Where is the GOP hysteria about damage to these babies and their parts? Oh, yeah. People are making money off of this bloodbath, so I guess it's ok. Years ago I witnessed the damage done to a 13 year old working on a chicken farm in Arkansas. His jacket sleeve got caught in the sproket of a conveyor and he was pulled into the machine. It chopped up his hand and tore off his fingers. Tyson Chicken is the reason the world's best hand surgeons are in Little Rock, AR.
31
Oh absolutely, big government intrusion preventing an 8-year old from running equipment that can kill or maim is a great example of unnecessary regulations. How about letting 4 year olds clean rifles? This is insane. Federal regulations are necessary when this degree of carelessness endangers children.
33
Caught in the squeeze of economics, the opiate deathwave, and corporate food production, these families are trying to make it. But, you know what would be really great? If farmers could get some help— some adults to help—maybe from a new generation of folks looking to make this country their home. But, where could we find such people? If we can't help the middle of America, maybe Putin has some ideas. I mean Palin could see Russia from her house.
17
Whoa. I thought this headline was about China. Shame on us.
19
Thank you for an excellent, well balanced piece on an important topic that’s rarely discussed. Another important issue not touched upon here that would make a great followup piece is the exposure to harmful chemicals that farm children face. My parents gave up suburban CT life when I was in middle school and bought a 250 acre farm in Washington County, NY. It was a major financial struggle and my siblings and I had to pitch in. I can still taste the pesticide on my lips that I had to spray all summer long when I was 14 sitting on the back of a tractor. Such a formative time in a young girl’s physical/hormonal development. In my gut I truly believe that pesticide exposure was the cause of my rare cancer diagnosis at age 39.
41
Look there's nothing wrong with having kids do actual work, including physical work, on their families' farms. The question is whether they should be operating that kind of machinery. Those are two totally different issues. Maybe they wouldn't be if the only farm work were heavy machinery work. But there's always a hundred things to do on a farm.
31
I suggest that everyone criticizing the Schactschneider family should access primary source material about Cullen's accident. According to Wisconsin newspaper articles on this tragedy Cullen's father was actually parking the skid steer at the time the accident took place. Young Cullen approached the machine to get on with Dad. He wasn't operating the machine, just trying to join his dad. The headline is misleading, at least as it applies to this tragic accident.
Elsewhere the emphasis is on the deep sense of remorse Cullen's dad is experiencing. I can't imagine this family would have let the reporter in to their home and allowed photos to be taken of their children if they'd been fully informed about the spin the author intended to put on their story.
It's clear that there should be commonsense guidelines about children under the age of thirteen operating farm equipment but we need to develop the rules with real input from people who actually understand how farms work and how the equipment works.
The accounts in Wisconsin papers include information that isn't touched on here. Get the facts before you judge.
18
If it’s not okay for a six-year-old to run the cement mixer on a construction site, it’s not okay for a six-year-old to run a skid steer.
20
Regulation of child labor on farms, if it comes at all, must come from farm communities.
We're seeing right now that regulation, as sane and reasonable as it might be, has little support and much opposition when the rationale is unknown or forgotten by those it protects.
Keep the facts coming, and those affected may eventually demand regulation.
8
So this business netted 14K but one of its employees sustained a job related injury costing 150K or so in medical costs plus ongoing disability.
But none of this is paid for by the business because the injured employee is a little kid.
Any other business would have gone out of business--and this one should too.
14
If I could choose between a childhood spent sitting indoors, staring at a screen and being helicopter parented; or spending my days outdoors, being useful and learning a skill, with the risks that come along with that ... well, give me the latter.
11
I grew up on a wheat farm/sheep ranch on the Western Kansas prairie in the 1950s. The horror of a child injured, my brother, a paraplegic, as a result of a tractor accident at the age of six, eventually tore our family asunder. In guilt, my father sank into alcoholism.
My brother eventually died at the age of 21, from complications of paralysis.
I don’t know why this still continues. A child maimed or lost changes family dynamics for generations
41
Accidents that injure young people using ATV's, snowmobiles, and other recreational equipment far outnumber children injured operating a farm machine. The problems for both are parenting and will not be fixed by more government regulations.
4
This is hold abuse, pure and simple.
They either knock it off or the children get taken from them.
Going forward the authorities, like the cops or departments of agriculture, should conduct surprise inspections.
There is no reasonable explanation for this.
6
I'm sure this has already been mentioned in the comments but here we are again with folks who want the government out when there is a regulation that is distasteful but in and with money to solve the problem that lack of regulation caused.
18
Didn’t trump use farmers to push ending the death tax?
6
Both of the children are obese. Both have been critically injured, (one now disfigured and disabled) during what should be considered egregious violations of child labor laws. The parents made a horrible business decision, which has resulted in them taking advantage of their kids. Time to walk away from farming and let your kids have a life. Looking at them they are probably suffering from stress and anxiety because they have been forced to take in adult roles that they are too young to comprehend. Where are the social workers, the health care workers intervening? Absolutely shameful.
23
Sounds like child endangerment to me. Any parent of some other profession would have CPS knocking at their door.
We used to accept as normal that children worked in factories, now we consider it barbaric.
If farmers can't make it without child labor then they should find another occupation.
20
City America needs to stop telling Not City America what to do. This is the kind of article that gets us Trump.
5
“These kids help. They are our hired hands.”
Umm...nope. They’re your kids. Hired hands receive wages and are old enough to understand and consent to the requirements of a working contract.
26
Thanks for removing the romantic illusion of a farm as a bucolic “safe place.”
I don’t miss getting body slammed by a steer into the barn or kicked by sn angry horse.
A friend of mine, a big animal vet, retired at 50. At 50 he was done. Body just couldn’t take it anymore. On the other hand, these prople are the real deal. Nothing like risking your life to build character.
9
Folks, are the cries for change about farm accidents coming from the farm families themselves? If yes, then let us do something about it.
If not, and the outcry is coming from those not involved in the industry, then shut up and let them live as they want. i am sure they know the dangers and accept them.
6
Young children are not experienced or aware enough to make those decisions. It seems that neither are their parents.
13
Accept the death of babies driving heavy farm equipment? I don't think so! That's like saying, "Any abuse at home gets to stay at home."
Anybody thinking young children, should be driving heavy adult sized farm equipment is not thinking straight... and that includes the parents.
18
If the dismay over having 6-year-olds running the heavy equipment in the canning factory aren’t coming from the families involved in the canning industry, then let’s not concern ourselves when first graders lose an arm in the machine...
8
My heart goes out to this family, these children and the thousands of families like them. I can’t criticize these parents for putting their kids to work on the family farm, and I lament the fact that my children consider the most elemental chores to be overbearing.
But the solution to keep kids safe on these farms is not to outlaw their use of heavy machinery. It’s to work with independent farmers to help them earn a livable wage and hire the help they need to provide a safe balance between family and hired labor.
Caleb seems like a tough little boy who went through something horrific and has come out the other end fortified. I’m sure his parents would do anything they could to have that accident never happen, but they must be proud to have raised kids who are that resilient.
6
"With prices plummeting for wheat, dairy and other products, smaller, struggling farms are also under intense financial pressure, and entire families are pitching in to survive."
Has anyone in Government ever taken a serious, hard, long look at small farms and rural communities, this feast or famine cycle has been going on for decades. Farmer's in this rich nation should not have to rely on their children for hard labor like farmers in poor, developing countries unfortunately still have to do.
I've seen a few documentaries on some countries in Africa where the farmers have suffered terribly from big AG, self-serving Governments, and big business, but with the help of experts in the field they have developed new, creative and sustainable ways to keep small family farms and turn them into thriving businesses, they can send their children to school instead of using them as labor and their rural communities and social bonds are maintained and enriched.
Why is no one thinking out-of-the-box here?
So far all Trump has given farmers is the freedom to pollute water and natural resources by nixing regulations designed to protect. How is that going to pan out when the ground water becomes polluted and having to use their their kids as labor is no longer a question because their farms are unlivable toxic swamps?
25
Children should be allowed to be children. They are our most valuable resource and should be treated with dignity.
11
These folks fail to see the Forest for the Trees. They will spend more money on medical bills than they would have spent hiring a qualified adult to help with the farm. No one says children cannot be taught farm work but for goodness sakes, children should not be operating heavy equipment or be around it. These kids have a right to a life not fraught with danger and injury. I think it's completely irresponsible for parents to put their children in these situations. If you cannot farm responsibly get out of farming! You don't have the right to put your children in harms way because "your family before you did." Hogwash! If your reasoning skills are this deficient is no wonder you can't run a successful farm.
18
My parents were from rural South Carolina and they worked on their family farms from the time they can remember.People had big families because it was an all hands on deck culture.Sadly when children are hurt helping put the food on the families table we are taken aback.I know the parents regret that they have put their children in harm's way but what other alternative do they have? Farming is a labor intensitive business and me sitting in New York judging these people is wrong.Maybe teaching farm children in school the safe operation of farm equipment would help but getting government involved would further alienate these folks.
10
What does NY have to do with it? I live in NY. There is a farm right next to the office I work in. There are farmers that come in to the bar I work at. I do not ever hear them talk about their children working on the farm.
8
My wife, who grew up on a farm in Lancaster County (PA) started to drive a tractor at age 5, as did her younger sisters. They still talk about it 70 years later. But they never complained about working to help support the family; it was assumed everyone worked. None of them was ever injured. My wife did tell me she had decided by age 18 she was never going to marry a farmer. She didn't.
9
Well they they’re essentially using their own children as farm laborers and many are probably not paying them a cent. And “big intrusive government” does nothing to protect these kids? When I worked in a grocery store at 17, I wasn’t supposed to touch a box cutter. This is nothing more than a sadistic joke. Blame Obama, but protect these kids.
8
The report says the federal government stopped doing surveys on how many children were hurt on the farms back in 2015. Why did it stop?
10
Sorry at what point is it call child abuse. A 8 year old is not mature enough to drive a tractor. We have this really silly bucolic view of formwork. In reality it is dirty and dangerous, If an Urban Parent had their 5 year old doing dangerous work Social services h=would have a fit. Sorry there is nothing special about farm work at 5, the parent should be taken to court.
12
My dad as a boy on the farm almost lost his foot to a horse drawn hay mower. The only thing that saved him was a passing Model T that got him to the doctor in time. His brother’s face was crushed by a steel wheeled tractor that accidentally rolled when he was working under it on it. Life on a farm, I guess.
6
Sorry, I haven't read through all the almost 300 comments but I'm pretty sure being 100 pounds overweight at age 6 or 7 guarantees this kid a life of health issues more than the the slight chance he may have had an accident on the family's tractor...
Not the best choice as an example to back up a troublesome point of view.
8
Cullen has a medical condition which has many challenges including weight gain.
6
Author, show your true outrage and never eat anything grown on a farm ever again. You should last a few days...
2
I grew up in Wisconsin. My grandparents ran a (failing) dairy farm in the 60s and 70s that exploited the labor of their 7 children. The parents highlighted here should lose their children. Their judgement is deplorable and their behavior reckless—period. I can’t believe social services doesn’t get involved in these cases. And don’t talk to me about traditions and ways of life—meaningless justifications for negligent and abusive parenting.
22
Oh I don't know. Free labor or child? Free labor or leg off a child? Free labor or no arm? They are trading their children and parts of their children for money. What does getting your leg ripped off do to serve the interest of the child? These parents are fooling themselves and trying to excuse their poor parenting by claiming it is in the child's interest -- it teaches them to work? Nope. It teaches them that their health and future isn't worth much at all.
24
I believe it’s called irresponsible parenting regardless of the ‘family farm tradition’. If a parent displays such willingness to place a child in harms way there are child protection laws that should be brought to bear.
13
They must let these children grow up first--then send them to be used as fodder in our foreign wars like in the old days.
6
Somewhere there's a pic of me, under age 5, sitting on grandpa's tractor. Cute. But grandpa had too much sense to let me operate the dang thing. This isn't about kids hand-milking cows and feeding chickens, a la Little House on the Prairie. Operating heavy machinery is for adults. Or at least old enough to drive. I guess we just let farmers keep putting their kids in harm's way, until farm moms put their foot down.
16
i would like to see the numbers of deaths and injuries of kids in the city riding bikes, playing dangerous sports, using drugs, shooting themselves or others with guns, etc, etc. i was raised on the farm and worked myself up using machinery that is a lot safer today than it was backing the 50's. i suspect letting a 16 year old drive a car is a lot more dangerous than kids working on farms.
5
So your thesis is that if kids in the city are injured then it's fine that kids on a farm are mangled or killed?
Amazing logic.
Kill one, kill 'em all?
17
Being in a car is statistically bad for all of us.
I have taught 1500+ kids in NYC over the last 15 years or so, and know of only 3 deaths as children of students I taught. There may be some others that I'm unaware of but the number seems quite low. The school counselor quoted in the article doesn't give numbers but from her quote and my knowledge of the typical size of rural schools, it seems likely she's seen more deaths than I have in a school with fewer kids.
3
Taught to drive the family's riding lawnmower at 12. I drove it backwards over a 4-foot cliff one day in reverse after overshooting neutral. Landing on my back, I watched the machine fly over my head and crash behind me, thankfully not on top of me. Accidents will happen.
10
Not only will this practice NOT change any time soon, but it will get worse since farmers, Wisconsin dairy farmers in particular, are struggling with 1) the little trade war Trump has started with Canada and 2) an inability to find the cheap, experienced labor that immigrants have long provided.
More and more Wisconsin farms will be going out of business in the near future.
Like in upstate NY.
But they're not coal miners, so according to Trump they should seek work in Milwaukee because Foxconn will be there one day.
20
Well those Wisconsin farmers voted for Trump so guess they are getting their just rewards.
Just tragic that their kids are the ones who will suffer for the rest of their lives -- IF they live.
8
Did the Schachtschneiders think they MIGHT not have had five children, thereby also cutting back on expenses? I too grew up on a dairy farm, many many decades ago before so much regulation, and small children were NOT allowed to operate this equipment. Also, I see some child abuse going on further - the two boys featured are obese, this does not bode well - what's next, after childhood obesity? NOT a characteristic of Northern European descent midwesterners! Get the children off the machinery, get them to lose weight, and let the children be children. It sounds like the Schachtschneiders had children for the free labor!
