Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work: New Perspectives from Research and Action explores the place of labor in the children's lives and child development. Almost all the world's children work at some time in their lives. Some kinds of work are extremely harmful; other kinds are relatively harmless; still others are beneficial, a positive element in growing up. It is questionable whether current child labor policies and interventions, even though pursued with the best intentions, are succeeding either in protecting children against harm or in promoting their access to education and other opportunities for successful futures. By incorporating recent theoretical advances in childhood studies and in child development, the authors argue for the need to re-think assumptions that underlie current policies on child labor. Rights and Wrongs uses interdisciplinary methods to understand children's work as a component of child development, which cannot be treated independently of children's varied lives. In the first few chapters, well-documented historical cases ranging from contemporary Morocco to 19th century Britain question common assumptions about children's work. The authors examine concrete situations of work and schooling, suggesting that not all paid work outside the home is harmful to children, and that not all unpaid work-not even all work in the family or school-is harmless to children. Later chapters explore ideas of children's independency in the workforce as well as how working as a child can positively contribute to adolescent development. The authors, while remaining sensitive to the abusive nature of some children's work, maintain that a "workless" childhood free of all responsibilities is not a good preparation for adult life in any society.

This textbook showcases innovative approaches to the interdisciplinary field of childhood and youth studies, examining how young people in a wide range of contemporary and historical contexts around the globe live their young lives as subjects, objects, and agents. The diverse contributions examine how children and youth are simultaneously constructed: as individual subjects through social processes and culturally-specific discourses; as objects of policy intervention and other adult power plays; and also as active agents who act on their world and make meaning even amidst conditions of social, political, and economic marginalization. In addition, the book is centrally engaged with questions about how researchers take into consideration children's and young people's own conceptions of themselves and how we conceptualize child and youth potentials for agency at different ages and stages of growing up. Each chapter discusses substantive research but also engages in self-reflection about methodology, positionality, and/or disciplinarity, thus making the volume especially useful for teaching. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including childhood studies, youth studies, girls' studies, development studies, research methods, sociology, anthropology, education, history, geography, public policy, cultural studies, gender and women's studies and global studies.

Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work: New Perspectives from Research and Action explores the place of labor in the children's lives and child development. Almost all the world's children work at some time in their lives. Some kinds of work are extremely harmful; other kinds are relatively harmless; still others are beneficial, a positive element in growing up. It is questionable whether current child labor policies and interventions, even though pursued with the best intentions, are succeeding either in protecting children against harm or in promoting their access to education and other opportunities for successful futures. By incorporating recent theoretical advances in childhood studies and in child development, the authors argue for the need to re-think assumptions that underlie current policies on child labor. Rights and Wrongs uses interdisciplinary methods to understand children's work as a component of child development, which cannot be treated independently of children's varied lives. In the first few chapters, well-documented historical cases ranging from contemporary Morocco to 19th century Britain question common assumptions about children's work. The authors examine concrete situations of work and schooling, suggesting that not all paid work outside the home is harmful to children, and that not all unpaid work-not even all work in the family or school-is harmless to children. Later chapters explore ideas of children's independency in the workforce as well as how working as a child can positively contribute to adolescent development. The authors, while remaining sensitive to the abusive nature of some children's work, maintain that a "workless" childhood free of all responsibilities is not a good preparation for adult life in any society.