With child labor inflation  I do not mean an increase in the number of children working, but an increase in the age that is seen as borderline for child labor. It inflates the perceived problem and takes away attention from real cases.

A case in point is Juliette Terzieff's piece at WPR about concerns of increasing child labor in times of economic crisis. That concern is justified but I can not agree with the examples she links to and uses:

• A claim that Chinese factories are allowed to disregard some employment regulation if they avoid laying off workers. The report says nothing about children at all.
• A report on sixteen year old women working in a Chinese factory producing shoes for Nike while the Nike contract says the company should not employ anyone under eighteen. Sure the company should stick to its contracts, but why is a report on sixteen year old working in a factory headlined "Child Labor Allegations"?
• Another report linked in Terzieff's piece highlights the death of a seventeen year old adolescent due to a machine male-function in another Chinese factory that produces for Disney. He started working there when he was fourteen.
• The last example is of cotton harvest campaigns in Central Asia where, for a few weeks each year, children have to help the adults.

I regard none of those cases as child labor.

Starting with the last one German schools have two weeks of fall-holidays that were still named "potato-holidays" when I was in school. School was off but at least in the country site the children had to help with collecting the potatoes the grown ups dug up. My families vegetable garden was bit over an acre and we had no machines to take care of it. We would not have had our own potatoes without us children helping to harvest them. Starting at age twelve or so I also had to work an hour or so per day in my dads company to get my allowance. Was that child labor?

Two weeks after my fourteenth birthday I applied for work at a semitrailer factory for the summer holidays. The work was hard but I learned a lot about manufacturing and made about $2 per hour. I would not want to miss the experience nor the radio it bought me. Was that child labor?

Most of my junior high school mates entered an apprenticeship in this or that profession at age fourteen/fifteen while I went off to secondary school. Was theirs child labor?

I am concerned about real child labor where young kids are abused for regular and sustained labor, often in bad conditions and/or without pay. Unfortunately the economic downturn will indeed increase the number of children who will have to work. It is difficult to influence that. For the children the alternative may mean starvation.

Inflating the age of what we regard as child labor certainly does not help at all. The definition for children is a person between birth and puberty. Sixteen and seventeen year old are not children.

Also to characterize work in harvest campaigns as child labor is disingenuous. Not every farming family on this planet can afford machinery and harvest is a peak time where more hands are needed than usually. Hunger during the winter certainly hurts more than collecting potatoes or cotton during fall.

There is real child labor and we do not need the age inflation to argue and act against it.