30
This has been going on for a long time. I recall going to the funeral thirty years ago of a 13 year old classmate who was crushed when a tractor he was driving turned over while compacting silage. He was found by his mother who could not extricate him. It was a horrible death by all accounts. My cousin's son died while riding an ATV to bring in the stock. He was 9, a little friend riding behind him was paralyzed. I used to drive a pick up with no brakes when my dad decided it was to expensive to get it fixed. I clearly recall almost killing my little sister who wandered in front of me. I was about 10 at the time. Another cousin lost part of his hand in when he removed a pump housing to service it. He was 9 or 10 years old. These farmers need to recall that family farming is first about "family". They have no right to risk a child's life to fulfill their dream. It is really in excusable to allow very young children to operate heavy machinery. The parents should be jailed for willfully endangering the life of a child. This may seem harsh but until they suffer the consequences it will go on. In my experience, the mom's know better. I think I know why the child in this story is clinging to his mother. It is because he knows he can trust her to keep him safe. I've been there.
48
i suppose if these farmers oppose any legislation that is designed to protect their kids then they are getting exactly what they deserve.
10
Read the article again and try to figure out what it means to live as a farmer. It's hard work and sometimes there are accidents.
That's life. No need to attack them for doing what they do.
6
Five year-olds operating machinery? If you think that's acceptable, then country life has warped your perspective, and warped it very badly.
8
Just because people did it in "the good old days" doesn't mean it right or should continue.
40
These children apparently attend school. In some rural communities home-schooling is used, in my opinion, as a means of keeping the children home to work the farm. I know of a family of almost a dozen children, most of whom have been home schooled by the mother, who also runs the farm while the father works a regular job. That is a case of blatant abuse of home-schooling, in a state that prides itself on school choice. I see it as denying rural children a decent education for the profit and pleasure of parents. In the example I cite, the parents have little or no knowledge of farming, and just chose to do it. I suspect this is a common story, whether the farm is a family tradition or not. It saddens me to see relatively many comments here from survivors of child farm labor who claim there is nothing wrong with it.
20
Can we call it what it really is? Slave labor.
15
Farming is not a lifestyle, it is a business. This one profiled is failing; sorry, it is tough business. There is abosoutly no justification for young children to operate machinery. The overwhelming majority of modern farms don’t have children operating machinery. Most folk with nostalgia for the good old days have selective memories leaving out the children, and adults, maimed and killed in farming accidents. Farm organizations stress safety around machinery, livestock, chemicals and keeping children away from work settings.
35
My father grew up on a dairy farm. He rarely spoke of his parents, but I did pick up that his childhood was one of very hard labor. One of the few things I remember him saying was that his parents didn’t raise children, they raised free labor, and he knew that the only reason he, the youngest of eight, had been born was to replace some of his siblings who had married and moved away. They told him that. If that’s some wondrous “American Way,” phooey.
48
A six-year-old child driving a skid-steer puts his 7-year-old brother in hospital for a week, and two years later another six-year-old sibling is seriously injured when his father allows him to ride on a skid-steer. "They are our hired hands" is a very succinct summary.
30
But they're not hired. They're obliged to do the work, but don't get paid. We've got a word for that in English - slavery.
14
"No city folks, no $ to pay for your healthcare"
When will rural america learn how subsidized its "independance" is?
30
How many kids are injured or killed in auto accidents each year?
'Nuff said about safety then, or is it simply that most everyone "needs" a vehicle and most of us do not farm?
Bad use of statistics (as usual).
1
The difference is rather obvious. These kids are their parents' unpaid workers. Those kids aren't in the car to earn their parents a living.
23
@ vandalfan:
Wait, let's flesh that logic out.
Kids accidentally killed/injured in the course of helping the family earn a living is wrong/bad.
Kids accidentally killed/injured in the course of going to the grocery, being driven 1.2 miles to school, (etc.), is acceptable/okay.
Wow.
Even more simplified might read:
Accidental death of children is permissible when it is for little to no purpose other than the convenience of parent(s).
Harsh world.
1
I'm about as city slicker as they come, and as concerned about child safety as anyone. But the father in the story has a point: unless you take these kids off the farm completely, they're going to grow up around animals and machinery. You HAVE to teach them how to handle themselves around machinery at an early age. But I also think five years old is WAY too young to be doing any heavy work, including driving things. And if you are making peanuts each year and your kid has already virtually lost his leg, it's not about "up and quitting" -- it means you've already failed at the enterprise.
32
In my own experience children of farmers is a drop in the bucket of children working on farms, and doing dangerous work. It is mostly children of farm workers.
15
“I’ve seen too many children killed,” said LuAnne Ujazdowski, a counselor at Cullen’s elementary school in central Wisconsin.
Being raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, I know first hand of the plethora of dangers that are present. Not once did my parents willingly nor deliberately place me or my 8 siblings in harms way. But accidents occurred - getting stepped on by a 180 lb. heifer's back hove while cleaning out the stall, a hungry red 150 lb. sow pig rushing towards and ramming your left leg into the pen at feeding time, being surrounded by a pack of wild dogs that roamed fields (dogs that were abandoned by city folks) and hoping to make it to the barn before they closed in. The list is endless when living on a farm.
But dangers lurk around every corner for kids on farms as well as in small and big cities - getting hurt while playing Pop Warner football, riding a bike and never making it home, coming out of a candy store and getting shot by a passing car. More kids are murdered in Chicago from gun fire and family violence than Wisconsin kids are from farming accidents.
I understand the comments in which blame is placed on the parents. But these are accidents. There is not one single Wisconsin farm parent who believes their child will get hurt and are devastated if an injury occurs. A little one should not operate farm machinery, obviously, but every day a kid dies from gun or domestic violence. Danger is everywhere. Most parents do the best they can.
7
"There is not one single Wisconsin farm parent who believes their child will get hurt and are devastated if an injury occurs." So farm parents have the maturity of a teenager, who thinks that he'll live forever? Something is wrong here.
24
Oh please, that is NOT what was being implied. What is wrong is the assumption that farmers are irresponsible and/or horrible adults and comments taken out of context. I have yet to meet the perfect parent who never made a mistake or error in judgment.
5
The article doesn't talk about a regrettable mistake. It is about adults who have felt cornered enough to justify continuous and repeated practice of putting their own children lives in danger. I am appalled enough to think twice when grocery shopping wondering if the producer's practice is cruelty free to animals and fair trade to workers. I now have to add another concern if it is produced by someone who endangered children. Entire food industry and farming needs to be put into perspective: why is it possible to farm only using the large scale machinery on such a small scale farm to almost negative profit? Should we reassess the food price and pay more directly to farmers instead of all kinds of middle men through subsidies?
7
And so...
even though Europe was enacting child labor laws 175 years ago, kids in the U.S. are unprotected from death and mutilation in the U.S. in 2018?
19
There are U.S. laws addressing child labor, but are exceptions in the law for children working on family farms.
So very sad. http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/two-children-dead-in-farming-ac...
2
No way should these children be operating these machines. Adults are putting their financial needs over the safety and care these children. This child is now disfigured and disabled for life because adults needed the cheap labor. Unlike adults these kids can’t say no. The parents should be brought up on charges. Based in the size of the child he is suffering from other health issues - stress is probably one of them.
30
We have an economy where 5-year-olds need to work to help support their families. And we have bankster gazillionaires who never need to lift a finger while the dividends and capital gains roll in and then are diverted to tax-free offshore hiding places. When can we admit that this is not working?
64
The children depicted in this article are being ill-used, no matter the need, and there needs to be an end to this.
22
Sad. I'm not a farmer so I can't pass a judgement. But aren't there relatively safe chores for young kids? Maybe save the heavy duty stuff until they're old enough to drive?
An unrelated comment based on a statement in this article: "With prices plummeting for wheat, dairy and other products..." You'd never know that from supermarket prices for these items.
17
Families should no longer do farming. It's a big ag operation. These families operate like they are in the third world.
8
People really need to think. Just because its was done in the 1890s or by several generations does not mean it makes sense. It seems to be a uniquely American trait to excuse stupidity with the concept of "personal rights". Yes, Federal Regulations are the answer, because too many parents don't think things through.
26
There's really nothing in this article that indicates how many chores the Schactsneider kids actually do each week, but many of the people commenting seem to believe that they are using their children in a Dickensian, forced child labor scenario. But do we have any indication that the kids spend much more time on chores than the average suburban child does on organized sports each week? Is there any suggestion that the children object to helping with the animals or riding along with Dad on a tractor? That in fact, they may indeed clamor for the opportunity to ride along with him?
Another point that seems to be eluding readers is the fact that young Cullen was NOT working or doing chores when this horrendous accident took place. He was clambering up to be with his father while he operated a piece of heavy equipment. I fault the father big time for operating it carelessly - he should have turned it off to allow the boy to climb on safely - but it should be noted that his son was not working when the accident took place.
I really have to wonder how Jack Healy, the reporter, got the family to cooperate with the story. Why did they let him in to their home and allow him to take photos of the children? Were they informed of the spin he intended to put on this article? Something really doesn't add up here. Why would a family invite a reporter in to their home if they knew he intended to portray them in a negative light and open them up to scrutiny and public humiliation?
8
They call their kids "hired hands" and specifically state they'd have to hire laborers they can't afford, if the kids don't do the job. This should give you an idea of how much these children work.
26
The children are being used as free labor.
Maybe that's why the Schachtschneiders had five of them.
And they are NOT paying attention to the children's well-being: look at the size of them!
13
The children photographed for this article appear terrified. There are no life lessons of honor and responsibility when looking at these emotionally fractured or physically maimed lives.
14
Children should not be saddled with adult problems. Keeping you family afloat is an adult problem and one that is putting children in harms way. Children are not property or free labor. You cannot just do whatever you want with them, under the guise of freedom. For those supporting this risky behavior, ask yourselves this: If a teacher or babysitter assigned your child a chore which had them using heavy equipment, would you be ok with that? If they were injured, would you sue? Would you settle for “It teaches responsibility”? I don’t think so. If you would not let someone else put your child in harms way, you should not either.
20
What a horrifying story. How disgraceful for a parent to suggest that unless a child learns to run farm equipment at the age of six or seven, he or she would not be able to carry on the family business; their children would have no future. Immigrants come here without money in their pockets or a word of English. Yet they do whatever is necessary to make a better life for their children. They ensure that their children take advantage of our free educational system, they push them to go to college - all so that their children can have more opportunities than they ever dreamed of. But if the only education you want for your child is how to run a piece of farm equipment, what kind of future can you expect them to have? These parents should be ashamed of themselves. This is the ultimate fallout from the dumbing down of American society. You can climb out of anything with an education. Without it, you are doomed.
32
It would be hair raising to look into the accidents on Amish farms in PA. I used to live there and it is not only engine driven mechanical machines that cause great harm to children working on farms. In addition, Amish families do not respond as quickly, as the larger community does, to children who have been hurt. Their comfort level with the medical commmunity, and use of their services, is quite varied.
7
5 is definitely too young to be driving any heavy equipment. I have driven many tractors and a 5 year old probably couldn't reach the brakes or clutch on any of them and certainly couldn't press them. All these kids are doing is sitting in the seat holding the steering wheel, which may seem cool, but everyone involved would be much safer just rigging up a strap or bar to keep the tractor going straight, which itself is pretty dangerous. I think the basic rule should be that you can't operate any machinery unless you are physically (and mentally) capable of quickly stopping, turning, and performing other basic tasks on such machinery as it is equipped.
10
As others have noted here, this article doesn’t describe kids operating machinery. I live in a rural area and kids don’t drive skid loaders. And I’ve never known kids at this age to drive these kinds of machines. A five year old driving a skid steer? The article describes a child riding in a bucket and being killed. Or a child standing on the edge. Machines like these are dangerous. Large animals are dangerous. But don’t use this article as an example of the hardships of farm life. When a five year old runs over a three year old because they can’t afford to hire a person on the farm, that goes against common sense. Time to sell the farm. Keep your kids safe.
28
I'm from farm in Australia. All of us (my 4 brothers and sister) worked on the farm from a very young age; mustering stock on horseback, operating heavy machinery from trucks, tractors, harvesters, guns, combines, augurs, bailers, and many other farming implements. Most of these machines if not operated correctly are dangerous. In the 50's and 60's many of these machines did not have much in the way of safety guards or fail safe mechanisms. The result was that several of my peers in our farming community sustained serious injuries ...losing limbs, being badly and permanently maimed, sometimes fatally. The manufacturers of farm machinery have, over the past few decades, incorporated safety into their devices. This has reduced the injury toll considerably. Notwithstanding this, unless parents are safety conscious and instruct their children carefully in the use of this equipment, there are going to continue to be "accidents". Children, especially young male children, don't have a good appreciation for consequences. If they're to operate heavy equipment they have to be taught the consequences of inattention and negligence. They have to understand that the operator's inattention may be only momentary, and the consequences can be devastating.
My father taught us well. Different machines require different skill-sets, and he was careful not to allow us to operate equipment requiring skills beyond our abilities.
In retrospect I would not trade my childhood years for anything.
3
This is a very tragic story, and as a parent I have empathy for what these parents and families are going through. I also grew up in a rural area.
That said, 5 year olds allowed to run heavy machinery?! That didn't happen where I grew up.
I fond it profoundly ironic farm families bristle at the idea of laws about how old a child must be before operating heavy equipment-yet apply readily for government assistance/ low income health care when a major injury occurs. Of course I wouldn't advocate for a child going without needed health care, but where is the personal responsibility for the consequences of their freedoms? These injuries ultimately often are covered by taxpayers in some way or another, and this doesn't seem right either.
9
It was one thing to allow young children to help with farm work before these very large, very complicated machines. A plow behind a mule is one thing. These large machines are another.
Our nation has its priorities wrong. We need universal healthcare. A family farm should not mean parents risking the health and safety of their children.
I can see I’m in the minority here. But children do not have the cognitive development necessary for handling complicated, dangerous adult tasks.
18
They probably lack the reflexes, too.
