“Childhood is a chance for kids to discover who they are before the world tells them who they should be”
Childhood is the most fun and equally important phase of life for every child. This is the phase where every child creates the most fun and beautiful memories of his / her life which would bring a smile to their face when they think about it. Childhood is the first phase of every kid’s life. As we grow up, we always wish that those childhood days, which was full of joy and happiness, would come back, though we know that childhood is a one-time life experience that has its sweet period.
It is such a tragedy to see little children, who are to be the future, losing the “once in a lifetime” opportunity, which is the precious phase of everyone’s life, childhood. This is the phase where every child is moulded and guided in the right way which is necessary for every kid’s life to follow the right path leading to a happy future.
Childhood is the time where children play, learn something new and enjoy one of the happiest days of their life. It is during childhood that a child is moulded as an individual for the rest of his life. As mentioned before, every individual’s best memories of life which would bring happiness on their face are the one’s of their childhood. It is the phase where children should learn the right things and also this is the phase where their mindset could easily be changed. No matter whether it is right or wrong, once the child starts to think about it, there are a lot of possibilities for the child to change his / her mind. This shows how important childhood is in everyone’s life.
In contrast to this, nowadays there are a lot of children who don’t get an opportunity to enjoy such happiness, not because they don’t want to. The reason is that they don’t have an option. It is so heart-breaking when their parents snatch their own children’s childhood. Parents also do this unwillingly just to sort out their present problems and thinking about the present they forgot about their child’s future. Some parents do know that, if they do this to their children, their future will be spoiled. But it is the situation and the crisis that they are facing which has made them take such decisions.
People who are poor and facing problems due to this poverty, go for work. In many cases, not only parents but also their children go to work. Such cases are so distressing and upsetting where those small children who should have a happy childhood, are going through such hard and tragic childhood.
From this, we can say that child labour is children under the age of 18 years going to work, out of their interest, which deprives the children of their childhood. This might make them mentally as well as physically disturbed. Child labour deprives the children of the opportunity to attend school which is the place where children not only learn their school lessons and have fun but also learn life lessons.
“Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time.”
As the above quote suggests, if we think that child labour is one of the solutions to solve poverty then it only a loss for us, where we are neither able to reduce poverty nor able to stop child labour. I would like to conclude by saying that Children are meant to learn, not earn.
Author of this review: Aakilah Syed - Associate, GIO Chennai (Runner up of Article Review Competition)
Author of the original article: Aafrida Sulaigha Beevi. R, Associate, GIO Chennai
Date: 11th July, 2021.
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