Discussions about children’s work often focus on the Global South. Yet, research in Canada offers valuable insights into how young people view and experience early paid work; how these views and experiences are shaped by age, class, race, and gender; and how they are embedded in specific contexts.
Rebecca Raby
When people think about children and work, they often focus on children labouring in sweatshops in the Global South (Abebe & Bessell, 2011). However, children’s work takes on many different forms and happens under diverse conditions around the world. A growing body of research in childhood studies acknowledges that while it is imperative to consider safety and exploitation, children’s work can be necessary for survival, a right, and valuable to young people themselves (Saadi, 2012; Schissel, 2011; Bourdillon, 2005).
Over the last few decades, many researchers and child advocates have also sought to recognize children’s viewpoints and how children shape the world around them (Reynaert, et al., 2009). While important, this approach tends to prioritize children’s “discursive” contributions (e.g. voice) over “material” participation (e.g. through work) (Wyness, 2013). Wyness counters this weighting by recognizing children’s material participation as well. He argues that we can value and assess children’s contribution through labour rather than only problematizing it. Resonating with this position, researchers such as Mizen, Pole & Bolton (2001), Leonard (2004), Saadi (2012) and Taft (2019) have shown that work has significant meaning and value in children’s lives.
Within North America, research looking at young people’s early work has tended to involve quantitative surveys of older teenagers, often investigating the effects of work on schooling, safety, and workplace inequalities. Instead, my own research joins the smaller body of scholarship that has drawn on childhood studies to foreground young people’s views and experiences of early, part-time, paid employment in Canada, from babysitting or delivering papers, to working as an umpire or in fast food restaurants.
Our research team has investigated how young people think about themselves and their peers participating in early paid work; what their experiences are with early work; how age, class, race and gender shape ideas about, access to, and experiences of early work; and how ideas and experiences about work are embedded in specific contexts. We have conducted individual interviews with 38 young workers (aged 11-16), 308 surveys with grade nine and ten students (aged 13-15), and 14 focus groups with 101 of the students who filled out the surveys. We have found that many young people in Canada keen to work and that a number have early paid work experiences. They seek immediate benefits such as pay, but also experience aimed at preparing themselves for future employment.
Our participants who were already working tended to moralize their work, presenting themselves as active, responsible go-getters, while characterizing their non-working peers as lazy, and unprepared for future responsibilities. However, many young teens who are not working counter that it is better to postpone work to either hang on to the unstructured time of childhood or to fulfil extensive extracurricular involvements. Other participants spoke directly to the tricky tension they face between embracing the idea of a carefree childhood, but also wanting (and for some, needing) the rewards, recognition, experience, and independence of work. Ironically, while work is seen as bringing independence, access to work is also grounded in relational dependence; for many of our participants, parents played a pivotal role in supporting their early work experiences, from helping them get jobs to driving them to work (Raby & Lehmann, 2021).
Of course, class and gender are relevant. Our middle-class participants were more likely to have had limited, structured, work experiences, often through parental connections. Working class participants were either less able to acquire work or more likely to be working long hours, including over the school term.
As Sheppard et al. (2019) address, first jobs, and how they are discussed, are also gendered. For instance, in our research, girls were more likely to be involved in early work, largely through babysitting, and sometimes negatively portrayed boys as “slackers” in contrast. Babysitting provides an opportunity to gain work experience, but it is also under-recognized, under-valued and can sometimes prevent young people from moving into later, more formal work opportunities (Besen-Casino, 2018; Easterbrook et al., 2021).
Workplace safety and workers’ rights are always a concern, especially with younger, less experienced workers (Hobbs et al, 2009; Cohen, 2013). Some of our participants were aware of workplace safety issues, including their right in Canada to refuse unsafe work, and some had received on-the-job training or education through school. We were struck, however, by how many had not received such education yet and by stories we heard about safety issues, especially in the food industry, e.g. being transferred, untrained, to a new workstation during a lunch rush; being burned at a grill but expected to keep working nonetheless; and deterring sexual harassment.
A number of young people are very keen to work, for the money, status and experience. Many are competent and hard workers, but also need protection (Raby, et al., 2018). We must therefore attend to how best support them and ensure their safety.
Photo by Jacob (pseudonym
Acknowledgements: A thank you to my co-researchers, Wolfgang Lehmann, Jane Helleiner, and Linsday Sheppard, to Riley Easterbrook for research assistance and collaboration on our babysitting paper, and to all of our young participants for sharing their views and stories with us.
References