6
I was raised on a small, working dairy farm. My brothers were feeding calves by aged 7, unloading hay/straw (small bales) as the sole persons on the wagon by aged 8, and driving the skid loader (what we called the machine referenced in this article) with guidance by aged 8 or 9. All three were driving tractors by 14--albeit with adult supervision and strict speed control/monitoring. We four were responsible for mowing our yard, our grandparents' yard next door, and our uncle's yard at our other farm (2.3miles away) weekly. We have pictures of my brothers standing behind the wheel of the pickup trucks, right hand on the wheel, left elbow hooked on the door/open window, and their heads out the window to see where they are going. In HS, we all played sports. We rarely missed school, we were honor graduates, and active in clubs, etc. We did not drink, smoke, etc. We went to school, practice/game, home to do our chores, then dinner, a shower, and homework. Today, two of us are college graduates. One is a combat veteran of two tours in Iraq as a Marine. Two are entrepreneurs. My point? Unlike so many of our peers and teens today, we understood nothing in life came free or easy. As adults, we are particular about the quality of which we do our respective jobs. We are disciplined. We are a direct product of our upbringing. Our parents did not put our lives in danger. Ever. They instilled an appreciation for life, a sound work ethic, and morality. My boys will receive the same!
4
I grew up working on a family farm too. On the whole it was a positive experience for me, but I knew children who were maimed or killed. There are many ways to raise responsible young people. Is it really necessary to put small kids in peril to develop their character? I don't think so. The parents have been negligent and the children have been maimed as a result of that negligence.
8
This article omits an important piece of information that would help judge the severity of the problem.
We are told that around 100 children are estimated to die in such accidents in one year.
How many adults die per year? Is the rate significantly higher, lower, or the same as for children?
3
One reads about child labour in third world countries, but who would have thought in 2018 that terrible accidents happen to children in the USA.
7
How many children under ten are hit and killed by a car while crossing a street in the city? What is the difference? This is not a worker safety issue. This is an issue of parents properly supervising their children.
4
My God when I saw the title I was wondering what 3rd world nation was abusing young children. Then, found it was the USA
52
I understand that big machinery might be foreign and scary to NYT types, but I'm guessing the rate of concussions in schoolgirls' soccer is higher than the rate of serious injury to working farm kids.
Anyway, I'm not sure what point you think you're making with the comparison to scalpel-wielding or roof-shingling. Young kids aren't educated enough to be doctors, nor strong and agile enough to work effectively at roofing. They routinely *can*, by contrast, do something like run a skidloader.
Sometimes kids are asked to do too much on the farm, that is true. But accidents are rare, and even then, it's not usually the kid operating the equipment that gets hurt -- it's often their small siblings whom the parents neglected to secure safely while work was going on.
By far the most common outcome in families like these is a kid who grows up unscathed, with a few extra manual skills, a close bond with their family, and a powerful work ethic that will propel them toward success and make them better citizens, neighbors, and partners in adulthood.
As one of those farm kids myself, I'd say the small risk that comes along giving kids early work responsibilities is well worth it. Take the time to train them carefully, stow the tots safely while work is going on, and it's fine.
8
From the third paragraph in the article that I doubt you read: "injuring thousands of children and teenagers every year and killing an estimated 100 more"
You just hand wave that away while peddling the right wing lie hat no one who lives in a city does dangerous labor.
10
Farms are dangerous places. They are replete with machines, grain bins, animals and chemicals that can all easily be deadly. My siblings and I escaped death or grievous injury multiple times in the years (50s, 60s, 70s) we were on the farm, and the risks haven't gone away in the intervening years. Even as machines have gotten improved safety features, in some ways risks multiplied with bigger machines and bins and larger herds.
Parents who allow their children to operate machinery, ride on machinery, or work in the immediate vicinity of machine operations, or to handle dangerous large animals or chemicals are negligent. It's that simple. The fact that we're talking about the mythical and romanticized family farm environment doesn't make endangerment benign, however often you repeat "way of life," and "when I was a kid."
46
After reading a lot of comments from people who grew up on farms, I have to say there's a big difference between a five-year-old and a ten-year-old. It's still dangerous, but a ten-year-old is vastly more capable. What I remember about being ten is that obviously, I was less informed, experienced and realistic about risk than an adult and certainly not as strong as an eighteen-year-old, but in terms of nimbleness and reflexes, I was close to my peak.
5
I feel like I just stepped into a Dickens novel...
How does a heavy piece of farm equipment. Built for adult size, and adult muscles, EVER fit a 5-6 year old? Kids this age should be driving trikes and toy batmobiles, not vast pieces of heavy hardware! How do they even reach the pedals? How do they maintain the adult grade of concentration needed? They really can't.
There is lots of "it's necessary," and "it's cultural" in this article. That just shows the blind spots in the logic, not that it's right. We once used the exact same two reasons to justify slavery on plantations, and child labor in Victorian mills, or children as Chimney Sweeps. It's still not right!
One person said their kids were their "hired hands." No, they are your children! This article covers why farm labor laws about children were fought against so hard under Obama. Sorry, but no. All this article does is show why such laws are necessary in the first place.
49
Different rules for different regions from the read of some of the commentators on here. If a twelve year old in the city/suburbs was left to babysit until a parent got off of work, and a younger sibling was injured , CYF and the neighbors wouldn't miss a beat. As long as you tag yourself salt of the earth, you can endanger your kids without social consequence when it comes to chores", I guess. My chores were about building character and personal responsibility...not saving the family home and business because my parents misjudged the costs.
33
18 or older to join the military, 16-17 to operate a vehicle, 21 to legally purchase alcohol. "Farm safety groups say that children should be at least 14 to drive tractors and 16 before they take the controls of skid steers or A.T.V.s. But the federal government has largely ceded safety decisions to families, saying that children of any age “may work at any time in any job” on their parents’ farms". This Country "says" we need to protect our children at all costs, but yet we do not hold parents "accountable" when they allow their 10 year old child to wander off without supervision, or the parents that allow their child to get possession of a firearm, that leads to another tragic death. This country talks out of both sides of their mouths. Same ole, Same ole.
21
The article’s discussion could be extended to include deaths of youth in corn silos—the example that I used in an American government course which I taught for years. Those who thought that the US had far too many regulations about safety argued that families should set the rules; others, of course, differed.
Well-done article; both the public policy and the personal troubles are well presented in text and photos.
7
It seems like this is one area where AI assist in driving would save lives. Especially considering that even adults are working long hours and driving because they have to, likely even when tired. I hope, too, that with this technology being developed for cars, trucks, and construction equipment, it wouldn't be that much more expensive to add this to these machines in manufacture. It's completely understandable, this dilemma, but perhaps improving the tools can help avert more tragedies.
This article made me think of this: https://www.wired.com/story/this-robot-tractor-is-ready-to-disrupt-const...
1
How many children are killed or maimed in this country every year because parents put them on four wheelers and dirt bikes and let them tear around residential neighborhoods with no regard for the neighbors or safety of the children themselves. I actually witnessed a toddler on a dirt bike. It had training wheels, the kid couldn't even ride a pedal powered bike yet! Irresponsible parents need to be held accountable, not glorified for such stupidity.
17
Both my parents grew up on the farm in the 1930's-40's. They were never allowed to operate big machinery, although my Dad was driving the family owned pickup truck on the farm at around the age of 8. But 5, 6, years of age? What is wrong with these people? Your kids are your "hired hands?" If farming is a business, and you can't afford to hire adults, then you probably have no business being in business. There should be legislation passed to prohibits children under the age of 16 from operating large, dangerous machinery, other than a lawnmower. We're America, not Pakistan!
25
If the family featured in this article were people of color - two severe, life-threatening injuries due to parents' lack of judgment and supervision - those children would have been removed from the home. No question. And probably, it wouldn't have taken two incidents to happen, CPS would be in there the first time. But the magic words "white" and "rural" absolves folks of all sins, apparently. Inexcusable.
76
Farms, one of the last great sacred cows of the American landscape. No hand of government shall intrude upon this august institution.
There should be something to the expression "equal justice under the law" but not so much where farming is concerned. Farms get all kinds of special treatment. They don't pay the same in property taxes as I am forced to do. They don't have to obey building codes, they don't have to obey child labor laws, they don't have to obey a while host of OSHA regulations for that matter.
I'm a building contractor. Not a quarter mile down the road, I can build a barn on my neighbor's farm of any size I want, using any materials I want, get my kids to shingle the roof and the government can't say boo about it. Not only that, but they are not taxed on the structure either. If I tried to get away with the same thing on my property, I'd lose my contracting license and be sent to jail for tax evasion and child endangerment.
Look, I love my farming neighbors, they're some of my best friends. I just want to be treated the same as them. I don't want to have to pay ten times what they do in property tax. I want to build stuff without supervision. Why can't I be left to my own judgment? Oh that's right, I'm the evil general contractor trying to screw over everyone in sight. The government has to protect the public from people like me. Never mind. Go Farmers, Go!
7
Sue, if you made big political contributions like the agriculture lobby does, then I bet you wouldn't have to worry as much about those pesky safety regulations.
6
I grew up in rural northern WI, and you cannot tell people there anything. My Catholic German immigrant grandparents were all from large farming families, 9+ kids, etc, and they all had brothers and cousins that were hurt or killed as children. That's why you had lots of kids. The government would be wise to simply keep out of it, and let the farmers rack up their children's death and injury tolls, and then turn to their God for comfort.
6
They may turn to God for comfort, but they turn to the rest of us to pay the medical bills.
I'm not sure what Cullen's medical bills due to this tragedy will add up to over his lifetime, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's already more than the total profit their farm has produced during the ten years they've been operating it.
22
Anyone who thinks a six year old should be operating heavy machinery (farming or otherwise) needs their head examined.
38
This was pretty common when I was young on the farm. I knew plenty of kids who were injured or killed in farm accidents. I now think that if one can only make a living using five or eight-year-olds as laborers, then it’s time to hang up the hoe & get a town job. Farmers fought regulation on this in the Obama administration. I say if you’re crazy enough to have your boys around dangerous equipment, then you reap what you sow. In the end, it’s not fair to children but we have an administration that certainly won’t act to protect farm kids. The Farm Bureau will make sure it’s status quo.
45
The notion that you can have all the reward without any of the risk is simply not realistic. The risks on a farm are huge and real unlike the sanitized virtual online world most kids grow up in, when they finally grow up at all. At the same time farm kids are unique in their ability to see what is noble in labor and responsibility at an early age . Bad things and tragic things are going to happen for sure and there are a lot of stupid parents on the farm and off. That is the cost for making great things possible. Be smart or get hurt, dont depend on the nanny state to do everything for you. Mediocrity is sanitized for your protection. Darwin rules in the real world.
2
Suburban/urban Americans like cheap milk. The current retail prices in the supermarket link back to a farm gate price of about $15-$18 per hundred pounds of milk.
At this price, margins for family dairy farmers are desperately thin,
Occasionally the farm gate price rises to as high as $35 per hundred pounds.
If this rate were consistent, dairy farmers could afford hired adult labor.
And city folk would need to pay about $7 per gallon for their supermarket milk.
Are the commenters here prepared to take their share of responsibility in the equation???
12
Do we care more for cage-free chickens than farmers kids? I would rather pay more for milk, personally. But I sense this is another one of those cultural divides, as in don't tell me what I can or can't do to MY kids. Americans are the wonder of the world all right.
12
I'd gladly pay more for milk if it meant children weren't exposed to such dangers, and their parents could hire, train, and pay adult workers.
17
Hmm, if the wholesale farm gate price went from $15 to $35 per hundred pounds of milk, and nothing else changed, this would add $1.71 per gallon to the end user's cost.
Worth it to me, if this is what it takes to stop child labor and mutilating injuries of said children.
13
As of last year, Wisconsin law allows children of any age to hunt with a mentor, who must be 18 and within arm's reach. Previously, the child had to be 10 to do so and could not carry a weapon. Now he or she can. Might need that skid steer to haul the deer out of the woods. 14-year-olds who pass a hunter safety course can hunt alone.
3
Isn't this just another facet of the overall trend, that some parents aren't nearly careful enough with their children? Yes, it's terrible that kids are maimed and killed by farm equipment, but this is about the same as the kids maimed and killed by guns, or eating laundry detergent pods, or pulling boiling water off the stove, or dozens of other things that end children's lives too soon.
I've been around lots of little kids in life, and I know full well that you have to watch them like a hawk, constantly, to catch them when they decide to try berries you don't recognize, or taking the cheese out of a mousetrap, or poking around in electric sockets. Kids have no common sense when it comes to danger, and parents should learn that rather quickly.
I'm sure plenty of farmers make their kids wait until they hit 15 to drive the tractor, and those kids usually get through childhood unscathed. Other parents have their kids use heavy machinery, and some of those kids pay the price. But we can't legislate parenting, so as tragic as this is, incautious parents have always existed, and there's nothing we can really do about it.
4
I wonder how much better off the kids would have been if their parents had stuck with their foundry and bar jobs, and perhaps had only has many children as they could afford to responsibly raise, including health insurance for all of them.
40
I know - when I read that they had five sons I thought the same - you can barely survive on your farm income yet you think it's a good idea to have, including the parents, seven mouths to feed. Bad decisions all around.
And for those who defend the practice of allowing a child to operate machinery that can easily kill them or others in their path, I know as many responsible farmers who would never, ever allow a child to even get near a piece of machinery when it was working. That includes the idiotic practice of allowing kids to "ride along".
12
In Britain, in the early part of the eighteenth century, children worked in coal mines.
In 1842 the Mines Act was passed. No females could work underground, and no boys under ten could work underground.
Now, one hundred and seventy six years later children are still enslaved. I wonder about the judgement of parents who have their very young children operate heavy machinery....
Surely these parents could hire college students to do this work, even if it was an unpaid internship wherein the college age students garnered experience.
5
Young adult Americans do not look for farming work. That is why we have 'migrant" workers at farms across the country. Some have temporary work visas, some do not. The need for workers is ongoing. Few Americans of any color want to do this work or other low paying hard labor jobs.
6
Safe working conditions on farms and encouraging kids to get an education should instead be paramount. If child labor is not permitted in certain kinds of industries, work sites, and with certain kinds of machinery under state and federal law, neither should it be permitted on family farms. State legislatures need to take this up immediately and address the issues.
3
Lawn tractors can also kill children if they roll over and some parents let their kids use power mowers as scary young ages too.
Government should have some common sense restrictions. There should be mandatory safety videos or something, I can believe not everyone knows to keep your 8 year old away from a tractor !
Economics should not shield you from possible child endangerment charges.
8
I am a lifelong equestrian. I have no problem with children working with large animals (horses, cows) - as long as they show themselves to be responsible and are properly instructed and supervised. In fact, this can help kids to learn responsibility and diligence, and give them confidence.
