Before industrialization, chil

Before industrialization, children carried out both paid and
unpaid labour. Rural families tended to work the land together as a unit, including
children. There was minimal separation between home and work (Pilcher 1995:
83). During industrialization, work and domestic life became separated, which
meant that some children stopped working, but others began to work in the
public sphere, where they tended to be more vulnerable than when working for
their families at home. Subsequently, after industrialization, laws were
introduced with the aim of banning children from working by the end of the
nineteenth century. Hence, the nineteenth century saw the growing dependency of
children by denying them a source of income; by the beginning of the twentieth
century, children were no longer seen as workers (Hockey and James 1993).
Consequently, industrialization led to a change in social relations and the
emergence of children’s dependency. Childhood became seen as a time when
children did not work. It is important to remember that this was because of
changing social relations, not because of children’s physical abilities. It was
connected not to their biological or chronological age but rather to their
social age. Thus, as a result of changing social attitudes, children no longer
engaged in work and became seen as not participating fully in society.