In what countries do you find child labour?

Do an Internet search for “global sweatshops” and “child labour,” and from this information answer questions like: How many children are currently being exploited globally? In what countries do you find child labour? What sorts of jobs are children expected to perform? Provide your own commentary and opinion, but for better marks be sure to link to ideas in the Study Guide and the textbook. If you wish, you can make specific reference to the film The True Cost in your assignment.

Reading Assignment
Elements of Sociology. Chapter 10: Family
Cornell, C. (2011, June 11). “The Real Cost of Raising Kids.” MoneySense

In this unit we look more in depth at one of the key institutions of our social world: the family. Although we have already looked at the family in the context of culture and socialization, and have seen how the family takes part through its day-to-day practices in the replication of the social order, in this unit we will extend our understanding of that process by looking at the importance of the family in relation to productive and reproductive labour in our society according to Marxist theory.
After reading the textbook chapter on the family you will see that families perform a number of different functions. In addition to these functions, I would like to address another aspect of the family that perhaps does not garner enough attention: the family’s role in reproducing the working classes. To put it as clearly as possible, families are responsible for creating (i.e., socialization and training) each new generation of workers, and the family unit (whether the nuclear family or extended family) is a part of the productive apparatus of society.
Consider the society around you for a moment and you will notice that it is organized around the production of goods and services. Except for our limited leisure time, everything we do is geared towards work and labour. Everything from our roadways (which often lead to high-density industrial and business centres) to our calendars (organized around a 35 to 40 hour “work week”), to our schools (which teach a “hidden curriculum” that prepares us for the routines of the labour force), to the media’s representations of reality, points us in the direction of work. The family serves the same purpose. The family is organized around the production of goods and services, and in the family you learn to be a good worker! In this regard, the family is an incredibly important resource for the reproduction of the system of work, labour, and production. That is, each new generation of labourers is trained by the family (and the school as well), and the socialization practices of the family reflect this. For example, it is typical, in the middle-class neighbourhood where I live, for families to spend a lot of time training their children to be productive, competitive, and self-sufficient. They are placed in competitive sports, taught the importance of performance and assessment (i.e., they are put in sports that reward high performance and punish poor performance) and their days are filled, from morning to night, with activity after activity after activity. To the parents who do it, this seems normal (everyone else around them is doing it), but whether it is ideal or healthy for the children is open to debate. In any case, the middle class socialization routines hardwire the bodies and minds of children with a typical pattern of middle-class managerial and professional work ethics. Get up in the morning, work hard, compete, and perform all day; then, go to bed at night to regenerate and prepare for the next day. This is the middle class family preparing the middle class child for the middle class production of goods and services.
In addition to the role the family plays in training the next generation of working-class or middle-class “production units,” the family also plays a support role in the maintenance of the productive order. That is, families maintain the labour force. Think, for example, of the traditional Western nuclear family where there is a stay-at-home mom (or as the case may be, a dad) who is responsible for looking after the children, keeping the house clean, keeping the clothes washed, and making sure lunches and dinner are ready while the father goes off at work. This work that the mother provides is valuable support work for the system of productive labour. She basically raises the next generation of workers and, more importantly, she performs a physical and emotional service for the male breadwinner who, having worked long hours at a stressful, hierarchical factory or office, is able to enjoy a relaxing evening in a clean home with prepared meals, clothes washed, and various levels of sexual and emotional support. Feminist scholars argue quite rightly that without this supporting role society would not be able to function.
Despite performing an essential service for society, society does not value the reproductive labour of women. Consider, for example, a mother of three whose spouse has left her. Limited social support, the breakdown of the extended family, limited family support, the high cost of housing and daycare, all lead to a rather negative outcome for many women (i.e., poverty and despair). As well as the financial hardship that often goes with being a single parent, there is the psychological harm that comes with singlehandedly bearing the social pressure and expectation placed on women to raise good, well socialized children. This is one reason that women experience psychological depression more often than men.[1]
It is worth noting that many critics of modern society feel that even though the labour and support women provide in the home is valuable, it is unpaid labour nonetheless, and therefore unfair. (As you’ll note in the Cornell reading, the cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is $243,660, or one-quarter of a million dollars) If you think about it, when children grow up and enter the labour force, they go on to produce profit for businesses and corporations for the rest of their life. Yet despite the fact that corporations and society in general enjoy greater returns at no charge for the labour, much of the entire cost of raising children is offloaded to the family (and quite often the mother). So why do corporations, or society as a whole, get away with offloading the cost of its human resources onto the backs of women? If the question sounds a bit strident, consider this. Corporations have to pay for the resources they exploit to produce their goods. Nobody hands over flour to the baker for free. Farmers, distributors, and producers get paid for the raw materials. Similarly, families raise and produce the necessary labour inputs (i.e., workers). Why does the baker (or more generally society) get to take them over for free? A bakery pays for the growth and development of its natural resources. Why should corporations and society not pay for the growth, development, and processing of its human resources?
