One of the less noticed special days, the World Day Against Child Labour, is celebrated on 12 June. Most Australians will associate child labour with past times and distant places: with Dickensian chimney sweeps and coal miners and with children sold into slavery on other continents.
Some may also be ruefully reminded of their attempts at domestic strike breaking and negotiating with their children to help with the washing up. Either way it is not one of Australia's greatest problems. But it does encourage musing about when child labour is wrong, and what this may say about adult work.
Even in impoverished nations children's work is not uniformly bad. Two acquaintances come to mind.
A young woman who was trafficked for sex work in Australia was sold across the Burmese border when she was five as a domestic servant. She was on-sold to Bangkok to work in a factory when she was nine, always locked into the factory premises. At 12 she was further on-sold for sex work in Bangkok, later in Malaysia as the bloom of youth faded, and finally to Australia. Her work history is one of straightforward evil.
I also met a girl in a village of El Salvador. For generations her family had lived by making rope from cactus fibre. She was fully equipped and educated for her working life by the age of nine. Her work contributed substantially to the family income and made her a valued member of her society.
Although this form of child work may cease to support families in changing economic circumstances, and we would hope that children will receive a broader education, it cannot be simply condemned. We must ask further under what conditions children may legitimately be asked to work, and when work will be abusive.
The test of the legitimacy of children's work is whether it helps them flourish as human beings. It must help them develop into healthy, secure, sociable adults, equipped to raise a family and make a contribution to society. Work can clearly play a part in children's development. In an ideal world work can involve physical exercise, encourage connection with other children and adults, teach skills and self-reliance, and help affirm the child's worth by the contribution they make to their family.
But to develop as adults children need more than work. Of course the balance of work, and even the definition of childhood, will differ in different cultures and economies.