The children’s rights movement was born in the 1800’s the orphan train. In the big cities, when the child’s parents died, the child had to go to work to support him or herself. Boys generally became factory or coal workers. Girls, became prostitutes or saloon girls, or else went to work in sweat shops. All of these jobs paid only starvation wages. In 1852,
Massachusetts required children to attend school. In 1853, Charles Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society, which worked hard to take the street children in. The following year, the children were placed on a train headed for the West, where they were adopted and often given work. By 1929, the orphan train had stopped running altogether, but its principles lived on.
The National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in the 1890’s. It managed to pass one law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later for violating a child’s right to contract his work. In the 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. The measure was blocked and the bill was eventually dropped. It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs, they would work for children wages. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards. Which amongst other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.
Now, that child labor had been effectively eradicated, the movement turned to other things but it again stalled when World War II broke out and children and women began to enter the work force once more. With millions of adults at war, the children were needed to help keep the country running. In
Europe, children served as couriers, intelligence collectors. And other underground resistance workers in opposition to Hitler’s regime.
The first effective attempt to promote children’s rights was the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, drafted by Eglantyne Jebb in 1923 and adopted by the
League of Nations in 1924. This was accepted by the United Nations on its formation and updated in 1959, and replaced with a more extensive UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1989. From the formation of the United Nations in the 1940’s and extending to present day, the children’s rights movement has become global in focus. While the situation of children in the
United States has become grave, children around the world have increasing become engaged in illegal, forced Child Labor, genital mutilation, military service, and sex trafficking. Several international organizations have rallied to the assistance of children. They include Save the Children, Free the Children, and The Children’s Defense Fund.
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