Having said that, there is no reason that any child should be operating farm machinery. Operating farm machinery is dangerous even for adults. For the sake of safety, children should be allowed to do only manual chores, while adults operate machinery.
8
Try cleaning a hind hoof of a stubborn mare, getting that last bail up in the loft, unsticking deadly corn pickers, farms are where we work. Kids own and raise a lot of stock, parents have to be aware and sensible but kids will text while driving to gymnastics class in your universe.This is a dangerous business, but kids love it and learn on their own, with personal responsibility. These accidents should never have happened, careful farming means being as sharp at 4am as suburban folks are at 9. It just is a tragedy, but it is farming, love it or quit.
The Nanny state hard at work.
The fact not mentioned in the article was whether or not Children represent a disproportionate number of farm accidents or not. Accidents happen in Farming its part of the life; If a parent is comfortable with the child's ability, then they have made that risk/benefit decision already. Lets hope, however, that Farmer parents are only letting the kids they are comfortable with operating the machinery and are physically capable of doing so, operating them.
Food is now required to mention on the label if GMOs were used in its production, right? Perhaps we should mandate that the labels also mention if child labor, paid or otherwise, was used in the production of the item.
17
I wouldn't trade my life growing up farming and raising livestock for anything in the world despite the ever present dangers-- and those dangers weren't only confined to machinery. Add in horses, cattle, and hogs, pesticides, herbicides, gasoline, diesel, even dangerous weather-- I came as close to dying from exposure in a blizzard and being beaten to death in a hail storm as I ever did from a machine.
Farmers are the shock absorbers between nature and your stomach. It's dangerous but I wouldn't trade any of it for the world, and often find myself longing for those wonderful days now long gone.
29
Maybe YOU wouldn't trade that childhood/life full of dangerous chemicals, machinery, animals, etc., because you're still alive to tell of it. Sorry we can't ask the dead and maimed children who weren't so lucky how they feel about it. But it's all good - YOU survived to tell of it after all.
18
Farm kids are safer than inner city Chicago kids.
8
Inner city Chicago kids, who live in the immediate vicinity of where I write this, are usually not obese. These poor underage farmhands are, to an actionable degree.
24
More fake headlines. He was not operating the machine, he was getting into it. Some older children can and should work on their farms, no 5 year old should be operating machines, as they are not.
8
You make a good point. The headline is misleading, as is the story to some extent. Cullen wasn't operating the machine - he was climbing up to be with his dad who was operating it.
There's a world of distance between operating a piece of machinery, and sitting beside your dad in the cab.
4
Read the entire article, there are examples of children operating machinery at 5 years old: A 3-year-old in Loyal, Wis., crushed last May by a loader being driven by his 5-year-old brother. Also, "Two years earlier, Cullen's brother Kholer, 8, had driven the steer into his older brother, Maric..." When Cullen was 6 he was driving a steer. Unless you find a big difference between 6 and 5 years olds operating machinery.
7
Economic pressure is not justification to put kindergarten-age children at lethal risk. If any other industry maimed thousands of young children and killed over 100, long jail sentences would follow.
This feels like the debate over the many "good people" in the KKK. How is this even an issue with two sides? Think about sex as an analog. The reason we have laws to protect children from sexual predators is because we understand that a small child does not have the intellectual capacity to provide "informed consent." Sex with a six-year old is by definition abuse.
How is being forced by parents to operate deadly machinery any different? On what planet is this not child abuse?
23
So, these farmers are using children as unpaid slave labor and are making them work in unsafe conditions that OSHA would not allow in other industries for adults.
Maybe instead of spending half the federal budget on the military and warfare, there shoudl be subsidies for farms to hire workers so that children do not have to operate dangerous heavy machinery.
14
Privatize the gain and socialize the pain. When the kids get stuck in the gears, who gets to pay for the years of medical treatment, therapy and rehabilitation. I can assure you, the cost isn't paid from the proceeds of bake sales and prayer. We don't have small scale backyard family operated steel mills or strip mines in this country, why make an exception for farms. Time for us to get over our romantic notions about agriculture and acknowledge that we are dependent on industrialized farming operations to support our urban/suburban populations.
19
Young children are free labor for farm families. Being the child of a farmer should not exempt a child from child labor laws. If a farmer cannot make a living without the help of free child labor he should seek another line of work. Being born in a farm family may very well be being born into a form of slavery. Farming is a business and should be subject to the same labor laws as all other businesses.
21
So who is capable of profitably producing milk for $15 / 100 lbs?
$14k return on $400 invested is 3.5% which is nobody's threshold for an economic return on their labors.
Who can make milk at this price!
5
I grew up on a large, busy, and efficient family farm. I was operating machinery by the age of 10, but I doubt that my father would’ve allowed me to use a bobcat. I do remember using a forklift when I was about 16, but I was pretty mature by then. I also remember the death of a young man who would have been my high school classmate; he flipped a tractor over on himself just before ninth Grade started, with his father watching.
Farm life can teach resourcefulness and pragmatism, but sometimes at a huge price. I am not sure that I fully appreciated either aspect until I got to medical school, where I saw both the value of resourcefulness and the extent of tragedy.
37
To all the people commenting that farm children have always operated large equipment, and that the family needs their labor to survive, I agree. We also used to have kids work in textile sweatshops and in coal mines. There's a train of thought in the comments that "city folks" just don't understand the importance of having children contribute to the family income, but you can bet those kids were there because their family needed their income to survive. Do you think it was wrong to outlaw their labor for the same reasons you think farm kids should keep driving tractors?
34
What is the purpose of operating this farm? To support one's family so that they may have a healthy and fully functioning life? How much is too much? Will the death of a child be worth it? Not implying these are easy answers, but certainly there are bigger questions to ask.
11
I was driving a John Deere tractor with a side wheel at the age of 14 (1961) in Kentucky putting up hay. They put blocks on the peddles that came off. So I jumped off the seat and gripping the steering wheel pushing down on the peddles and made this whole thing work. I still use these skills to this day in so many ways. 5 year old? Not so sure these people know what they are doing.
19
I find it disturbing how many people commenting here take the loss of life and limb of these kids so casually. This is neglect. If a child fell out of a window in a high rise housing project in a city, would you be so cavalier and reluctant to blame the parent. Kids of these ages don't work machinery in factories anymore for a reason - and they shouldn't be using heavy farm machinery.
Your "lifestyle", their leg.
47
Listen, skid steers don't hurt or kill people, people kill people. Also, we need to focus on the mental health issues of farm workers, not over regulation of skid steels by big gubermint.
6
Family farms function on cheap labor, mostly minor family members. Medium size farms depend on foreign labor, most of it undocumented. Absent this cheap labor, most farms would shut down.
I spent a lot of time on a family farm that would be considered small by today's standards. I learned to drive a tractor before I was 10. We did field work that built our strength, but probably led to muscular/skeletal issues later in life as our bodies were pushed to do things beyond reasonable capability of a pre-teen.
You really cannot hire someone who did not grow up on a farm to do farm work. First, they don't know how. Second, they would view the work as too hard compared to other jobs available. Third, if it involves care of farm animals, if improperly cared for, the animals get sick and could die.
Farm work is dangerous even for adults. Fall into a hay bailer or corn chopper, its like falling into a wood chipper.
15
Growing up in upstate N.Y. in the 50's I with all the other kids would watch the hay harvest with tractor driven haybailers. We were fascinated! Then one of the farmers fell into the machine. I can still hear his screams. We stopped watching after that.
4
I grew up this way. My dad and grandpa bolted down their tractor seats to override the safety factor designed to cut the engine when no one was seated since I didn't weigh enough to keep the engine running while driving the tractors. Danger was clearly communicated to me by the adults I worked with and it was understood that I needed to look out for myself. I and my classmates, who were all mainly from small family farms, prided ourselves on our work ethic. I loved the responsibility of being part of my family's business and I gained so many values that have helped me throughout my life.
However, as an adult, I find myself often struggling to understand a healthy balance of responsibility for a child. For myself, I still don't think I have a good sense of safe limits. And I continue to realize that working 12 hour days doing hard physical labor as a child has long-term effects on my health. Sometimes I wish someone would have said to my dad that his daughter wasn't allowed to do the work. But that's still the time my family memorializes as the time we were close, when we were all in it together, and the business ran like a well-oiled machine. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
I, who have had almost two decades of distance from this way of life, still don't have a good sense of what is right here. And I imagine that the families who would be affected by more regulation have far less ambivalence than I.
29
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reflection.
10
I grew up on a dairy farm in northern California, where all my relatives were dairy farmers. My earliest memory of driving a tractor was when I was 6 years old to help a crew gathering alfalfa bales on a hay field. I brought the 200+ milk cows in for the afternoon/evening milking beginning when I was 8, which was when my father also began to train me to milk. This early training had gone on in our family for many many generations, as it had in other families with a dairying tradition, and safety was an essential part of the training.
Growing up as I did meant I always had a lot work to do before and after school and on weekends. There were tragic accidents among my relatives and our neighbors, mostly involving adults, and improving farm safety should be a high priority. There was, however, another side to the life I grew into generations ago. The work habits, sense of responsibility, and, yes, safety consciousness I learned on the family farm served me well during university years through a PhD and later as a university Professor, advising graduate students doing field work in the aquatic sciences. While we must work to improve safety for farm children, let's not eliminate the positive aspects of growing up on a family farm.
43
'While we must work to improve safety for farm children, let's not eliminate the positive aspects of growing up on a family farm.'
James, nobody is working to eliminate the positives from growing up on a family farm. The problem is that nobody in power wants to make it safer. The black helicopter crowd/flat earth society blocked reasonable regulations proposed under Obama that would have protected young people from harm, and there is no one these days who would give these kinds of safety reforms a snowball's chance. America seems happy to extol the benefits of family and community, while pushing a laissez faire capitalism that puts the health and safety of our children at dire risk.
19
What's the right age to teach a child how to use machinery? It depends on the child. When I was a girl I rode in the back seat of the car when my father was at the wheel. My mother didn't even know how to drive, which was not at all unusual for Brooklyn in the 50s. I had a hard time learning to drive when I was twenty, mostly because I'd inherited her hesitancy about getting behind the wheel, and because I rarely sat in the front seat observing how the car operated. The expectation was that children "could not" drive cars so it never occurred to me to observe and figure out how it was done.
My son, on the other side, always sat beside me in the front seat while I drove standard. He also watched Daddy working on cars and bikes and handed him tools from the age he could pick stuff up. When he was twelve my husband decided to teach him how to drive, in case he ever "had to" in an emergency. (We hiked in the mountains, so it was possible that an emergency might happen.) Much to my surprise the kid already knew how to drive when he got behind the wheel that first time in an enormous empty parking lot simply because he'd been given the chance to observe for so many years.
Kids learn from being with their parents. This is a fact that's being rapidly lost in our culture.
38
Exactly! We live in the mountains and own our own mountain, so my 12 year old is an essential safety manager for his 60 year old dad if he gets hurt on one of our many types of scary machinery. He can drive them all when need be, and will soon be a better operator than myself. As his own mechanic, he will never be preyed on by the dreaded auto repair shops. REAL life skills, so badly lacking in our urban society today. Okay, my kid just came in with a bag full of precious lions mane mushrooms! Dinner for tonight.
I lived in Brooklyn until I was 13. Neither of my grandmothers nor my mother knew how to drive. We moved to Miami and I got my first drivers license at 14. I could drive a small motorcycle (under 5hp braking) or I could drive a car in daylight hours with a licensed driver in the car. At 16 I got a full operators license. At 18 I bought a 1968 Camaro with a 396cu. in. engine and was driving on I-95 at 140 MPH or faster when I knew I cold get away with it. I could outrun most cop cars. Ft. Lauderdale was the first city to buy Dodge Chargers to use as pursuit cars.
I went back to Brooklyn at 19 for 6 months (got drafted) I was astounded that my 31 year old uncle was going to driving school to learn how to drive. He finally got his license but he was never a great driver.
And that has nothing to do with this story. 13 is a huge difference from 3,5,6,8,10 years old.
Your uncle probably took the subway or walked
4
Five years old is way too young of course, but I'd like to see a comparison of child injuries across other family lifestyles.
My late father-in-law had many stories of growing up on a farm, and I marveled at the independence he learned from an early age.
As a child he and his brothers would canoe through rice fields, knocking rice off the stalks and into the canoe to sell later. They cut ice blocks from Minnesota lakes to sell in town. On the farm, he learned to repair or build literally anything, and when later married with children he built an addition to their home single-handedly.
Being city born and bred, I don't have a fraction of his survival skills. Now 7-year-olds have smart phones, but we also have record numbers of adolescent anxiety.
6
balance seem lost...tribes may have had balance in spreading out the labour
Prices are plummeting for wheat, dairy and other products? Prices in the grocery store aren't. Where is the money going? To grocery store chain CEO's? Companies like Nabisco that make processed foods? It is unconscionable that these families are in a position to have 5 and 6-year-olds operating machinery, when at even twice that age they still could not get a license to drive a car, because they are not making enough money to stay afloat.
26
It's the Zombie Farm Apocalypse!
Economic Darwinism is waiting with it's shotgun raised.
I'm sorry, but if the proposition is "The price of milk dropped from $20 to $15 per hundred." That means there are more 100 weights of milk being produced than needed at $20. The only solution is for there to be less 100 weights of milk being produced. So, maybe the farm needs to grow something else. Marijuana? Blue Berries? Honey bees? IDK, SOMETHING Chickens, Goats? Something.
Or they need to close down. Then the surviving farms will be able to get $20 per hundred weight and they can hire hands and let their children go to school.
Or don't sell milk. Make cheese, make butter, condense the milk and sell it in little cans, evaporate it and sell it in the dry goods aisle to survivalists. Contract with homeless shelters and food kitchens to buy all you produce at 10% less than the market (which will rise because your production is taken off the market).
There are lots of other things to do. Putting 7 year olds in the path of danger can be summarily ruled out!
