like working in the real world. Ultimately it is the parents who allow their children to work or not. One possible upside is it affords children in corrosive households the ability to engage in a positive activity outside the home while gaining dignity versus joining gangs and partaking in other less dignifying activities. That being said the more cynical side of me wonders if the theatrical outrage over the Iowa decisions is not rooted in something completely different. Perhaps if teens start working and enjoy and/or excel at real work fewer will attend the despot’s early adulthood indoctrination camps more commonly known as college. Maybe they will learn the value of a dollar and push back against socialist ideologies. I reckon time will tell.
I think the general traditional way of approaching the issue of adolescence and adult activity was to introduce teens as much as possible to mature activities while minimizing anything that would have a permanent or enduring consequence. Young people can get jobs, but not take on debt; they can date, but shouldn’t have sex; they can drive, but not drink (or in some parts, drink but not drive). Soft intoxicants get coded as “experimentation;” their harder cousins “abuse.” In all things the central question should be, ‘are we introducing adult responsibilities without adult levels of commitment and risk?’
Along those lines, mutilation is definitely out, while working evenings at Baskin Robin would be ok. Full-time work that robs teens of the chance to experience family life should also be forbidden. An exception could be made for family businesses, which I think might be more beneficial for some kids than school or athletics. Call it the Gateway to Maturity approach or something like that
People are also assuming that every child has a “family”.
Laws and policies have to be made with the most general understanding of applicable conditions, since they apply to whole categories of people and activities. Every minor, unless legally emancipated, has some adult assuming legal responsibility for him, even if it is a state actor. A kid with no blood relations and not inclined to academics would probably benefit from working more and becoming economically self-reliant more than his more fortunate peers. However, I cannot imagine a circumstance where he would benefit from castration.
Very well said!
and i would add that i know in Florida a 14 year old can only work very few hours a week. They require a break every 2 hours. They cant work past a certain time of day. If those safeguards are in place in Iowa, this is not an apples to apples comparison. Its part time job experience for kids to figure out what they do or dont like to do. It teaches responsibility and allows them to save there own money. No assembly line is going to hire a 15 or 16 year old to work full time.
This is an extremely helpful way to differentiate these issues.
We've been living under the reign of SAFETY FIRST! and treating kids like fine china for at least a generation or 2, and how's that been working out?
Do American kids seem any smarter, stronger, do they have better mental health, better education, better life outcomes? Do they seem competent and confident for the most part or emotionally brittle to the point where disagreement makes most of them run straight into the arms of the nearest authority figure? How many more are afflicted with anxiety and depression?
Someone please ask Robert Reich.
The Culture War has devolved into cross between the Salem witch trials and a game of dodgeball. Nothing can be discussed rationally because the most imporant issue by far was the passionate desire a million drones had to type the words "Republicans Child Labor" in the same sentence/Tweet.
Absolutely. The lawn work I did as a kid using power tools wouldn't be allowed in many places now.
i did all sorts of manual labor with friends, odd hauling jobs etc, starting at 15. was a great way to meet new people, get some exercise, make some money, and be/feel independent. i think it may be the 'independent' part that bothers our benevolent statists.
Before someone gets through to Robert Reich, meanwhile we can ask Simon Sarris instead 😉
🗨 Modern schooling began as a track to be left as soon as you had something worthwhile to do with your life. But it has since morphed into an attempt at systematizing as many years of a child’s life as possible, extending well into their adulthood.[...I]n having so many years of life monopolized, people come to inadvertently believe that skill and knowledge transfer are primarily the domain of school rather than a normal consequence of meaningful work. The ever-longer march through school creates a bizarre barrier separating the student from reality.[...] Instead of making adolescence full of rites of passage where one attempts to master something and accept responsibility, we have made it full of waiting and fake work—for school is work.
🗨 It is difficult to blame young adults for thinking that work is fake and meaningless if we prescribe fake and meaningless work for the first two decades of their existence. When meaningful work is an adult-only activity, it is little wonder that adolescence is a period of great depression.
🗨 This is not the worship of employment, but an observation of fundamentals: it seems that the more you ask of people and the more you have them do, the more they rise up to the task of doing it on their own.
🗨 The purpose of education is to develop agency within a child. Purposeful work and achieving mastery are tools to getting there.
School Is Not Enough --> palladiummag.com/2023/06/06/school-is-not-enough 👌
1000% spot on!