It is difficult to even broach a discussion of paying a family wage to women for raising the next generation of workers. For one thing, ideology tends to get in the way. If you ask why women’s labour in the home is unpaid, there is an ideological justification: We are trained to think that “women’s work” is really women’s natural instinct, natural duty, or even their God-given role, and therefore just something that women should do because it is “natural.” But even if that were true, the fact that it is natural does not lead directly to the conclusion that it should be free and voluntary. That’s not good social science, nor is it good logic; it’s just an excuse. But, it is an excuse with a purpose. Corporations and governments benefit greatly when the cost of raising the labour force is offloaded onto women (and stay-at-home dads). Governments benefit because they can reduce social supports (like accessible daycare, accessible housing, tax credits, or even actual social wages paid to mothers) for families with children, and corporations benefit because they do not have to contribute the full cost of their human resources. It is the same when corporations dump toxins into the environment. Dumping toxins causes illness and environmental damage, and that damage costs somebody in terms of health care, lost productivity at work, and even cleanup; but quite often these corporations conveniently offload those costs (which is the manifestation of illness) onto families. It is the same with the family. We (governments and corporate leaders) devalue women’s labour, allow single parents to descend into poverty, fail to provide adequate support, and generally force a form of financial and emotional slavery in homes because it means lowered costs and more profit. Think what would happen to the bottom lines of this world’s major corporations and governments if they were required to contribute financially to the reproduction of their labour forces. Probably not much; even a small fraction of the trillions of dollars in The System, if devoted to supporting the reproduction of this world’s labour force, would make a huge difference in the lives of millions of women. However, because this would result in less private profit, no one would want to be held responsible for it. Thus, it is far better to make women do the work for nothing.
Now you may think this is a hypercritical, even cynical, view of the family, and, in a way, it is. For many of us, being part of a family and raising children are loving activities that add to the magic and mystery of life. However, despite this positivity, and despite the reality that there are alternative ways of organizing the family (e.g., extended families, families where both parents stay home to raise children to ensure healthy psychological and sociological development, and so on) it doesn’t change the fact that most families have been designed with capitalism—and The System—in mind. Indeed, the current nuclear family arrangement is an artifact of the Industrial Revolution, where society became driven by the need for mobile, flexible, and cheap labour. In pre-industrial society, the family was structured differently (i.e., families had large numbers of children and economic viability was based on family-centred production).
It is important to note that the family is in flux. As the textbook points out, the stereotypical image of a stay-at-home mom and a dad away in the labour force, is changing. Family roles are no longer rigid and variation is allowed (if not yet common). For example, we do see men (on occasion) being the stay-at-home parent while the mother is in the workforce. And though we do notice that roles have shifted and that there is more co-operation and sharing of family responsibilities, this does not alter the primary economic relationships. In the context of the reproduction of the labour force, the primary function of the family is still to reproduce labour. And as was already mentioned, whether it is male or female who raises the next generation of workers, it is still an unpaid endeavour.
To further illustrate the importance of the family to the reproduction system, consider the colonization of Canada and the efforts the Canadian government made toward westernizing the structure of Native families. The sections in the textbook on colonization and residential schools demonstrate the importance that government places on the form and function of families. Before Europeans colonized the Americas, the Native populations of Canada were unencumbered by European laws and conventions and, as a result, had very different lifestyles. They had extended families and did not believe that they should spend their lives working and accumulating wealth. Instead, they did enough to survive and prosper and enjoyed the rest of their time. For example, on the prosperous Pacific Northwest coast, many Native tribes used to hold potlatch ceremonies, which were community feasts called for the purposes of redistributing accumulated surplus wealth and for social posturing. During these ceremonies, wealthy members of the community gave away (and sometimes destroyed) much of their wealth and goods, with the idea that the more generous the gift-giving, the greater status earned.