19
So government has given a pass to rural Americans to use their children as unpaid manual and heavy-equipment labor, for tradition's sake, especially when the family farm's finances are shaky. It's just good old American work ethic: the whole family pitching in. Well so is leaving older children (not teens) in charge of younger ones. Humans have been doing this for millennia, after all. But if an *urban* mother (or father), working 2 jobs or at unreliable hours, gets caught leaving an 9yo at home in charge or a 5yo social services would swoop in with the quickness and pleas of need, parental autonomy, or tradition would fall on deaf ears. We do like to treat our rural ("hard on their luck") and urban ("irresponsible") poor differently in this country don't we.
To be clear, neither situation should be permissible, therefore both should result in proportionate and even compassionate intervention/oversight by child welfare authorities. Americans should also support all services (including family planning) that don't leave families in these kinds of binds in the first place.
65
Would these parents hire out their young children to neighbors in order to teach them a way of life and "do chores?" Very, very doubtful.
11
The neighbors usually couldn't afford to hire them.
1
If you have to put a 5-year-old to work on a piece of complex machinery to stay in business, then you need to get out of that business. I'm sorry, I know that sounds harsh. And I know that family farming isn't just a business. But risking the life and limb of a 5-year-old to save it, think about that for a minute.
58
Who has less faith in farmers' ingenuity? The government that tells them to stop making 4 year olds work on dangerous equipment or those who say that preventing these children from that work will destroy the farms. It is a good bet that if young farmers' children are excluded from the most dangerous tasks, their families will find other ways to make the tradition part of their upbringing and continue the profession.
16
The clock from DuPont Cheese, reminding the family members of their daily responsibilities and their corporate master, is a telling inclusion here. I wonder if this is as much a story of how the agribusiness juggernaut is grinding rural families into pulp as it is a reminder that there is a continuing role for government. It's unacceptable that Dickensian conditions still exist in parts of our country. Operating heavy machinery does not qualify as "chores." It's skilled labor for adults. Any politician who argues otherwise is willfully blockading his or her constituents from enlightenment, in service of profit.
24
I regret that I didn't check on Dupont (NOT DuPont) cheese before posting my comment. According to its website it's a local, family-owned business, so the fact that it buys from the Schachtschneiders isn't really germane to a discussion about corporate agribusiness. There still might be a strong argument for increased government regulation regarding child labor in farming but my comment doesn't add much to the discourse.
8
When I was 9 a school friend of mine was killed when he fell from the back of a tractor and was run over by the trailer it was towing. The driver of the tractor was about 12 at the time.
I think I was about 13 the first time I drove a tractor unsupervised.
That was the 1980's in Ireland and back then there was plenty of PSA's about farm safety and the danger's for children.
Before reading this article I had never heard of an 8 year old driving a skid steer or a tractor.
50
Little Cullen's story is tragic. However, it seems unlikely that there is any viable policy response to such a tragedy, inasmuch as the nation is comfortable sitting by while many more thousands are killed by gun violence each year--and unlike farming, those guns don't have any shred of family/social/economic raison d'être.
12
To the author: is there any account for donations? Thanks
This is simply child abuse. We don't let kids drive cars for good reasons. Farm life can include so many things. Operating such equipment can be learned quite adequately starting at an appropriate age. What age is that? The answer definitely does not include numbers with only one digit.
22
We don't let children drive cars because non rural life rarely prepares them for that (or nearly any) responsibility. I can see why city folks are horrified by the specter of youngsters preforming adult responsibilities. They are imagining their own children in those situations and are rightly concerned. But farm life is a very different culture and farm kids absorb very different skills, values, and levels of maturity from their farming experiences.
Children mature to whatever level the environment and culture asks them to. City children are immature because we city folk shelter and infantilize our children out of a romantic notion of childhood innocence. In the process we produce children who are fearful rather than confident, rebellious rather than independent, and bored rather than purposeful.
Only 100 killed out of 2 million farm families? Even 1 is tragic. But the solution is not to legislate an end to these practices. It is better support for farm worker safety, whether family or not.
It's a mistake to force our city sentimentalities on farm families. 100 child deaths per 2 million due to farm accidents is nothing compared to the rate of city children dieing at the hands of other children with guns or drugs for example.
To the people opposed to federal regulations on the operation of this dangerous machinery: Do you also think we should get rid of age restrictions and licensing requirements for operating a motor vehicle? I know that farm equipment can't go nearly as fast as a car, but both types of machinery can--and do--kill people if used irresponsibility. To oppose federal regulation of the use of one type of heavy machinery, but not another, is hypocritical, in my opinion.
18
"...children as young as 5 grow up in the driver’s seat of machines many times their size...injuring thousands of children and teenagers every year and killing an estimated 100 more."
Farm equipment is many many times adult size. It's a high risk job--actually dozens of jobs. Farmers must be Jacks of many trades.
Ole MacDonald had a hobby farm, by today's standards--and even they are dozens of high risk jobs. How many adult farmers are injured or killed annually?
And the equipment is only part of it; chemicals--fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide are another high risk.
Workman's Compensation Insurance doesn't apply to family farms--so safety standards and monitoring are lax.
And so are the environmental safety standards. Today's "factory farms" are well known polluters of air and water--ground water and river water.
And they use huge huge quantities of it to grow cattle, hog and chicken feed--so humans can eat "high off the hog"--high up the food chain.
Much wiser to be at least 50% vegetarians.
Save on health care that way too.
9
There's certainly an argument to be had about regulation here but this isn't a federal issue. This legally should be handled by the states. Besides, there's hardly going to be a one size fits all solution for the entire country. That's the whole point of having states in the first place
3
The Trump administration is implementing policies to allow younger immigrant workers to handle dangerous chemicals in the fields. After all, it's about the bottom line, not safety.
8
There are a million accidents that can happen with kids, but at the same time we can't wrap them in bubble wrap until they are adults - it's how we've ended up with young adults who are frankly not prepared to function as adults or community members.
Why do we care about farming accidents which are related to livelihood and family traditions, but we don't care about shootings involving weapons of mass murder? Because what else can you call guns not designed for real sportsmanship.
There needs to be a reasonable balance between government interference into family decisions, and sensible regulation for both farming and guns. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and we sure have more than our fair share of fools at the moment.
4
Great point.
1
No one should try to live out some unrealistic, unaffordable dream at the expense of his or her kids.
25
Agreed. The business plan for this family enterprise seems to have been to breed farm hands to pay off the mortgage. And what is the game plan for these kids when they grow up?
5
There’s a reason farming families had so many children....you lose a few along the way. Is this still necessary?
27
Stuff happens. I grew up on a farm. I drove a tractor hooked to a hay wagon in the hayfield when i was 8 years old. But that is all I did for awhile, by 12 I was driving a more powerful tractor, plowing and discing a field to plant corn or soybeans. I picked up haybales and loaded t hem on a grain elevator. Never got hurt and nor did my two younger brothers.
Accidents happen, l total agree with the idea that parents should decide when their children are old enough to operate a tractor or a utility farm machine.
In the city you have kids that are in their teens that have no work ethic whatsoever. Government has gone overboard on child labor. This article is biased, and I would ask where did the author grow up? What are his built in opinions and bias. Much journalism today is opinion about facts, and with the internet more opinion than fact. I am pleased that the Obama Administration responded by listening to farm families.
3
Are you saying that these children did not die or were not seriously injured? Or that it's OK for some kids to die or be maimed because parents should be able to decide if they're comfortable with their children possibly dying?
Or are you saying that it's no big deal if some 5 year olds get killed by farm equipment because, oh well?
16
I’ve been an educator in NYC for thirteen years. Those kids that have after school jobs (the money from which goes straight to the family) from the moment they can easily lie about their age in order to help out? That miss classes in order to take shifts? And have been watching siblings, helping to keep house, escorting elderly relatives wherever they need to go since much earlier than that? The ones that don’t get to go to college precisely BECAUSE they need to continue fulfilling these duties for their family? How dare you say they have no work ethic. One doesn’t need to operate dangerous machinery at the age of 7 to be considered hard working. How ridiculous and insulting.
20
Exactly. This idea that only the salt of the earth = "real Americans" needs to go away.
2
I'm 68 and still live on the farm where I grew up, but I don't farm. My dad put me on the most dangerous piece of equipment there was starting at 8 years old. It was common practice in the neighborhood at the time. I've watched my children, and grandchildren grow up and over the years I've many times thought, "What on earth was the matter with my parents? How could they be so stupid to put a little runt kid like me on equipment that could kill me?" I looked at my own grandsons and thought how wildly inappropriate to consider putting THEM on anything like even a riding mower. Believe me, I understand the economic pressure to have free "hired men". I was one. It's long past time to put a stop to this. If the farmer can't make a living, it's time to get a different occupation. I've done exact that.
101
These are children.
Tiny bodies, hands and feet.
Common sense should be a no brainer here.
6 years on the planet doesn't qualify a child to have the agility to physically operate, and understand the sheer danger of operating heavy machinery.
The seat, I'm sure is not " child size" nor modified for a child.
The controls, designed for an adult by the manufacturer, are not meant to be handled by a child's tiny hands and feet.
Small children DO NOT belong on heavy equipment that can kill them or maim them for life.
Riding with your toddler on your lap?
Don't see the danger in THAT ?
Obviously the farming community has gone deaf dumb and blind on common sense.
26
An intolerable beginning photograph, I look at the child and cry for the child.
4
Growing up, I worked on a farm a hundred miles south of the farm in the story. We used bob cats, loaders, dump trucks, and tractors starting at a young age and never had any injuries due to their use. I also don't remember any friends at nearby farms having injuries either, but they certainly do happen. We we're just lucky. We were also blissfully unaware at the economics in play.
This story highlights how desperate conventional farmers are in this country. It is no longer financially feasible to have less than 200 milking cows on a conventional farm (non-organic co-op), and some would say the minimum is even higher. When we have to rely on unpaid child labor to literally put food on the table, both for a consumer and farmer, then the system is broken.
While reading this article I thought about my grandfather who worked a small hog farm in western Wisconsin for 50 years and was able to put all five of his kids through college (keeping in mind tuition at UW-Madison in 1969 was $250/semester). I wondered how many of these current farm kids would get the opportunity to go to college and what job prospects are available to someone whose sole profession has been as a farm hand?
These are big, complicated, and very political issues and they need to be talked about a lot more.
34
Ok, so talk about it.
Do you expect me (who has a more than glancing knowledge of farms but it is certainly not as much as farmers have) to direct the conversation?
I wouldn't know where to start the conversation.
So you tell me what it is that YOU think ought to be done. YOU come up with the plan of action. I'll be glad to help, but that's all I can do.
2
This will only change when family farming is completely replaced by industrialized farming. Agriculture is moving in that way, but it's not yet there.
1
And it shouldn't be. A family farm is a small business--one that is every bit as legitimate as the small business of your corner tavern, your attorney working from a home office, your dentist, the predatory real estate agent trying to sell the farm to ADM, Koch, Monsanto..........
Save the family farms! Make America a place for equal opportunity and the pursuit of one's dreams.
4
JKatz:Spoken like a true capitalist who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Ultimate Lib: you are much closer to the truth. We should recognize that family farms have a positive social value, as well as an ecological, nutritional, and environmental value, and subsidize them. This is done directly or indirectly in France, Japan, and a number of other enlightened countries. Failing that here in the land of the free, we might as well cede agriculture in its entirety to factory farms, with bad food, bad soil conservation, high profits to the 1%, and no better worker safety.
6
Skid steers aka “Bobcats” are some of the most dangerous machines on a job site. They have poor visibility, are prone to tipping over and are often operated by newer employees (as opposed to the larger, sexier pieces of equipment). This is a recipe for injury or worse in any job site.
I understand that country living is different and agree that parents need to teach their kids to respect equipment. My frustration is that the children did not choose to work in hazardous conditions. One solution may be common sense industry guidelines and possibly basic classes on farm equipment operation for children. They might also learn best practices for equipment maintenance (which wasn’t addressed in the article but is definitely a concern).
County folk are mighty proud of their grit and toughness, but yet they often don’t have health insurance or are willing to assume unnecessary financial risk. What kind of lesson is that?
I admire the family in this article but if it were me I’d have pulled up stakes long ago. Best wishes to the kid in his recovery.
11
We all assume the healthcare costs. Their independence is due to our subsidies.
9
$14 a gallon for milk and $25 for a block of cheese should end the subsidies to them.
1
So we have handfuls of family farms using child labor, but 9/10s of US agriculture is actually industrial farming? What are the figures on this? If the US were to return to decent food and smaller scale agriculture, not factory food, would we need to endanger children?
2
My husband and I have our own very small family farm. None of our kids are over 10. I wouldn't dream of letting them operate our tractor or other heavy equipment -- they are simply too young and, frankly, lack the judgment to operate heavy equipment. Nor would I let my kids come within 20 yards of the equipment we are operating -- if the kids want to climb up, everything is shut off first and they have been trained never to run up to equipment from the time they could walk. There are tons of farm tasks kids can perform to help out that they aren't risking their lives to perform. As others have pointed out, if you are required to use your very young kids to perform tasks that have such a high risk or catastrophic injury, then you really need to reconsider whether farming is the right choice for your family. No child should have to die or live with a life-long disability due to their parents' reckless decisions.
341
A very important point is made here; i.e. that children "lack the judgement to operate heavy equipment". As this writer points out, there are many chores children can do on a farm that do not endanger them.
12
I'm all for children learning the value of hard work, doing chores, etc., but when you have an 8 or 6 yr. old handling heavy machinery, that's just nuts. My blue collar dad, who started work at 13 wouldn't even let me mow the grass until I was about 16 and strong enough to handle the machine.
Farming, dairy, livestock all require long dirty hours and being at the mercy of weather. When these dedicated family enterprises have to use the labor of their small children to survive something is very wrong.
A typical loaf of bread these days can easily cost over $4 and cheese is outrageous - $5 for a four oz. tube of goat cheese for example. I suspect the big name corporate entities are the ones raking in the $$ instead of paying their suppliers enough to make a reasonable profit.
Add in the medical bills and it's truly insult to injury. Wisconsin - home of Scott Walker and Paul Ryan, whose goal is to eliminate the ACA, Medicaid, etc., and of course cut taxes for the people who profit off of families like the Schachtschneiders - and I have to wonder who they voted for.
41
Agriculture: The backbone of America. We are, undoubtedly, the greatest agricultural country in the world. "God shed thy grace on...purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plains."
It seems to me, states should have controls in place for family farms. Maybe protective clothing? Minimum age for operating machinery and driving? I'd set the age at 12. The younger ones can do stoop labor, picking crops or setting milking equipment on the cows' teats; feed chickens, collect eggs, assist with raking manure (must watch those animals' hind legs, though.)