There is a difference between gender-affirming care policies and policies that allow young people the opportunity to gain work experience. Gender-affirming care exploits vulnerable young people to further the goals of radical adults. Policies expanding opportunities for young people to work as described in the article are for the benefit of young people. In contrast, Upton Sinclair style child labor exploited children for the benefit of factory owners. Those jobs were not part of a child’s education, they were in place of one. Today, one set of policies - gender affirming policies - harm vulnerable children. The other is intended to open up opportunities for them.
Stop using the euphemism ‘gender affirming care’. You are feeding into the propaganda. It is butchery and child abuse.
You’re right.
Farm states. Did you know a 13 year old can get an agricultural husbandry driving permit to operate tractors and some trucks on public roads in Nebraska? School driving permits at age 14? Most farm states have similar age restrictions.
OSHA does not regulate family labor on farms. It doesn't regulate labor on farms that employ ten or less employees. The department of labor, wage and hour, basically exempts employers of farm labor from everything except paying minimum wage and withholding taxes. Slight exaggeration. And of course, farming is one of the nation's most dangerous occupations.
Farm kids work for neighbors, doing all sorts of dangerous things all the time. They always have. Oh yes, the 13 yo driving permit is only required on the public right-of-way. On private property there are no age restrictions. Seven years old and driving a truck in the field. It stills happening.
This is life in rural Dakotas, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, etal. It's not over yet. The rules for town kids never made sense to us.
Family labor strikes me as a whole different universe than corporate labor. Children have been working alongside mom and dad since we lived in caves.
I run a small business. My kids have responsibilities at a very young age. They help clean tools, put them away, maintain them, clean the work van, etc. from the time they're 6-7 years old. Three of my sons, ages 15, 18, 22, are on the job site daily with me right now. I am constantly told by customers how kind, considerate, hard working, and mature my boys are. Some seem genuinely surprised. Haha, I'm not bragging about my kids or my parenting skills, (if anything my wife gets all the credit), but working and being part of the family business gives them a certain pride in a job well done. Corporate labor is an entirely different universe to be sure, but done correctly it could have the same advantages for kids.
These on-farm jobs mean rural kids can be more sophisticated than urban kids in some ways. Certainly driving vehicles and machinery, while their counterparts have no plans to get a driver's license at 16, 17, even 18.
I don’t know what the laws are like now, but as a farm kid in Indiana in the 1970s I had a limited driving permit at 14; before that I had been driving tractors and combines off road since my feet would reach the clutch. My first off-farm job, at the age of 16, was in a nursing home. I fed, bathed, dressed, and medicated elderly patients too frail to care for themselves; I talked to them, sang to them, comforted them, and on a few occasions sat at their bedsides holding their hands until they passed over to the next life. Not only did none of that have anything to do with premature sexualization; the confidence and feeling of mastery I gained by being entrusted to do these mature activities empowered me to stand up for myself in situations where I could have been taken advantage of. I also parlayed the nursing home paycheck into a seriously kickass Macintosh stereo setup. This article feels like the fretting of anxious upper middle class suburbia.
You've misread it. I haven't said that working causes sexualization.
Indeed. Your pairing of the labor laws along with the current efforts to sexualize children exposes just how different the concept of “growing up” really is across the schizophrenic divide of nurture and abuse today. Freakin’ Clownworld.
You wrote an article juxtaposing legislative efforts to normalize and expand employment opportunities for mid-adolescents in a framework that gives input to parents vis a vis legislative efforts to forbid mid-adolescents from making irreversible medical decisions with no input from parents. Presenting same as "troubling" evidence that the pro-work advocates were hypocrites. Expect some pushback from those of us who had positive experience of being valued employees when we were 15 years old.
I described an argument that is being made, which doesn't mean that it's my argument. Look for the place after the block quote from the organization arguing for the value of teen labor where I say, "And I agree with every word of that, but then I have questions." The words "I agree with every word of that" should communicate something.
I haven't argued for hypocrisy AT ALL. I've argued that there's room to argue over degree among people who agree on principle, and I've argued that leftists who are trying to sexualize childhood are going to use "child labor" often and loudly to try to delegitimize efforts to protect children: If you say that 14 year-olds are mature enough to do X, then you have to admit that they're mature enough to do Y. That equivalency is already being advanced. It's specious, but you absolutely will see it more and more often.
So when conservative legislators advance teen labor bills, they have to think about limits and boundaries, and avoid handing political weapons to people who are trying to destroy childhood. In Iowa, preserving parental permission serves some of that purpose.
