Author Response to the Review of Earning a Life

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol 13, No.2 (2003) ISSN 1546-2250 Author Response to the Review of Earning a Life Michael Bourdillon University of Zimbabwe Citation: Boudillon, Michael. “Author Response to the Review ofEarning a Life.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring 2003. I am pleased that Earning a Life has made many people aware of the plight of working children. My response to this appreciative review is point to what has happened in the three years since I worked on the book. If I were writing the introduction now, I would probably be less “balanced” and make a stronger and more explicit argument against the ethnocentric view of childhood that is behind much of the discourse on the elimination of child labor. In this view, the general competence of children is underplayed, they are not permitted to develop their material value and the status that often goes with such value, and their potential for contributing meaningfully and materially to their family and communities is denied to them. Unfortunately many careers, and packages of aid, are linked to such discourse. In agreement with Save the Children Alliance (2003), I prefer to use the term “child work” to cover all forms of children's work, and avoid the term “child labor,” which is emotionally charged and often precludes serious consideration of the interests of the children. Many people and organizations justify their aim of eliminating child labor by defining “child labor” precisely as work that is harmful to children. Having made this definition and thus eliminated the need to examine possible benefits of “child labor,” the same people quickly slip into the more usual connotations of “labor” as formal employment. The emphasis then moves to stopping children from entering formal employment, as if it is wrong to pay children for the 198 work they do or to contract with them on how much they should be paid. As academics, we need to be more accurate in our language. It is the abuse of children we need to be trying to eliminate, not their work or labor. Their labor should rather be appreciated and rewarded. Abuse can be in the form of long hours, low pay, health hazards at work, deprivation of sleep or education or leisure, and so on. It is also abusive to belittle children's work and discriminate against what they produce or to discriminate against employers who make it possible for children to benefit from their work. While many people, in the interests of the children, oppose programs aiming to eliminate child labor, there is general agreement on the need to eliminate the “worst forms,” among which are prostitution and child pornography (although even in this field there is a danger of imposing ethnocentric values on children and their communities). In material terms, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in various parts of the world makes the sexual world of children, and particularly child prostitution, a matter of gravest concern. Our chapter on street children, as your reviewer points out did not deal adequately with the sexual aspect of the children's lives (although my colleagues, Yotamu Chirwa and Markim Wakatama, are not naive: you cannot cover everything in a short chapter). Readers might be interested in our more recent work, Girls on the Street, by Rumbidzai Rurevo and Michael Bourdillon (Harare, Zimbabwe: Weaver Press, 2003 – 68 pages). Reference Save the Children Alliance (2003). Children and Work: The Save the Children's Position on Children and Work. London: Save the Children Alliance, UK. 199 Professor Michael Bourdillon has taught in the Department of Sociology of the University of Zimbabwe for over 25 years. He has also taught at the University of Calabar in Nigeria. He was a founding member of Streets Ahead, an organization working for street children in Harare, and has been on the board since its inception. ...