I have never farmed, but I had friends who did. It is an accident-prone business. Children under the age of 12 should never operate heavy machinery.
In many rural areas, schools celebrate agriculture with "Drive Your Tractor to School Day," and all those 12-17 year-old students thunder in with police escort, showing off their equipment to envious elementary aged little kiddos, in awe of anticipation for that same privilege.
9
After reading Thoreau's Walden I volunteered to be a 'Farm Cadet' one summer @14, fantasizing that I would be helping an aging farmer plowing a field with one horse and reins around his neck. Instead I ended up working on The 1,000
acre Peters Homestead in Callicoon NY which had sixty cows to be milked with three machines and by the end of the summer we had put in 30,000 bales of hay. In my city kid ignorance, I thought driving the tractor to be the ultimate in being a farm hand. Imagine my surprise when I saw 8yr old Timmy driving the tractor. That's because, frankly, even a child could do it, (and he never made a mistake) and the real work was in hoisting the bales of hay onto the flatbed wagon in 130 degree heat. With the limited number of hands, it was unthinkable to use anyone else but an eight yr old to do the easy work - driving the tractor. I believe Timmy grew up and took over the farm. But I also know that the farm needed him to do the driving - and he had no trouble. Kids were taught very young - their responsibilities and how to do the jobs that they could. To have outlawed this would have been inconceivable to Farmer Peters, his dad. Not to mention that the independent minded kind of citizen that he was - would have objected strenuously to having someone tell him what he could let his son do and not do. In the end, one of the proudest accomplishments of my early adolescence was being given a bonus of $150 to the summer wages which were $15 / wk plus rm &board.
26
Great point. My kid is that Timmy type that takes to mechanics and machines from the DNA in his make up. Does quite well at the piano too. At age 12 my kid can change the oil and numerous filters on a bulldozer faster than the average befuddled 19 year old with only cheeto powder under his fingernails from eating at the keyboard. And for fun, he also speaks Polish fluently as a second language. Kids like this get to pick their life's journey instead of being swept along by the tides of gangs and ignorant school 'teachers'. Nothing worse than someone at age 20 that can't change the oil, filters, plugs, bumpers or radiator on his car, and is held hostage by the plethora of crooked mechanics out there.
Well this sounds like idiocy to me, I mean why are they even bothering to farm. Wouldn't let my kid do that. On the other hand we don't need to add a ton of dumb regulations telling poor farmers, how to have their kids do farm chores. That isn't going to help anybody. Its just gonna drive up their costs and be impossible to enforce. Seems like the govt could sponsor more farm training and actually making sure farmers (and everyone else) have affordable healthcare would be more beneficial.
5
@Scot - the government has had good education programs for farmers through the Agricultural Extension Service for many years. 4H clubs for children* are covered under the same program, and they also have good safety programs. But the funding for the extension service is one of the things being cut back severely under Trump's appointees and their staff.
* 4H was originally conceived as one way to get modern (this was the 1920s) farming methods and information out to the farms when many of the parents were stubborn about doing things the way their parents had and not changing.
4
A child's life is always fraught with dangers. Ask any kid living in the inner cities of America.
4
I'd cheerfully suck up an increase in the price of milk if it means that children stay off these machines until the are old enough to handle them. My worry is that the middlemen would get the markup and it wouldn't go to the farmers.
24
Young children ALWAYS have operated machinery on small farms and ranches in America. What are the rates of injury compared to those among adults? If they're not comparatively excessive, then what's the issue? If BOTH rates are regarded as excessive, do we deprive small farmers of economic viability to serve the interests of Kumbaya political correctness?
At least in some part, Trump was elected based on this mounting disgust and impatience among the people with the insistence by elites in intruding in EVERY aspect of how individual lives are conducted; as were an undivided Republican Congress and two-thirds of our state governorships and partisan state legislative chambers.
Get out of my life!
Because children that can’t read or lift a 25 lb barbell shouldn’t be operating heavy industrial machinery.
43
If I don't have 2 pay 4 these kids injuries in some way...I don't care. If I do, your in my life, I'm in yours!
6
Get out of my life, except when those medical bills come due.
12
We lived in the country for several years (only non farming household in our immediate area). All of the farmers were very aware that farming is rated one of the most dangerous occupations in USA. All neighborhood kids would ride on laps of farmers for a bit at beginning of each season, but there was awareness that children needed to be in teens before allowed to operate equipment under supervision.
Most of the boys grew up watching and eventually helping fathers repair nearly all equipment. No surprise some of the sons in area became engineering students when older.
10
There is a significant difference between bottle-feeding calves and driving machinery. For the woman who said "they are our hired hands", there are all sorts of jobs to be done on a farm, which have been the same for generations. Family farms were not always so vehicle heavy, which is why children were able to contribute fully.
For farmers to have fought commonsense restrictions is simply heartbreaking- who will protect these children?
47
All heavy equipment is inherently dangerous. This includes cars, yet we allow small children to drive along with us in automobiles despite the risk of injury or worse.
In the summertime I rode a tractor sitting alongside my father and manure kicking country grandmother when I was a very small child. It was part of life. It was what my father grew up with. As an adult I supervised my eight year old while he fed cows. He learned to push these gentle 600 pound beasts if needed. There was an element of danger to it - large animals can be dangerous - but there was even more danger in sheltering your children from anything potentially harmful. I taught my children to use sharp scissors and exacto knives as well because these are tools I'm very proficient with. People who are fearful of large animals and sharp tools are much more in danger from them than people who learned young how to handle them safely. We develop skills most easily when we're young.
All of this has to be done with supervision, mindfulness and rules. I wouldn't have given an exacto knife to an eleven year old who was afraid or didn't possess good eye hand coordination. I wouldn't let a child use sharp tools without supervision. Many parents today actually spend very little time with their children. The children are in school and daycare for most of their waking hours. Parents often don't have a good understanding of what their child is capable of, simply because they don't spend enough time working with them.
3
Living on a small family farm in Massachusetts, I have always thought there is a BIG difference between helping the family and endangering a child. Sorry, driving equipment like a loader or skidded is for people who are at least 16. We have plenty of dangerous tasks to do as adults. Even adult can get themselves killed. Four years ago our son (then 23 years old) plowed snow with a John Deere bucket along cranberry bog canals. He slid sideways into a bog and was pulled up by our excavator. If he had gone the other way he would have drowned. Just luck, but if a 10 year old did it that would be insane and I think criminally irresponsible.
29
So the farm parents draft their six-year-olds as unpaid labor to teach them the importance of work and responsibility? No, the parents are teaching their children that adults value their land & income more than they value their children. As one farmer after another explains, their kids are unpaid labor. Without that unpaid labor, the farms wouldn't survive.
And, somehow, as so many of the comments proclaims, this is meant to be a good thing. The virtue-signaling of people who work on farms (or worked on farms as children) is one of the great constants of American history: we are the noble yeoman of the land, and the rest of you exist because of our ceaseless and godly toil.
I don't mind if low-income farmers enslave their children; I do mind if their greed & carelessness maim or kill them.
When the NYT does a story about the overseas factories of Apple, or Nike, the emphasis is always on the exploitation of child labor; and the comment threads blossom with indignation at the Dickensian narrative. But that's different, right? That's corporate cruelty & avarice. What happens on those family farms is not that, not at all, not even a little bit.
82
Farming is one of the most dangerous jobs in America and there are programs at Future Farmers of America and online for safety, machinery, etc. These should be used. I grew up on a farm about 100 miles west of Odgenburg Wisconsin and am exceptionally proud of what we accomplished and the family bond and work ethic. I completely get that the work is not over until it is done. BUT, it is simply to much to ask a child (I'll say less than 12 years) to operate heavy machinery---both physically and mentally (anticipating what can go wrong). I feel sorry for the Schachtschneider family regarding the equipment related injury---I can only imagine the nights they been wide awake thinking through what happened. I loved my time on the farm, and wouldn't change it for anything! But we can't keep having these types of injuries in children. Farming is tough enough as it is, even for adults. Wishing the Schachtschneider's the very best--and especially to Cullen---hang in there, and get as strong as possible.
15
Charles Dickens would be impressed. Seriously.
30
I'm no expert, but I do operate a loader on occasion, and the last line paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb. Never travel with a raised load.
The boy hopped into the skid steer and drove it across the snow to a spout where ground-up cornstalks and kernels poured out of a silo. He filled the bucket, pulled a lever to swing it high in the air, and spun the machine around, steering it toward the pen of waiting cows.
15
Kids who are 5 or 6 are not "hired hands." It's one thing for them to learn responsibility by waking up early and feeding chickens, it's another thing entirely to have them driving tractors. I understand that life in rural farming communities is vastly different from city life but kids still need to be introduced to things at an age appropriate time.
I'm also not sure how children of any age "may work at any time in any job" on their parents' farms does not violate child labor laws. Chores are very different from jobs--I'm surprised that this hasn't had different outcomes in court. At the end of the day, children are not free labor and should not be used or considered as such.
43
Children have been driving huge farm equipment for as long as there has been farm equipment. From spring to summer- then early fall I see monster-machinery on wheels (going 5 mph) overtaking the roads where I live. Looking up I often see a tiny head barely peaking out over the driver's seat. Third and forth generation dairy-kids; cotton and corn family farming; BTW- this is in California. This is just a way of life no different than a plumber, electrician or tile setter teaching the future generation- the trade.
3
Yes, and you don’t see 6-year olds working these trades.
2
A rare article about a longstanding danger and nightmare. My father "asked" me to drive a tractor the summer I turned seven in the early 1960s. I was excited to learn how to do it and in the one, short practice run with him operating the clutch and the brake, there was no problem. The next day he told me to go get the tractor from the field where it was parked on a dirt uphill path. I had no concept of what "popping the clutch" was or how the tractor would react. The front of the tractor started bucking up and down, higher and higher. This was an era before tractors had roll over bars. When the tractor stopped bucking, the one thing I felt for sure was that this was something a 7 year old should never do.
Parents and parenting can evolve, however. My sister took up farming as her livelihood after college and married a gentleman with his own large family farm. They raised four remarkable and gifted children using an adult consciousness and, I trust, the common sense not to send early elementary school children out to drive tractors by themselves.
133
Grew up in Nebraska, but we were the city slickers of the family. All of my extended family farmed. I remember looking on with envy as my 14 year old cousins were allowed to drive trucks to school. Of course, they were doing 80 on gravel roads. It's actually a miracle any of them survived to adulthood.
A hundred years ago, families would have eight or 10 kids, and they all had to contribute hard labor for the family farm to survive. Even small children had to help. Times have changed, but what's left of the family farm is quickly dying. Huge corporate farms are taking over, where they have the profit margin to afford modern machinery that allows one person to cover more acreage than in the past. Smaller family farms have it tough in every way imaginable. If you regulate when kids can help out on the farm, you're essentially signing the death warrant for family farms in this country.
With that said, parents need to use more common sense. What kind of a fool puts a five year old at the controls of a 2,000 piece of heavy machinery? Trained adults still have accidents with those things on construction sites, so what hope is there for a small child, who doesn't have years of experience to guide them? In this case, I think a good rule of thumb is that you allow only what is safe for the conditions. Kindergarten children on skid steers probably don't fit that description.
12
I live and worked not too far from where these events took place.
Barbara Lee is a saint who spent her professional life trying to educate farm families on child safety. Alas, only a few listen to her.
Being a small dairy farmer is almost like joining a cult. The cows must be milked twice a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. There are no or very few vacations for these farm families. Economic ruin is always just beyond the horizon.
Many farmers were raised as they presently raise their children.
Who would enforce a law or regulation limiting chidrens access to dangerous areas of the farm or dangerous equipment?
When the child came into the health care system did any physician report child neglect to the social workers? Did the social worker send a report to the local DA for possible prosecution . The answer is probably no to all of those questions.
Should the answer have been yes? But I can assure no elected DA in a farm county would prosecute those cases.
So the child is crippled for life, health care bill pile up and the family has no insurance so all of us pay.
Collection jars will show up in stores, bars and fund raising events will be held but as sure as night follows day the tragedy will be repeated.
203
So you give up on enforcing child safety just because it's on a farm? They don't seem to have a problem enforcing rules about who can operate a slicer at the grocery store or the deep fryer at the local fast food restaurant. You aren't going to have to prosecute many. A handful of felony child abuse convictions with big fines will sent a message farmers will quickly adjust to. I happen to be in Nebraska. Have the Douglas County/ Omaha prosecutor set that pace. The farmer vote doesn't much matter in that County. The message will spread quickly across the State.
5
A 5 year old has no business on or near a skid loader. Death traps in my experience as a owner of many large excavating machines. My son has been in my lap for many years - 12 now- and has moved up to MOVING them up and down our mountain, and driving trucks and cars on our private roads. He has become my legs now that my back is failing. Kid can change a tire and oil faster on anything faster and more safely than 'Quick lube' and will be able to find "summer work" soon at $30 an hour as a mechanic or dozer operator - not a flippin burger flipper at $8 an hour!
I worked on tobacco in CT when I was 14. Bad idea then and bad idea now. I almost lost a thumb when I didn't pull my hand out fast enough from a machine. I lost the nail and that was enough. My farming career was done.
9
Wisconsin didn't choose the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, which would have provided the entire family with health insurance. How is it these child laborers are not covered by either workmen's comp or Obamacare? What's the matter with Wisconsin? Have they no sense of decency?
91
Instead of decency, we have Sleezy Scott Walker, who last fall eliminated the minimum age of 12 to allow a youngster of any age to hunt deer with a rifle.
4
The pro farmer commenters here seen to be neglecting the fact that this family has only been in farming for 10 years, and borrowed heavily to make their "dream" come true. Now they have to maul their children to stay above water. This is a lesson in folly, not responsibility. Will they file for bankruptcy at some point? Perhaps. That will be a lesson in failure and heartache.
62
Relative to the number of children who work on family farms, very few are injured even though they do very dangerous work. There should be more accurate figures. This one family had two children seriously injured. Either these parents are really negligent or very poor teachers. The second accident was the father's fault. He should not have let his child climb onto a running machine. Either way, one would think they would consider giving up this type of work.
