Alyssa's Final Presentation

I had always known that Child Labor existed throughout the world. However, I never knew how severe the issue actually was. For example, there are 246,000,000 kids who are working 77 hour a week jobs. In America, children rarely work and the average person’s work week is around 44 hours. Children ¼ the age of an average working person are working double the amount of time, and for much less money. The videos within this showed a lot of poverty, injury, and over hardships. It really made me consider my life. Thinking about it, I don’t think that there is any way that I could possibly live, let alone live happily, on only $2 an hour. I earn around $60 dollars babysitting in one night, which is how much these children would make a week. However, child labor has not been as common within the United States. The blog talks about how there was child labor during the great depression, working in sweat shops. Even these children were earning more than child labors do today. Therefore, I never thought that the United States could truly do anything to help. However, the blog stated that many popular companies employ and promote child labors overseas. For example, Nike and Gap are two stores that I have shopped at in my past, and two stores who I learned employ child labors. This is truly sad and makes me re-think even shopping there again. It almost says something about America; material things are more valuable than human life. These children make a choice that people in Deerfield would never have to think twice about, work or food. America is in need of jobs, and therefore a possible solution is to bring jobs back to the United States and to stop employing children. At the same time, the blog also points out the possibilities that could happen if child labor is completely eliminated. It could leave more children homeless, and increase poverty. Basically, child labor is a lose- lose situation: you go hungry or you work.