Employers in Florida will soon be able to replace workers for grave yard shifts with 14 year old teenagers, work them 30 hours a week and longer than an 8 hour shift. Children can now help support the family like the good ole days….”I don’t need no stupid education.”
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Typical response, though. Teenagers and younger work for their parents on farms- don’t kid yourself. Family businesses have always done it. One of my workers, a horse trainer, years ago was the oldest in a single parent (mother) household and he rode his bike 8 miles to work in a stock yard after school, and all summer, starting at age 14 so he could ride horses while helping to support his mother. It doesn’t have to mean slavery or unhealthy working hours.
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All depends on the spin…I went to work at 13 to earn money. Worked all through junior and senior high school. Worked until 11 pm during high school. Bought my own school supplies, personal expenses and clothes. Same in college years. No allowance ever.
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i grew up on a farm
i was labor from age 4 up
i own a couple of small biz and my 9 yr old worked his first 8 hour day in his life with me this week. he loved it (or the cash he earned).
but laws in my state at least have always said exactly that, to work in your family biz is 100% fine (and one of the tiny tax advantaged things as they don’t/employer doesn’t pay income taxes on those earnings)
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My mother was a doctor. She put caps on the keyboard of our manual typewriter and gave me a high school typing class (secretarial… they did that in those days) to learn to type without looking at the keys. At age 15, she had me out front in her office on Saturday as the receptionist, letting me see a few remarkable slides of amazing diseases one can only imagine, and typing up her notes onto 3x5 cards to put in the files for each patient. I learned NOT to be a doctor but I also learned to be a responsible employee even if the boss was your dang mother.
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The typing class and data processing classes I took in high school definitely proved to be the best part of a skill set that added to future job opportunities.
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