9
Recently I saw an article somewhere that spoke of the high rate of suicide among farmers/ranchers. This way of life is teetering on the edge of collapse. One of the reasons is that the profit margin narrows every year
These are the people who keep us eating, but government policies and the political influence of corporate farms keep them just above the poverty level.
They do not work their children because they are stupid or neglectful parents. They work their children because they are using whatever labor is available. It is almost impossible to hire a part-time farm laborer, but if the farmer hires a full-time hand he has to provide benefits. And those would be benefits that the farmer and his family do not even have. And he could not afford to pay them or the full time salary.
I do not think a 9 year old should be operating heavy equipment or even driving ATV's, which happens quite often with suburban children vacationing in the mountains, but if the child labor laws are enforced on family farms it will the the last straw.
Small farmers are in the forefront of sustainable, organic production. Corporate farms could care less. Yes, we need to protect children, but can the Times suggest ways to keep the family farm afloat and the children safe?
2
Will immigrant workers take away the jobs of 5 year old farm children?
22
Astounding writing by Jack Healy. The statistics are available on line; one child agriculture related death every three days and 33 injuries a day. But Jack Healy puts a face on these injuries.
The rôle of religion is paramount for these people; it is an act of God that their children are injured, an act that cannot be avoided.
Their logic, or lack thereof, is revealing. Caleb Schachtschneider says,
“It’s like an extension of you,” he said. “If you’re around it, you’ve got to teach them. They need to know because they’re there. Otherwise, they’d get hurt worse.”
But teaching should be moderated by caution. That "they'd get hurt worse" would fail in a company, as Jack Healy mentions, because companies have risk analysis and lessons learned.
Clearly what these people want is to be left alone, sans "government intervention". Just like gun owners who occasionally shoot themselves, they do not want government regulation. It is part of the native primitiveness in our culture; it's a distrust of knowledge. There are lessons learned, but they feel that they are better learned the hard way.
Well, then there are consequences: Their children will be injured or die. They become inevitable statistics that these farmers believe cannot be changed. And Trump is there to cater to them by saying that they can go about their way.
They may believe that their children need to perform work around the farm without government regulation, but that puts responsibility on *them*.
22
While the scenarios described are tragic and unfortunate, it's one thing to read and write about them vs. living and working the farm life.
The farm life I lived in the 1950s was similar to the Schachtschneider family with one key exception. My dad had a full time job at a soda plant, bottling Hires Root Beer and then come home to our tiny 80 acre dairy farm to work the fields and tend the livestock. There were 9 kids in our family and each had a chore but not out of total necessity in keeping the farm going. Our parents believed in instilling hard work, discipline and the sense of responsibility to contribute to the family.
When I was 7, I used to sit on my dad's lap when he drove the tractor in the fields. He let me drive it alone until I drove it into a patch of mud and it became stuck. The neighbors helped getting the tractor unstuck. That was one of the few times my dad didn't beat me for messing up. It was a good day.
My mother would not allow me to get a horse because she was afraid I would break an arm or leg. Both of my parents were very strict about not letting their kids do things that could result in injury. After my tractor debacle, no sibling operated the tractor or any other piece of farm equipment until they were at least 13.
There were tragedies in our area - the 9 year old neighbor boy tipped the family tractor over and was crushed underneath while another boy got his arm caught in the combine.
Parents do the best they can at the time.
35
I remember "working " on my aunt's farm when I was young. But if my memory serves, I did things that were pretty safe..feeding the chickens, slopping the pigs, and in the summer, riding on top of bales of hay in a pickup truck my sister, who was sixteen, drove. When I got older, my uncle taught me how to milk a cow. I learned a lot about hard work etc but then there wasn't the heavy equipment there is now. I rode in my Uncle's lap on the tractor but never was taught to or allowed to drive it. I feel for the families who are close to poverty and it sounds like a dairy farm is very different than my aunt's and I wish there was an easy answer to their problem but I'm afraid there isn't. I have fond memories of my time on the farm.
70
Parents need to use some common sense regarding farm work. Especially with regard to farm machinery. It is the same with other owner-operated businesses. You can't use child labor to run factory machinery. You would not be able to employ children at a fast food restaurant, they could burn themselves cooking and might not follow cleanliness rules, etc. If you can only stay in farming by using child labor, may be you need to sell your farm and find another line of work. My husband's grandfather 's farm was sold back in the 1940s because all the sons had become school teachers and none of them wanted to give up school teaching to run a farm! You have to move on some times.
7
i could not help but wonder what this family's life would be like if the parents just worked and did not have the large mortgage...but just a few animals to round out the family's food supply and teach work ethics
3
My father grew up in rural farm country in upstate New York. My grandparents lived next door to a farm and they had certain equipment for outdoor chores, and my father was taught to drive a tractor when he was around 11 or 12. No one thought anything of this. When he went to Vietnam, he was the only person in his unit who could drive a standard vehicle - all thanks to that tractor - and he got the job of driving a giant truck hither and yon whenever he was called upon to do so. Therefore, to a certain extent, I understand these people: farming is truly a way of life and it is a family affair, and it can impart valuable skills. But the other side of that coin, the safety side, can adequately be summed up by my father: of his own experience it was, as he put it, "a different time".
Even in my father's time, I doubt six-year-olds would be have be permitted to drive farm equipment, nor would three-year-olds have been allowed nearby when it was going. There is a certain amount of plain old common sense that these parents failed to exercise. A dear childhood friend of mine grew up on a horse farm and, while she was allowed to do certain chores and handle certain pieces of equipment, there were things that, in the name of safety, her family simply did not permit her to do. There is a no reason a 5-year-old, even an ostensibly supervised one, should be driving or handling farm equipment. It's a recipe for tragedy and disaster, as this article sadly proves.
311
Here in Indiana, we should not have teens walking down the grain either.
2
I've no doubt that's true, Name. Farming communities know far more about this than I probably ever would or could, that's for sure. As my father likes to say when discussing the tractor-driving lessons of his youth, it was truly a different time. Had we lived next door to a farm with tractors or needed to use such equipment on our property when I was growing up, he would never have permitted me to use it at 11 or 12, to say nothing of my mother.
1
To clarify: neither my father nor my mother would have let me drive a tractor at 11 or 12.
1
It is possible to run a farm safely, but it requires changing old practices at the local level and harmful agricultural policy at the national level. Our rural communities deserve better than this.
5
And yet these communities resisted common sense regulations.
4
I grew up on a dairy farm in Eastern Canada. Yes the machinery was dangerous, and yes we sometimes got hurt. But we also learned the value of hard work, that we have a responsibility for others (animals can’t care for themselves and they need to be fed/cared for 24/7) and it takes teamwork to get things done (bringing in the hay or silage s not a solo job and when working with equipment, we needed to watch out for each other). I may not live on a farm anymore, but I have tried to carry those life lessons forward and have great respect for those families who still do, it is not an easy life.
38
Couldn't you learn the value of hard work without risking your life? Or losing a leg? What does a child who lost a leg say to a parent when they get old enough and learn that it could have been prevented?
33
As someone that grew up in this environment I'm deeply sympathetic to both sides. I wouldn't trade those childhood experiences for anything in the world. There is nothing like circling a field in a tractor as the sun sets. Yet I recognize it isn't rationale to allow dangerous conditions that wouldn't be allowed in other workplaces. I hope this isn't regulated but it is dangerous to allow individual parents to make their determination on what is risky behavior. (For what it's worth, I never would have been allowed to run equipment before the age of 10).
66
Having grown up in a series of farming communities, I feel for these families. However, taxpayers end up footing the bill for medical care that can stretch for years--not to mention the cost of disability for 100s of the 1000s of kids injured. In these cases, it *is* in the financial interest of government and taxpayers to intervene.
You may say my outrage doesn't outweigh a parent's right to have kids do "chores" (that, in this article, they freely admit they'd use hired help for without their children). In fact, back when they farmed, most parents on one side of my family had at least five or more kids precisely so they'd have farm labor.
Would we be okay with a chef having his five-year-old be his sous chef or do all the knife work so he can be ready to take over the restaurant? No, we'd step in and say the child can't work in the restaurant, no matter what the task, and certainly not with knives.
We already subsidize farms, in a variety of ways, with our taxpayer dollars. I just had no idea this was one of the ways.
372
How about letting the child wash dishes, no knife involved or mop the floor or many other not dangerous tasks that could be performed by a child. Our child labor laws have promoted the unintended consequence or delivering teen agers that lack a work ethic and expect the government to care for them with a welfare check.
1
E W
Same thing in Canada. At 5 years of age we used to visit friends who were farmers. They had a son the same age as me. He would drive the Massey Ferguson tractor. I would stand on the hitch and go for the ride. None of the adults even gave that a second thought, and of course I didn't because I was too young to know better. Later on, as a young adult, I became a farm hand and then took some courses at Kemptville College Technology. The practice of children doing chores and using heavy equipment was still considered "normal". I don't think that will change. There is only so much the government can do. Common sense has to take over from there.
2
Typical idiotic city-speak from someone that knows no practical work. My kid has been wielding a knife and sharpening them since age 4, when we make sausage at home. Now at 12, and with a collection of knives and guns, he will never shoot himself by accident or another - and he has yet to cut himself with a knife in all those years.
For every kid hurt on a farm, there are a hundred in the cities destroyed by drugs, street gangs, and broken families. Far safer in a silo than most streets in Chicago or Boston, ad nauseum, etc.
1
What about young adults and adults, middle aged farmers, older farmers not yet of Medicare age, where do they get healthcare insurance? After an injury before Obamacare, they couldn't get healthcare at a reasonable price. That was good for the corporate America and Republicans. It was another way to move them off their land. Rural Americans, standing up for the "free enterprise system." Vote for Trump and Paul Ryan. They'll fix things.
19
These are powerful machines that require much more than the ability to move them from one place to another. They require judgement and young children don't have that judgement. Neither do some parents. I assume that when the bucket bit into Cullen's leg, the bucket was moving. No one should try to climb into a steer while the machinery is moving.
I'm all for children learning from doing chores but the chores need to be commensurate not just with physical skills but also with judgement. And that need for judgement should include the adults. Instead of using pre teen boys to run the steer, why not Mom?
56
I'm pretty sure I was about 12 years old before my suburban dad taught me how to use, and allowed me to operate the gas-powered lawnmower, which was a marvel of 1960's lack of any safety features.
If the venerated 'family farm' has to depend on unpaid child labor at heavy machinery to function, then it should go the way of Dicken's work houses.
I think it was only about a year ago that there was an article in the Times about the number of teens killed in grain silo accidents, another absolutely preventable, and horrific way to die.
The price of food should cover the cost of producing it at a living wage for adult workers, not subsidized by the lives of children.
468
Far more children died in school shootings, car accidents, street crossings and street crimes than any number in grain silo's. Far, far better to be working in a grain silo with safety TRAINING than to be dodging drive by bullets because you wore the wrong scarf that day.
1
- when our republican politicians won’t participate in meaningful gun control and don’t support healthcare including mental healthcare for all then we are stuck with babies having babies, and kids who need mental healthcare instead getting guns illegally and killing people. In the meantime there are child labor laws in place because as a society we all agreed children should not be working. Not in a farm, not in a factory, not as free and forced labor for their parents.
2
I grew up on a small family farm in upstate NY and now I have a small family farm in NC. When the economics get to the point where we have to endanger our children to pay the bills, it's time to move on and retrain.
The rationalization, the justification the adults make is the same argument given when children were... are sent into factories. A child should not risk their life, their health or safety or that of those around them when they do their "chores." We are sanctioning child labor. Period.
598
Glad somebody actually understands that child labor is child labor: rationalizations for it are given worldwide.
20
Well said !
1
I thought crusaders like Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis had helped eradicate these abuses 100 years ago...but it is still "Ok" if families do it to themselves???
2
There's not much point in trying to impose labor regs on family farms. Near impossible to enforce and will only generate resentment for little practical results.
4
Imposing regulations that are hard to enforce can also send a message that the act is wrong. Maybe it will get some parents to think twice about sending their kindergartners out to work on the farm for free. Some will continue to try to get away with it while others will likely realize the risks aren't worth it.
2
I am from a farm in Germany and its the same thing there. I dont know how much the government laws will do if they are not enforced. I do believe a lot could be done with just going from farm to farm and present the statistics to farmers. As the article rightfully notes - the problem is that they often cant afford extra labour and it is not that they are simply irresponsible (even though its difficult to call it anything else - I know the mentality). My father was always very worried but it did not stop him from letting us drive the machinery. I think if someone would have told him once more how dangerous it is and how many accidents happen - I believe he would have actively looked for alternatives then employing his kids. One my brother took over the farm he relied on his 9 and 11 year old kids to drive these huge machines. He did listen to us and started then to employ retired folk from the village or teenagers and young adults for the harvest season on a hourly basis. However, there is another aspect of it - kids in particular boys are really eager to learn how to drive the machinery and it is hard to keep them off and when you are desparate for help I can see how easy it is to give in because it feels like win win. Your kid has fun and you need help. To sum up, reminding farmers of the danger (they know but work pressure makes them ignore it) will be more effective than only passing laws.
75
In the United States the Extension Service does just that with safety training for adult farmers and with 4H for the children. Or rather it did. The Extension Service is one of those programs feeling the chipping away of federal funding by the Trump 'presidency' appointees. The states and counties are paying the costs now, but my county has less than 2,000 total residents and can't afford to pay the full salary of a 'county' agent and needs to share one with another slightly more populous county that has different soil, and crops, and farm sizes leaving one overworked county agent 50 miles away.
3
If you are a responsible parent focused on safety, then your kids starting at @ age 10+ can and should be introduced slowly to the machinery. If they WANT to drive them, that means that they will take the training to make that desire safe. The kids that don't feel good at the controls and are pushed into the job WILL be hurt. Let them become accountants.
2
At the age of 5 or 6, I, as was many of my cousins, put on a small tractor (Farmall Super A) to steer while hay was being collected on the following wagon. Finally I had reached the Big Time! Every farm kid I know can usually remember that first time driving a tractor and the feeling of pride and accomplishment. We were finally pulling our weight and not just collecting eggs or picking rocks. Danger? What danger?
