Contents child labor and its effect to children in primary education presented by: luzviminda g. Contents child labor and its effect to children in primary education presented by: luzviminda g. Research paper child abuse in the urban community's: the causes and effects wanda hopkins social work with children professor: evelyn batts november 10, 2004 hopkins pg 2 table of contents chapter i 1. Question there is a great need for more research on child abuse in the urban. According to the us department of labor, a sweatshop can be defined as a factory that produces one of the following items: shoes, clothing, rugs, toys, chocolate, bananas or coffee, and that is operating in violation of two or more labour laws.

Violation of labour laws could include absence of living wages or benefits, dangerous working conditions and verbal or physical abuse. As a society, we are constantly purchasing items without thinking for even a second about how they were made. We are often unaware or choose to ignore the problem of child labor in sweatshops. However, even though most people are not conscious of this, it is a reality that many children are denied their childhood and are forced to work. It has been estimated by the international labor organization 2013 that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries.

More than half of these child laborers are employed in asia, others work in africa and latin america mostly. Sweatshops are not an ideal place of work for anyone however risks are often doubled for children. According to the university of iowa labor center 2011 , working conditions that are safe and healthy for adults may not be safe for children. In sweatshops, children most often do not receive proper training and are not adequately supervised. Providing for their families, who otherwise would not be able to survive, is one of the most common factors for child employment in sweatshops. According to university of iowa labor center 2011 , children living in poverty develop health problems such as malnutrition, fatigue and anemia. These problems make accidents or injuries at work much more likely, and also increase the consequences of the labor and could lead to more permanent damage to the child’s body.

Love Actually Essay

As it was just mentioned, it is evident that working in sweatshops can have many negative impacts on childhood. However, what makes them so dangerous? according to woman global and human rights, sweatshops are crowded, filthy, and rat infested. They are located behind barbed wire fences that are monitored by armed guards, visitors are forbidden and it is also very difficult to escape. A 1998 study done in southern california’s garment industry showed that 75% of the clothing industry factories violated health and safety guidelines and were considered unsafe.

The hazards, such as blocked exits, exposed electrical parts that could start a fire or cause an electrocution, and a lack of safety guards on sewing and cutting equipment to prevent workers from dismemberment, were all found to be serious enough to warrant saying that an accident within these premises deemed substantial probability of death or serious physical harm. The gross violations of safety and health laws left the workers defenseless and vulnerable. Not only do sweatshops negatively impact children’s health, also compromise their mental health and have serious psychological consequences. Child laborers work long hours and often do not have the opportunity to go to school, to make friends and to play like children should. Therefore, they do not learn to interact with other people which could lead to mental health problems in the future.

According to the child labor public education project, children’s social development can be harmed by long hours of work on a regular basis. The long hours of work also result in children becoming sleep deprived, which can be dangerous as it decrease a person’s ability to deal with stress and puts you at risk for depression. According to webmd 2013 , long term lack of sleep makes you 10 times more likely to develop depression and 17 times as likely to have serious anxiety issues. Wanda embar 2011 , who advocates children’s rights and crusades against child labor in sweatshops, does however concede that sweatshops do create jobs that otherwise would not exist.

However, compromising the children’s health and education to help their families out of debt or to feed their siblings is too high a price to pay in my opinion. According to bhakti varma 2011 , children taking jobs in sweatshops create a cycle which must be broken. The vicious cycle begins when circumstances force children to work which almost inevitably leads to very little chance of them ever being able to create a better life for themselves. When they start work young they generally receive very little or no education as they grow up, they remain uneducated and have their children young. With no education or skills, they are lucky to be able to keep their low paying and often miserable and dangerous jobs.

However, that is not always the case most often older adults lose their employment to younger workers. Remaining in a low paying job or being unemployed makes it difficult to afford to feed and send the children to school. Therefore, the children are forced to become child laborers themselves and continue the cycle. As demonstrated in a study by unaids 2010 , globally the number of people infected by hiv has been steadily increasing since 1990. Major concentrations of the infected victims are people living in the underdeveloped and poorer countries of the world. Children whose parents are infected by hiv or who have become orphans because of the disease, are most likely forced to work in sweatshops to survive, making it increasingly difficult to break the cycle of child labor that was mentioned in the previous paragraph.