Children's Work and Apprenticeship
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 February 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0007
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 February 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0007
Introduction
Children appear to be predisposed to learn the skills of their elders, perhaps from a drive to become competent or from the need to be accepted or to fit in, or a combination of these. And elders, in turn, value children and expect them to strive to become useful—often at an early age. The earliest tasks are commonly referred to as chores. David Lancy’s Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans and Laborers (Lancy 2018, cited under Surveys and Anthologies), the first comprehensive survey of the relevant literature, advances the notion of a chore “curriculum.” The author notes that the tasks that children undertake are often graduated in difficulty and complexity. These built-in levels, or steps, create a kind of curriculum that children can progress through, matching their growing physical and cognitive competence to ever more demanding subtasks. The anthropological literature on children’s work is both extensive and elusive. That is because, while work is a common theme in ethnographic studies that highlight the lives of children (in itself an uncommon focus), relatively few publications have children’s work as the prime concern. A distinction must be made between the chores assigned to children in the household and village and “child labor.” See the Oxford Bibliographies article Child Labor for more information on that subject.
Surveys and Anthologies
Lancy 2018 is an overview of the anthropology of children as present and future workers and includes chapters on children as helpers, apprentices, and laborers, among others. MacDonald (2007) gives a survey of the literature available. Lancy 2016a is an anthology of recent field studies of children learning work-related skills. Lancy 2016b analyzes the “folk pedagogy” that underlies parental views on how children go about learning to be skilled and diligent workers. Lancy 2012 surveys children’s work as various “chores.” Liebel 2004 complements the work of Lancy by providing a sociological perspective—primarily on children working for wages rather than in the village. Zeller 1987 offers a brief survey of children’s work in thirteen societies. Spittler and Bourdillon 2012, an edited collection, highlights recent work on children and work in Africa. Lancy 2015 presents a theory that explains why children seem to be precocious in their learning of critical skills.
Lancy, David F. “The Chore Curriculum.” In African Children at Work: Working and Learning in Growing Up for Life. Edited by Gerd Spittler and Michael Bourdillon, 23–56. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012.
This chapter provides a theory (the chore curriculum) that accounts for the processes—psychological, ontological, and cultural—underlying children’s acquisition of subsistence and craft skills.
Lancy, David F. “Children as a Reserve Labor Force.” Current Anthropology 56.4 (2015): 545–568.
DOI: 10.1086/682286E-mail Citation »
This article advances the theory that children’s competencies in the world of work usually appear ahead of the period when they are required to apply them in earnest. But various triggers, including family crises, intensive labor requirements in agriculture, and catastrophic events (plague), may call for children to “step up.”
Lancy, David F., ed. Special Issue: New Studies of Children’s Work. Ethos 44.3 (2016a): 202–289.
A collection of four papers including an overview of the field (Lancy), and ethnographies of children’s work from Mongolia (Michelet), Brazil (Medaets), and Papua New Guinea (Little and Lancy).
Lancy, David F. “Playing with Knives: The Socialization of Self-Initiated Learners.” Child Development 87.3 (2016b): 654–665.
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12498E-mail Citation »
This article reviews relevant literature in anthropology to support a model of the cultural and psychological processes involved as children learn critical work skills, especially the use of tools.
Lancy, David F. Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans and Laborers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-53351-7E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive overview of all aspects of children’s lives that involves work: in make-believe and object play; as willing helpers; as learners of skills such as butchering, fishing, trapping, etc.; as more mature workers with regular chores and; as wage laborers.
Liebel, Manfred. A Will of Their Own: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Working Children. London: Zed Books, 2004.
This work covers a wide reach but is much more focused on children as laborers than as helpers and workers at home. “Cross-cultural” in the title should be “international.” The author is a sociologist and adopts the theoretical and analytical stance characteristic of that discipline. Though he does cite some anthropological literature on children’s work, it is drawn almost exclusively from the limited corpus of work published in German.
MacDonald, Katharine. “Cross-Cultural Comparison of Learning in Human Hunting: Implications for Life History Evolution.” Human Nature 18.4 (2007): 386–402.
DOI: 10.1007/s12110-007-9019-8E-mail Citation »
Quite comprehensive survey of the literature.
Spittler, Gerd, and Michael Bourdillon, eds. African Children at Work: Working and Learning in Growing Up for Life. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012.
The first volume to collect studies of children’s work, primarily in Africa. The main theme of the book is that children’s work is also the pathway to knowledge and that work must be studied in cultural context. Exploitative forms of children’s labor are discussed, but they are not the primary focus.
Zeller, Anne C. “A Role for Women in Hominid Evolution.” Man 22.3 (1987): 528–557.