This all happened in the 50's and 60's on a small dairy farm in the aptly named Farmington, CT. And as we got older we were given the opportunities for more responsibility which also had the increased chance for serious injuries, most of which did NOT happen. We were all aware of what could happen and were respectfully cautious of the potential dangers. We at young ages were exposed to firearms, power tools, tractors, trucks, mean cows, dangerous heights (climbing silos), unsupervised swimming in ponds, and probably fifty other things that would send todays parents or child care experts into terrified tears. But most survived with minimal damage, physically, emotionally, or psychologically.
What I do wonder about today, is there any difference between the rates of injury or death when comparing farm kids to inner city or suburban kids? Which is inherently more dangerous and by how much? That might rally tell us something.
59
Your questions at the end are salient. But, as the article noted, data gathering to answer such questions are inadequate at best. Perhaps that's where we should start.
1
Oh , I completely remember the experience as a rite of passage. I felt pride at being given adult responsibilities. Maybe it was necessary at the time. It isn't necessary now. It's reckless and inexcusable. Jeez, you can go to jail for doing far less to a dog. I think we'll agree that children are more important than dogs. Are you kidding about the accident rate? What kid gets killed by heavy equipment in a city? Are you trying to equate this with gang violence? If so, that's just silly. The alternative to child labor isn't gangs.
5
The children who didn't survive your experiences are not here to give their viewpoint on these activities.
7
What is it the parents don't understand? Evidently no lesson was learned when the older brother was injured just two years before this horrific accident. Is the family farm so important that parents risk the health/lives of their own children? That is not responsible parenting. It is borderline criminal.
It would be against the law to hire a grade school child to run heavy equipment because of the dangers involved. Why is it acceptable when a parent demands such work?
142
Not borderline criminal - it is criminal neglect - two children horribly injured, one disabled for life!
3
Regulations are an important check against self-interest. Children should absolutely be prohibited by law from operating or being near heavy farm equipment. It is only common sense: they are too small, their judgment is undeveloped, etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately, government generally no longer has the will to serve society's interests as a whole, so it is impossible to legislate protection for children on family farms where they are considered more as labor instead of as individuals.
However, Wisconsin's statute of limitations in tort is two years after the child's 18th birthday. If Cullen lives that long, he can sue his parents, and he should. In this anti-regulatory climate, we really do need tort lawyers.
34
This, in America, in 2018. It's insupportable and actually cruel treatment of children who, after all, just want to please their parents and feel all 'grown up' in the process. The perfect "hired hands".
The financial cost of such a labor set-up is self-evident.
44
There's a big difference between milking a cow and driving a tractor or using other very dangerous power tools.
All the quotes from farmers talking about how they want to teach their children responsibility and have them learn to farm are irrelevant. The issue is that children should not be forced into labor nor using dangerous equipment before they are old enough to use it safely.
105
Responsibility, it appears from article they signed up for insurance after accident, please correct me if I misread the article.
Lotsa folks all over the country are going broke farming. it's easy for those who know little about the reasons to pass it off as the fault of their favorite fall-guy politician; and it's also pretty easy to blame parents who have their kids run farm equipment.
Note though what the article said, an entire family netted $14K after farming full time and working two part-time jobs, and no health coverage. Folks, that is evidence that we are failing as a nation.
143
Yep, $14,000 for a family, and that's after the US government subsidizes the heck out of corn, milk, soybeans, and a whole lot of other products in order to prop up those markets. The conventional food system was developed post WWII and we have left it to the free market to manage. Anyone surprised by this result hasn't been paying attention.
6
We may be failing as a nation, but is that an excuse for them to fail as parents?
6
I am surprised to hear this at a time when parents are arrested for letting a 9 year old walk to the park. I have always felt strongly that parents should raise their children and not the State. I drove an outboard motor boat at 8 years old. Would they put my parents in jail today for that? Probably. It’s not my place to judge other parents.
50
An outboard motor is no where near as dangerous as a skid-steer.
4
When you have two children seriously injured in two separate machinery accidents, you are doing something very wrong as a parent. Your primary job as a parent is to keep your children safe.
10
Only in progressive areas are parents arrested for such, not in farm country.
3
Cullen was tragically injured by his father's error, not by operating the skidsteer himself. They are very safe for the operator, who is completely enclosed in a cage and locked in with a bar or seatbelt. His father neglected to press a button to lock all the hydraulics for the wheels and bucket before letting his son climb in.
My eight year old neighbors son used to drive the bulldozer around for fun and feed the cows with the skidsteer. Ten years later he is an expert operator getting well paid by a local gas producer. I wish his parents had emphasized safe operation more but federal regulations are not the answer.
104
Everywhere child labor brings the same comments of poverty and how no one must interfere. If the country can spend so much on wars, especially uncalled for invasions, napalm on Vietnam, Willy Pete, Gitmo, etc, we can do better with farmers AND kids. What is money, knowledge and compassion for?
12
If federal regulations aren't the answer, what is? Clearly relying on parents to be responsible themselves isn't working.
4
"I wish his parents had emphasized safe operation more but federal regulations are not the answer."
And wishing is? Parents who permit their children to operate machinery - or ride on it, or work around it - before they are mature and aware enough to do so - are guilty by any definition of child endangerment. The fact that they do so on a farm is not a pass.
So again, if not regulation, what?
3
Farming is a way of life, and it is good to shine a light on the risks and dangers, but those risks and danger are not only to children. Adults on the farm get hurt, maimed, killed, too. Wish you would shine a light in that direction! Good article, pulls at the heartstrings, but frankly, it is incomplete without coverage of the overall risk to farmers, their families and employees. They feed the world, but at what cost?
7
Three and five-year-olds being used as farm labor? If that took place in some foreign country we would shake our heads and think how backward and cruel they are. But, because it happens in Wisconsin we think it's ok? These parents are every bit as negligent as the parents in cities who let their children wander the streets alone. Except those city parents are prosecuted and sometimes even lose custody of their children. If it was discovered that young children were put to work in sweatshops in the city making cheap clothing, the owners would be prosecuted. But farm children work hours each day and are mangled in machinery and no one thinks a thing about it?
131
I'm sorry, but I think this is crazy. That boy will probably have issues with his leg for the rest of his life because his parents put him in a position that he wasn't mature enough for. Children are dead because of the same reason. I understand the value of kids doing chores, whether that be working on a farm or helping with cleaning the house, walking the dog, etc. But, why do kids need to operate the heavy machinery? Surely there are jobs on the farm that do not require them to operate deadly machinery that is not built to be controlled by someone that small?
118
So, why is rural healthcare so important? Our Senator, Jon Tester, walks around with 3 fingers missing on one hand due to a farm injury. He goes to work everyday in hopes of preventing issues like WHERE kids like this get treated when they have a life threatening injury. He wants it to be affordable and not a catastrophic event when a child is injured (a helicopter flight in Montana can cost $20K plus for a 50 mile flight to a medical center). He would also like healthcare to be affordable so these kids HAVE coverage. He would like these farmers to have reliable internet in case this kid can't make it to school. One Senator in WI would like the same (Tammy Baldwin)...the other probably thinks that this is totally cool...who needs regulations right Ron Johnson? Somewhere Bob Lafollette is rolling over in his grave.
21
Economic necessity cannot be used as an excuse to allow child abuse to continue. We have child labor laws for a reason. This needs to stop now.
96
This is very sad, but many people in rural America don't want 'big government ' regulating how they run their businesses. Even sadder, I would bet more children are killed or injured by gun violence than farm machinery; so maybe Congress and the president can offer these families 'thoughts & prayers.'
25
Quick CDC search puts child gun deaths at over 1,300/year and farming related child deaths at 110/year. No action based on these numbers will happen, except for "thoughts and prayers," i.e. "ignorance and inaction."
7
Perhaps Trump can use this story as another example of how reduced regulation is helping our economy.
13
Come on, getting up early to help with chores like feeding the chickens is one thing. But feeding large livestock and driving farm machinery? This is unnecessary and ignorant. What are these adults thinking?
52
Farm life is hard work. Americans are getting used to buy cheap produce no matter how unethical, illegal and immoral ways of production. This mentality needs to change. Politicians are looking for vote bank and don't hesitate giving false promises to gullible and sometimes "willing to look other side" farm hands. Subsidy goes to mainly large corporations who don't deserve them. Farming should never be corporation dictated ventures. These children are dying needlessly. Religious preachers have a vested interest in using Church as bully pulpit. Farmers are not sufficiently educated. Wall street will never make America Great Again but at present seems to be deciding fate of many Americans in a wrong way. Let us all pray for the best for the Farmers and their families. What else is left but despair? Grapes of wrath rev 3?
4
How do these numbers compare to the number of kids killed by gun violence each year?
3
What's the correlation? Parents aren't actively involved in putting their children in front of a gun (usually, there was that one crazy 2nd amendment lady who let her child get hold of her gun in the car, and probably some illegal owners who aren't careful).
7
Growing up around machines and animals that can kill you develops a sense of consequences and attentiveness that is very valuable.
Such experiences develop pragmatism because a lethal machine or animal is not ideological. You must take care to get the job done and not get killed or maimed.
The current infantilization of "youth" to age 30, cultivated to sloppy attention by the the "re-boot if you fail" video games, and unable to concentrate due to the distractions of "phones," are simply an inferior human product.
These days, I see Hispanics growing up working hard in the fields as children, perhaps moving into construction and food-processing in their teens, or late teens, and marrying and raising families also by their late teens -- just as the mainstream people did until the Reagan recession gutted our manufacturing.
Meanwhile, we make excuses for "under-developed brains" of teens as to why infantalizing them is appropriate. The human brain knows "cause and effect" by age 6, and if you are faced with real consequences, you learn to pay attention with self-discipline. There are no benefits to extending childhood, cultivating an incompetent and slothful "youth culture."
In sum, while we should make farm work as safe as is reasonably possible, exposing all children to an environment of real consequences would be better than keeping them in "social diapers" until they are 30.
8
Mainstream people did not marry and raise families in their late teens until the Reagan recession. Average age at first marriage in 1980, just before Reagan, was 22 for women, 24 for men. Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, the average ages were in the 20's.
3
Craig, no doubt it's great experience...if you survive it. Might as wll weed out the irresponsible ones early -- that's the net result your Darwinian philosophy.
1
Craig--
Coming from multiple generations of farmers--and remembering riding on tractor fenders myself--I have no patience with such excuses for parental neglect--the kid should NEVER have been standing on that piece of equipment--he wasn't working, just watching. I'm so tired of people using "farm culture" as an excuse for negligence and irresponsibility.
5
How does the injury and death rate for children living on farms compare to those who don't live on farms?
8
Per article the 6 year old "had grown up" around this equipment. No he did not. He still has not grown up. He's 6. He will be grown up at 16, 17, 18...not at six. Ridiculous statement.
201
You have to wonder what kind of people are these negligent parents. Shame.
19
These parents do what farm families have done as long as there been farm families. The work has to be done to make the farm work and somebody has to do it. That somebody includes the kids. the problem now is throwing machinary into the mix. It was a lot different when my father and his brothers and sisters drove a team of horses.
7
You have to wonder more about people that judge others. If you read the article with an open mind, you would have understood what kind of people they are.
3
These people only bought their farm 10 years ago. They have drafted their children to work because they got themselves deeply in debt. It's not some generational legacy they are carrying forward.
43
Is it worth nearly half of your adolescent child's leg to save a few dollars a day on outside-the-family help?
93
Where can I hire help for "...a few dollars a day..."? Things must be a lot different down in Texas than they are in Tennessee.
6
A Peace Corps to help US farmers? Why not?
6
In Texas, perhaps they could get cheap help. But it is not like some well-kept secret. If those farms can afford to hire help, they would have already.
This really should be illegal, family ties and profit be damned. Two children hurt, one who will certainly pay for it for life, and the farm is struggling and the family lives in poverty. Is it really worth it?
125
Truth be told this is an anachronism. Factory farming is what brought down the price of milk to the point of starvation of family farms.
5
Amen to both you & CK. The most recent "de-regulation" is that USDA is proposing to allow slaughter operations to decide if an animal is unsafe for slaughter, instead of USDA inspectors on site (& there really aren't enough inspectors anyway).
When I was growing up & living on the farm, we knew the quality of the local small-town butcher operation where my dad/in-laws/neighbors raised their own bee/hogs & took them for processing, but I don't need to slaughter a steer for just me at this point in my life & buy very little meat because I'm not comfortable with the conditions on the factory farms/corporate slaughter operations that the corporate chain grocers use to supply their meat.
Every person who complains about "gubmint reg'lations" ought to consider if they really want to start growing their own food, because there's lots to be concerned about with the corporate control of the food supply.
However, coming from a multi-generation farm family, I have no patience with people who choose to put their kids at risk like this...especially, as was noted, a town person who put a kid on a lawn mower/etc. & an incident occurred wouldn't get off with "accidents happen."
4
Trump's America - where every child is "free" to work the Federally-subsidized land-which-we-don't-talk-about-because-it-puts-a-hole-in-our-narrative-about-the-bad-ol-govment
130
It’s great that these folks are trying to be self sufficient and teach their kids good life principles. Then again one has to wonder what the thought process is where they have to attempt to buy health insurance after a major accident. One has to wonder who they voted for, and where they stood on single payer health insurance (until they needed health insurance for their child). I feel sorry for the whole family.
This article, while an interesting snapshot of rural life, is also an indictment or our screwed up healthcare system. It is the perfect example of where, if we had a better system, it would empower folks to take more risks in starting small businesses, and to survive if a calamity occurs. Why are there’s so many Republicans who are too stupid to see this? Or are they taking advantage of folks who aren’t smart enough to figure it out?
Shameful....
160
Wait, is your argument that universal health care would be good because it would free farmers to expose their children to dangerous equipment?
1
No, the point was that a better health system would be one less point of potential financial disaster for farmers & others.
Until the ACA, we farmers had virtually no affordable options for health insurance, unless we or a spouse had off-farm employment that included insurance. Even with that off-farm employment that included insurance, I still talked with my Ob-Gyn to barter down part of his bill in exchange for meat when we butchered a steer after our son was born in 1985. With mega-corporations owning the DRs/hospitals/etc. (we have only two DRs left in private practice in our whole county, where there were once about 25 private practices to choose from within a half-hour drive).
Unfortunately, @Rockets makes another sad point--farmers have been suckered by the anti-gubmint rhetoric to the point of self-sabotage on a host of issues. I highly recommend Thomas Franks' 2004 book *What's the Matter With Kansas?* https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../the-man-who-asked-whats-the-matter-wi.....
5