Childhood is under attack. The political context for *any* discussion about childhood has traps and dangers.
Edited to add that you've put the word "troubling" in quotes, and I haven't used that word. I haven't said at all that teen labor is "troubling." I've said the opposite, several times.
After re-reading your original article and my replies, I believe I have done you a disservice. I think I so profoundly disagree with the conclusion you have reached that I was unable to allow myself to consider your argument clearly and with charity. I apologize. I still think you're wrong, but I wasn't being fair to your rhetoric.
I appreciate this, and I could always be wrong. Thanks for this.
thats the problem, framing everything in a political light, instead of doing what you think is right. Worrying about your opponents spinning and twisting what you do is partly why we are what we are. Nobody has a spine to stand by what they believe, even if politically it may hurt them. Allowing kids to possibly get a jump start in a trade, or learn a little responsibility, is the opposite of all these gender mutilation bills. If worrying about a bunch of twitter and news bots guides your decisions, this side of the argument is screwed, because everything they propose gets the same response. Something you have eloquently pointed out via this substack since its inception.
Jim, I agree with everything you've said, but with politicians debating possible legislation, politics obviously is the #1 concern. I want the legislators on my side to hone their arguments and be prepared for the inevitable onslaught of distortions, lies and hypocrisy.
True! I could drive a pickup truck at 13 to the local store without a license because it was a farm vehicle and I was doing farm work.
Farm and ranch kids have been helping out their families with chores since time immemorial. Up until the last two generations, helping out in a family business of any kind was the norm. If we want kids to mature at a normal pace we need to give them graduated responsibilities from an early age. They can handle it. Should we put them in sweatshops or give them high risk, dangerous jobs? Obviously not. Everything is a matter of judgment, which will be outlawed any day now, since it’s not yet controlled by the highly credentialed people who think pooping on the sidewalk, meth addiction, and shoplifting are forms of artistic expression.
In case you hadn’t noticed, people seem to be extending adolescence further and further out. Adulthood hits around 40ish now. This is not a positive for society. It is a positive for the sociopaths in power cultivating dependency and a permanent state of neurotic anxiety.
My wife’s grandfather worked as a dishwasher during his summer vacation at the age of 15 - on a steamship from NYC to Cuba, traveling solo. That was 1936. His parents would go to prison for that these days, unless he was transitioning genders in which case they’d be given Cabinet posts.
We were just in coastal Maine, famously home of the Protestant work ethic, fisherman, loggers, shipbuilders, farmers etc. and nobody wants to work according to locals. Restaurants can’t find help. Either can hotels. Shops have shorter hours. We needed to have a disposal fixed at the vacation rental. The landlord said it would take a month to get a plumber. A month?
Some restaurants had kids from Europe working. I saw a lot of immigrant Latinos who I’m sure were doing manual labor that others wouldn’t do. The trend of not working hard is bad. It’s nationally enervating. We used to be the country that built everything. Not any more.
Work is good for you. It’s a healthy habit. It feels good to accomplish something, doesn’t matter what it is. There is dignity in the effort. It’s the difference between a wild animal that fends for itself and a house pet. We love our pets, but generally they can’t take care of themselves. They’re helpless. Learned helplessness is what we have too much of now. We need to reverse that trend. Democrats, as usual, want exactly the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
While this bill has various ramifications the one thing I didn’t read was the parent’s involvement in the decision of their child working . If the child is mature. Gets good grades. Likes to keep busy. has a close relationship with the family and a PT weekend job would only make the child more prepared for life , could be okay. Both of my daughters worked at summer camps at 15 And have worked ever since. They developed a work ethic and the love of a paycheck !!! 🙏🏻🇺🇸
Each child is different and Where are the parents in this equation???? !!!!!!
The parents are working their asses off.
That was basically my parents argument about everything; if you can show me that you can be trusted, you can do it
Thanks for your subtlety on this issue. You are absolutely correct that it is complicated. Starting from 11 years old I did things to make money for myself: selling stuff door to door, doing yard work, painting houses, etc. I think apart from the money it did me a world of good. I grew up in a middle class household, but if I wanted money of my own to spend , I had to hustle for it.
My thoughts are very similar to yours. From the age of 16, I worked 20-25 hours a week bagging groceries while going to school and being a two-sport athlete. Somehow I managed a girlfriend and decent social life while still getting good grades. I would have jumped at a chance to get work better paying but labor laws limited me.
