- family expectations and traditions
- abuse of the child
- lack of good schools and day care
- lack of other services, such as health care
- public opinion that downplays the risk of early work for children
- uncaring attitudes of employers
- limited choices for women
Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.
International conventions define children as aged 18 and under. Individual governments may define "child" according to different ages or other criteria. "Child" and "childhood" are also defined differently by different cultures. A "child" is not necessarily delineated by a fixed age. Social scientists point out that children’s abilities and maturities vary so much that defining a child’s maturity by calendar age can be misleading.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), "215 million children under 18 work, many fulltime. In Sub Saharan African 1 in 4 children aged 5-17 work, compared to 1 in 8 in Asia Pacific and 1 in 10 in Latin America." Moreover, some 8.4 million children were engaged in so-called 'unconditional' worst forms of child labour, which include forced and bonded labour, the use of children in armed conflict, trafficking in children and commercial sexual exploitation. Unicef’s State of the World’s Children Report says that although the exact number is not known, it is surely in the hundreds of millions. More information about who child labourers are, where they live, and new statistics on the total number can be found
Poverty is widely considered the top reason that children work at jobs thatare exploitative and inappropriate for their ages. But there are other reasons as well -- not necessarily in this order:
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