DOI: 10.2307/2802504E-mail Citation »
Cursory survey of children’s work in thirteen societies. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abduction of Children
- Aboriginal Childhoods
- Addams, Jane
- ADHD, Sociological Perspectives on
- Adolescence and Youth
- Adolescent Consent to Medical Treatment
- Adoption and Fostering
- Adoption and Fostering, History of Cross-Country
- Advertising and Marketing, Psychological Approaches to
- Advertising and Marketing, Sociocultural Approaches to
- Africa, Children and Young People in
- African American Children and Childhood
- After-school Hours and Activities
- Animals, Children and
- Animations, Comic Books, and Manga
- Anthropology of Childhood
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Ariès, Philippe
- Attachment in Children and Adolescents
- Australia, History of Adoption and Fostering in
- Australian Indigenous Contexts and Childhood Experiences
- Autism, Females and
- Autism, Medical Model Perspectives on
- Bereavement
- Best Interest of the Child
- Bioarchaeology of Childhood
- Body, Children and the
- Body Image
- Boy Scouts/Girl Guides
- Breastfeeding
- Bronfenbrenner, Urie
- Bruner, Jerome
- Buddhist Views of Childhood
- Byzantine Childhoods
- Child Beauty Pageants
- Child Homelessness
- Child Protection
- Child Public Health
- Child Trafficking and Slavery
- Childcare Manuals
- Childhood and Borders
- Childhood as Discourse
- Children and Film-Making
- Children and Social Media
- Children and Sustainable Cities
- Children as Language Brokers
- Children as Perpetrators of Crime
- Children in the Industrial Revolution
- Children with Autism in a Brazilian Context
- Children, Young People, and Architecture
- Children's Humor
- Children’s Museums
- Children’s Reading Development and Instruction
- Children's Views of Childhood
- China, Japan, and Korea
- China’s One Child Policy
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights Movement and Desegregation
- Class
- Classical World, Children in the
- Clothes and Costume, Children’s
- Colonization and Nationalism
- Common World Childhoods
- Competitiveness, Children and
- Congenital Disabilities
- Constructivist Approaches to Childhood
- Consumer Culture, Children and
- Consumption, Child and Teen
- Conversation Analysis and Research with Children
- Critical Approaches to Children’s Work and the Concept of ...
- Critical Perspectives on Boys’ Circumcision
- Crying
- Disability
- Discipline and Punishment
- Discrimination
- Disney, Walt
- Divorce And Custody
- Dolls
- Domestic Violence
- Drawings, Children’s
- Early Childhood
- Eating disorders and obesity
- Education
- Environment, Children and the
- Environmental Education and Children
- Ethics in Research with Children
- Eugenics
- Evolutionary Studies of Childhood
- Fairy Tales and Folktales
- Fathers
- Female Genital Cutting
- Feral and "Wild" Children
- Fetuses and Embryos
- Filicide
- Films about Children
- Films for Children
- Folklore
- Food
- Foundlings and Abandoned Children
- Freud, Anna
- Freud, Sigmund
- Friends and Peers: Psychological Perspectives
- Froebel, Friedrich
- Gangs
- Gay and Lesbian Parents
- Gender and Childhood
- Geographies, Children's
- Globalization
- Hall, G. Stanley
- Happiness in Children
- Hindu Views of Childhood and Child Rearing
- Hispanic Childhoods (U.S.)
- Historical Approaches to Child Witches
- History of Adoption and Fostering in Canada
- History of Childhood in America
- History of Childhood in Canada
- HIV/AIDS, Growing Up with
- Homeschooling
- Images of Childhood, Adulthood, and Old Age in Children’s ...
- Infancy and Ethnography
- Infant Mortality in a Global Context
- Innocence and Childhood
- Institutional Care
- Intercultural Learning and Teaching with Children
- Islamic Views of Childhood
- Juvenile Detention in the US
- Key, Ellen
- Labor, Child
- Latin America
- Learning, Language
- Learning to Write
- Legends, Contemporary
- Literary Representations of Childhood
- Literature, Children's
- Magazines for Teenagers
- Maltreatment, Child
- Marxism and Childhood
- Masculinities/Boyhood
- Material Cultures of Western Childhoods
- Media Culture, Children's
- Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Childhoods
- Menstruation
- Middle Childhood
- Middle East
- Migration
- Miscarriage
- Mothers
- Multi-culturalism and Education
- Music and Babies
- Native American and Aboriginal Canadian Childhood
- New Reproductive Technologies and Assisted Conception
- Nursery Rhymes
- Organizations, Nongovernmental
- Orphans
- Parental Gender Preferences, The Social Construction of
- Parenting
- Pediatrics, History of
- Peer Culture
- Peter Pan
- Philosophy and Childhood
- Piaget, Jean
- Play
- Politics, Children and
- Postcolonial Childhoods
- Post-Modernism
- Poverty, Rights, and Well-being, Child
- Prostitution and Pornography, Child
- Psychoanalysis
- Queer Theory and Childhood
- Race and Ethnicity
- Racism, Children and
- Radio, Children, and Young People
- Readers, Children as
- Refugee and Displaced Children
- Rights, Children’s
- Risk and Resilience
- Russia
- School Shootings
- Sex Education in the United States
- Sexuality
- Siblings
- Social and Cultural Capital of Childhood
- Social Movements, Children's
- Social Policy, Children and
- Socialization and Child Rearing
- Sociology of Childhood
- South African Birth to Twenty Project
- South Asia
- Special Education
- Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence
- Spock, Benjamin
- Sports and Organized Games
- Street Children
- Street Children And Brazil
- Subcultures
- Sure Start
- Teenage Fathers
- Teenage Pregnancy
- Television
- The Bible and Children
- The Harms and Prevention of Drugs and Alcohol on Children
- The Spaces of Childhood
- Theories, Pedagogic
- Tourism
- Toys
- Transgender Children
- Tweens
- Twins and Multiple Births
- United Kingdom, History of Adoption and Fostering in the
- United States, Schooling in the
- Value of Children
- Views of Childhood, Jewish and Christian
- Violence, Children and
- Visual Representations of Childhood
- Voice, Participation, and Agency
- Vygotsky, Lev and His Cultural-historical Approach to Deve...
- War
- Welfare Law in the United States, Child
- Well-Being, Child
- Western Europe and Scandinavia
- Witchcraft in the Contemporary World, Children and
- Work and Apprenticeship, Children's
- Young Carers
- Young Children’s Imagination
- Young Lives
- Young People, Alcohol, and Urban Life
- Young People and Disadvantaged Environments in Affluent Co...