One nuance in all of this is that work does not necessarily convey adult responsibility. So-called gender affirmation is a decision with lifelong consequences and likely cuts 20 years off of life expectancy. Working may result in an injury but the benefits of developing a good work ethic outweigh the possibilities. It is a fact the puberty blockers will ruin fertility and raises the risks of debilitating illnesses in old age by statistically significant factors (men should not get osteoporosis in their 40s, if at all, but trannies will). Working in factories and plants may even lead to good employment as an adult.
I desperately wanted to work at a "real job" instead of "just babysitting." I lived in a small town and unless you had the right connections, you babysat. Babysitting was usually lots of fun but you couldn't make much money doing that back in the dark ages - the pay was just awful. The younger you were, the worse the pay was. But there were snacks! And color TV! And some of those kids had great toys. I earned more than some because I played with the kids. Once they went to bed, it got boring. Somehow Tonka trucks aren't any fun without the kids there to play, too.
But it is not that different. It's working with and for the neighbor and the hired men, it's not just mom and dad. It's also working alone. Which is the most dangerous type of work there is.
Look my grandson has worked in a machine shop for three summers. He graduated from high school this May. With twenty or so employees, is it a family business or a corporation? It's not his family's business. He's going to take precision machining at one of the best vo-tech school's in the country at Southeast Nebraska. With his grades and ACT scores he could go to college absolutely anywhere if his skin were darker. He can still go most anywhere. Both Princeton and Harvard recruited him by mail.
But why go there? What does Wokedom offer that he wants? He'll be making right at $100,000 in two years at the machine shop. His grants and scholarships pay for everything. He got a better education during the last three summers working, making parts, than he did at his high school.
I can see the outrage tweets now: "OMFG, Chris Bray fantasizes about 16-year-old waitresses bringing him beer!"
This could be the end for me.
There is enough time for a part time job and doing well in school, and sports, and music lessons. Actually, too much time can be spent doing any one of those things. Sports can be all encompassing and rushing through dinner to get a kid to another practice can be unproductive. But it should be POSSIBLE for a kid to get a job. Not everyone is into sports or music, and they can do well in school and still learn a skill and work a parttime job after school and in the summers and still have time to sit with the family during dinner.
My family is proof it is possible. I raised 5 kids and they all had part time jobs after school and in the summers. They also played some sports, hung out with their friends and family, and played an instrument. We also went on camping trips together. If they wanted a driver's license and a vehicle, they had to pay for it themselves, including the insurance, gas, etc. Why shouldn't they?
Equating the sex reassignment surgeries and taking harmful hormone medications is NOT the same thing with being mature enough to work and getting good grades in school.
I know parents are working - my point is the parent needs to be the decision maker for this child not the government 🙏🏻🇺🇸
Valid and thought-provoking take. I would say, that for "Jo" and Robert Reich and those like them, their blind spot is the world is binary to them. It's Team R and Team D and nothing else.
For me, both can be harmful and I can say that without any fear of hypocrisy because I don't identify as Team R or Team D.
I prefer Team LMTFA...Leave Me The....Alone ;)
Unfortunately neither team is quite good at THAT.
Keep on truckin' Chris
My team too! I suspect there are millions of potential team members.
ALL of whom simply want to be LTFA.
My siblings and I all started working summers when we 14. I wanted to work! However, under the age of 16 kids should be very limited as to where they work and how many hours. My parents never would have let me work in an adult setting or factory at that age. Also, if you can’t legally drink in a State, you should not be serving alcohol. We’re either protecting kids or we’re not. Much of this legislation is probably being pushed by corporations/business owners who want to young people to work for less money or can’t find adults to work and of course politicians go along with it and justify it. In my opinion, most republicans are just as useless and corrupt as democrats.
Thanks Chris! You have me thinking now. There are two sides to every coin. I believe the option to work is good for kids who want to experience what it is like working in the real world. Ultimately it is the parents who allow their children to work or not. One possible upside is it affords children in corrosive households the ability to engage in a positive activity outside the home while gaining dignity versus joining gangs and partaking in other less dignifying activities. That being said the more cynical side of me wonders if the theatrical outrage over the Iowa decisions is not rooted in something completely different. Perhaps if teens start working and enjoy and/or excel at real work fewer will attend the despot’s early adulthood indoctrination camps more commonly known as college. Maybe they will learn the value of a dollar and push back against socialist ideologies. I reckon time will tell.