The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager
Ch. 4 Family Values
(Pg. 58-61)
I found the section on family values extremely interesting. Before reading this section I knew that it was common for families to live all together in colonial America and that children were expected to help out from a young age. After reading this section I better understood why the adolescent roles were extremely important economically. Often the teens worked a more physically demanding job and did so for many hours a week. Therefore they were paid more than there parents on most occasions. The parents generally could not perform the same tasks a young adult can. I found it particularly interesting because I can not imagine bringing in more money than my parents, especially in adolescents.
Today’s teens commonly work part time jobs and earn significantly less then their parents. The government has mandated child labor laws for two main reasons in my opinion. First and foremost to protect young children from unfair working environments and abuse, secondly, to keep young adults in school. Higher Education has become of utmost importance.
Spending habits have also made a drastic change since colonial times. In colonial days, teen’s earnings went towards food, housing and survival. Today teens spend their money on clothes, tanning and other material objects, not always necessary to survival. It was interesting to think about how earnings and spending habits have significantly changed in my own life and compare it to how they have changed in general.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager
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Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI liked this section as well, and it also got me thinking about what I spend my money on. I am a very material person, and I have a really hard time saving money. I always want the newest, shiniest toy out there, and most of the time, I plot different ways to get it, but it isn't a necessity. However, this is exactly why my parents want me to have a good job: to allow myself those luxuries. IDK if this is particularly how you viewed this section, but it was one of the thoughts I had...
-Aaron
It is crazy to think about the laws of child labor. The government watches over how much children get paid for many reasons and one that caught my eye was the fact that they regulate the income that children make so they won’t drop out of school to work. To me that means an adult working the same job as minor gets paid more just because of their age. That’s not really fair anyway you look at it. Yea some kids/teenagers would drop out of school to work if they were making a decent amount of money but that shouldn’t mean we should drastically cut their pay. Some teenagers need to work because their parents like in the older era's cant afford to feed their family. So teenagers get a job to help their family. In this case the child labor laws really don’t work in favor of the teens that do have to work to help out their families cause they now have to work more hours to make a decent amount of money instead of getting paid a decent amount and working less hours so they can focus on school work in the left over time they are not working.
ReplyDelete- Jennie