The potlatch, from the Chinook word Patshatl, functioned to confer status and rank upon individuals, kin groups and clans, and also to establish claims to names, powers and rights to hunting and fishing territories. Wealth in the form of utilitarian goods such as firearms, blankets, clothing, carved cedar boxes, canoes, food and prestige items such as slaves and coppers were accumulated by high-ranking individuals over time, sometimes years. These goods were later bestowed on invited guests as gifts by the host or even destroyed with great ceremony as a show of superior generosity, status and prestige over rivals. A great potlatch might last for several days and would involve feasting, spirit dances, singing and theatrical demonstrations. (Gadacz, 2015)
In the context of European values, which emphasize the accumulation of wealth even in the face of surrounding poverty, such a give-away tradition was anathema. The Natives were displaying an alternative economic system (one that certainly would have been attractive to poor people), but from 1884 to 1951, the Canadian government banned the practice because it was “wasteful, reckless, and anti-Christian” (Gadacz, 2015).
Notably, it wasn’t just the potlatch that was a problem for the early rulers of this country. Recognizing the role that family had in shaping and socializing the next generation of workers, the government of Canada, through the Department of Indian Affairs, also attempted for decades to systematically wipe out the Native family unit through forced assimilation into European norms and values, and cultural genocide. Native children were forced to attend residential schools, where they were isolated from their families, taught to reject their own culture, and indoctrinated into European language, systems, and values. It is notable that many Native children died in the schools and others were subjected to horrific levels of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. The schools and other initiatives had the effect of eliminating family patterns and destroying cultures that did not fit into the European model of the accumulation of wealth. The short of it is, white rulers saw Native values, norms, economic traditions, and family practices (i.e., extended family relations) as threats to the productive order in Canada, and therefore had to be altered or destroyed. To this day, Native communities continue to struggle with the psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage.
It is difficult to understand why the government would conduct such an aggressive and destructive attack on the Native social institution of family, until you remember the role that the family can play in fitting people into the productive system of a society. Sadly, the Canadian attack on the Native family was quite effective; it not only destroyed strong Native ties and values, but it undermined the self-esteem and psychological health of generations of Natives. It is something for which we, as a nation of colonizers, are only now beginning to take full responsibility.[2]
A sociological analysis of the family is one of the clearest signs of hegemonic domination. That is, the family is organized in a way that reflects the dominant social order and the requirements of the productive system. This is particularly clear in the case of the Native family structure that was destroyed because it was anathema to the colonists’ new ways (i.e., the accumulation of wealth). However, the now standard nuclear family also represents an industrial-capitalist model and when we examine it, we also see a clear example of hegemonic domination. In industrial Europe, traditional views of childhood and work were destroyed and replaced by middle- and upper-class views of children and family. Forms of the modern family were constructed during the Industrial Revolution to serve the interests of industry.
Despite this rather critical and negative view of the nuclear family, I should note that it is not all bad. While the family is a locus of power and control, and while the family has been “corrupted” (or at least modified to fit in with the requirements of capitalist production), it is nevertheless also one of the best examples of our ability to create and change things. We see this clearly in the changing demographics of family, the weakening of rigid gender roles, and the changes in the way work is distributed within family units. Through social commentary, social unrest, political action, long-term efforts to educate and enlighten people, and so on, the family is changing and expanding. As the textbook demonstrates, men are slowly taking over some of the responsibilities normally assumed by women. Although social change can be painstakingly slow, we can still see it.
Of course, we do not have to wait for social change to catch up; of all the places that socialization takes root, the family is probably the easiest to change. It is in the family where we have the control to change whatever common socialization patterns we do not like; if we want to resist stereotyped gender or de-emphasize competition and constant work, we can start with the family. It is just a question of observation—seeing what we are doing, and changing the behaviours we do not agree with.[3]
There is a lot more that could be said about the family, its functions, its changing demographics, and so on. We could talk about violence in the family or the changing perceptions we have of children. We could also talk more about changing gender roles or the differential emotional experiences of men and women in the family (i.e., women are often the primary emotional workers in the family); but this, I think, has been a sufficient introduction. Keep in mind that, as with all social institutions, the family is created and re-created by us, though not in a simple way. As you should understand by now, “reality” is a contested place characterized by struggle, unequal power, and unequal influence. As demonstrated by our discussions of deviance and of the family, and as we will see when we discuss ethnicity, stratification, and gender, we do create the world—but we do it from locations of unequal power.

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