Rethinking Childhood Dependency: Children's Contributions to the Domestic Economy

In industrialised countries, the growth of wage labour and capitalist relations of production have been associated with a decline in ‘child labour’. The general assumption within sociology is that children do not undertake productive labour, and that their new economic role is to attend school and prepare to become future members of the labour force. This paper presents evidence from a wider research project on children's involvement in ‘work’ and focuses on children's accounts of their contribution to domestic labour within their homes, based on an analysis of children's written descriptions of their everyday lives outside school. Data were collected from 730 children aged between 11 and 16 years in schools in Birmingham and Cambridgeshire, and in a small number of interviews and discussions with children. The paper suggests that children's labour has been rendered invisible behind dominant conceptualisations within sociology of ‘the child’ as passive and dependent, and argues that far from being mere ‘burdens’ on their families, some children may be making important contributions to household labour in the form of the routine daily tasks and child-care they undertake.