my "family" started working me hard on the farm. A lot of heavy physical labor starting with morning milking at 4:00 a.m. carrying milkers and full milk pails to be lifted up to strainers to dump into the bulk milk tank. Carrying full size hay bales around. That would end around 6:30 a.m. and I could quick clean up and go to school. Then repeat the whole process when I came home. On weekends it was work for 8 to 12 hours a day with breaks for meals. During haying season I carried and stacked bales all day along with the milking. All kinds of other work too.
By the time I was 14 I would typically put in about 40+ hours a week along with school. When school was out I would go to almost double that. By the age of 14 I had developed severe back pain and trying to sit and drive tractors was a matter of having to grit my teeth and stop every few minutes and get off and try to bend and flex my back to make the pain go away. After another year I began to develop problems with my knees. By the time I was in my late 20's I had to have major reconstruction because my kneecap cartilage was destroyed. This was before knee replacements were a thing. I also suffered some major injuries from machinery, silage forks etc. by the time I was 15. Thankful I didn't die. Many kids on farms do every year and also suffer major injuries.
It is not right to do this to children. Some can handle the labor at that age but to many it can cause later life to be filled with problems and pain and to many it is the reason for a childhood funeral. People do this with kids because it is free labor or relatively low cost wages. But now they want the kids in the meat processing plants, fertilizer plants, pesticide plants etc. They want them to work with harsh cleaning solutions. We all know that they will promise to safeguard the children and then fail to do so. I can't begin to tell you how many times I hurt so bad that I wanted to run away from home. It's not right to make children feel that way by working them like that.
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