Research Paper – My Portfolio

Child Labor Affects On Children Mental Health

Brian Fajardo

John Jay College Of Criminal Justice

ENG 101: Exploring Authorship and Inquiry

Olivia Wood

July 27, 2022

Abstract

Child Labor working getting taken away from family affecting there mental health. Affecting their education not being able to read and write. They go through so much because they aren’t able to live their lives. Poverty being one big issue that they have not been able to support their family so they also get jobs. This is just a way for the government to make more profit and gain more money while paying less to their workers.

Keywords: Child Labor, Trafficing, Slavery

Child Labor Affects On Children Mental Health

Hey Capitalism is it really necessary to use kids to work in these factories with bad conditions? Where they can catch different diseases and get badly injured where they can get traumatized. I know you wouldn’t put your own kids in these bad conditions so why would you put innocent kids in danger. We know that yes we go to forgein countries to make factories to use kids to work because it costs less money and it makes us more profit but are you even worried about their mental health? They are young kids that work for hours and hours and hours for us. I know some kids need the money because of poverty but why are we also child trafficking taking kids from their own family. I’m guessing you really want them to have mental health issues but I will inform people about this situation and why it might cause mental health issues.

Child trafficking is an action that we don’t hear about in our normal day. It’s an individual thing that the USA is known to hide and not make it such a broad topic but in reality it is. Children getting taken from their home, from their family, and in general taken away from their own life. It’s affecting their health but these traffiers don’t care. Kids can have symptoms and are “associated with other health risks including sleep disorders, nightmares, flashbacks, collapse, trauma-memory-associated body pain, dissociation, palpitations and breathing difficulties.”(Wood, 2020). They go through all types of health issues that mentally and physically are hurting them. But they still choose kids. But Why? Kids are taken away just to benefit other people’s issues like companies. Since owners don’t want to spend money they rather use kids for their own investment. This questions everything because the truth is this is what slavery was but instead of being Africans American there are little kids.

In all these foreign countries they make all the kids work long hours and hours. Slavery was a way to use people to do other people work because they were able to make more of a profit since they dont get paid alot or they dont get paid at all. But kids being used as slaves has “been used to refer to engagement of children in different forms of work without their permission to refuse such work.”(Srivastava, 2019). Starting to work at such an early age without being able to refuse work must be hard for them because they are being forced to do things that they shouldn’t worry about as being a kid. While being forced to work they were put in these bad conditions where they weren’t safe. “Scars found on examination of children may be the result of physical torture. Given high rates of reported head trauma (e.g., from gunshot wounds, shrapnel, or falls) and severe beatings.”(Lustig, 2004). This can cause neurological damage resulting in kids having bigger mental health issues. Being around this at the end of the day the kids will just have suicidal thoughts because they wouldn’t want to suffer any more.

Even though some kids get taken from family, some kids put themselves in those positions of work since “poverty-level incomes cannot provide for decent food, housing, health care, and other essential goods.”.(Scott, 2013). So while not being able to have all those necessary things the kids go out and try to support and help the family out. While being in a place where survival is a huge role it puts this stress on the family that a kid feels the need to help. Working at such a young age doesn’t allow them to go to school. “[Since] education was made the condition of ther emloymeht, it became rare to find an imperative of either sex under twenty years of age who cound not read and write.”(Graffenried,1890) Kids that aren’t able to read and write are called illiterate. Without being able to read and write you’re not able to go anywhere because not only reading and writing gets affected but the way you speak is also going to get affected. Which in the long run “illiteracy can cause immeasurable damage to an individual’s emotional and intellectual development, and often limits a person’s ability to achieve a fulfilling and successful adult life.”(Child Illiteracy in America: Statistics, Facts, and Resources, 2020). It makes them have a perception that they are able to be successful, which is true because they are not going to school because they need money to help support their family.

Child labor has been use to make companies more profits because they wouldnt have to pay the workers a lot of money. Especially now that the US still uses it for their own benefits but instead of being here in the states since now there is an act (Fair Labor Standards Act) they use kids in forgien countries to work in factories. While these kids are working in these factories it causes a lot of mental issues. From familly being in debts to basically having slavery all over again. Through the years it affects them badly that it affects their education and being able to live their life as kids. Imagine if you were one of those kids, put yourself in their position where you had to work because of debt or you got taken away from your parents. Working long hours and in bad conditions and not being able to go to school to learn or have fun with your friends. We need to make a change and without all of you it can’t happen.

References

Child Illiteracy in America: Statistics, Facts, and Resources | Regis College. (2020, June 26). Regis College Online. https://online.regiscollege.edu/blog/child-illiteracy/

de Graffenried, C. (1890). Child Labor. Publications of the American Economic Association, 5(2), 71–149. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2485612

Lustig, S. L., Kia-Keating, M., Knight, W. G., Geltman, P., Ellis, H., Kinzie, J. D., Keane, T., & Saxe, G. N. (2004). Review of child and adolescent refugee mental health. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 43(1), 24–36. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200401000-00012

Scott, & Pressman, S. (2013). Debt-Poor Kids. Journal of Poverty, 17(3), 356–373. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2013.804478

Srivastava. (2019). Children at Work, Child Labor and Modern Slavery in India: An Overview. Indian Pediatrics, 56(8), 633–638. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13312-019-1584-5