Saturday's Child by Robin Morgan Read Free Book Online

acknowledging their shadowy presence, although I know that the inclusion of the above-mentioned statistics risks heightening the contrast between such children’s situations and anything approximating what wasmy own. I can hear a reader gasp, “How can you possibly compare …,” and indeed, I am not comparing. It’s always a failure of ethical nerve to settle for compare-and-contrast-oppression competitions. Instead, the challenge is to use one’s own suffering as a skeleton key to gain access to the suffering borne by others. This does not mean arrogantly assuming one understands anyone else’s pain; it simply means acknowledging it, with empathy and respect—not pity— and offering active support toward trying to heal it.
    At first glance—certainly as measured against the hideous situation of a child worker in, say, the carpet factories of Nepal—a child performer in Europe or the United States can appear incredibly privileged, to herself/himself as well as to others. After all, the basics—water, food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education—are firmly in place; in addition, sometimes there’s wealth, fame, adulation. Yet these promised or actual privileges make any idea of revolt more indefensible, in turn making the distress and anger more bewildering. The wounds are different, the scars less visible.
    Although the hardships of child labor can differ dramatically in degree , they are intimately related in kind . The premature violation of innocence is the same, as is the loss—lifelong—of truly comprehending what “play” is. Accelerated maturation, inflicted responsibility, imposed discipline: the same. The boil of emotions confusing the child—fear, rage, sadness, and an odd, indomitable pride—is the same, and so is the deeply embedded ignorance of how to be idle. The fantasies of rebellion are the same, as is the guilt at entertaining such thoughts, because rebellion would violate the trust and respect adults have bestowed on you by giving you such responsibility: you learn to mistake their requisitioning of your labor as “trust” and “respect” for your sanity’s sake—denial as a survival tool.
    Interestingly, whether in a hill village in South Asia, a London music conservatory, a Russian athletic gymnasium, or a Hollywood film set, the adults’ justifications are also the same , giving a new meaning to the term “labor relations.” Their repertoire includes the following:
    You’re lucky. I never had the chance to improve my family’s life, but you do .
    (Or, conversely:) I was working at your age. Why shouldn’t you?
    How can you be so selfish? Do it for me/us .
    Look what I’ve/we’ve sacrificed for your sake; you owe us .
    It’s the way out, don’t you see? (Out: of poverty, the village, the working class, the projects, the ghetto …)
    You should be honored to be given so much responsibility at your age .
    You have a God-given talent/gift/skill/opportunity, and it would be a sin to throw it away .
    The child reels at the clutter of such multiple messages, because the child hears all at once how the justifications range (and overlap) from the hypocritical ( You have to love doing this or you couldn’t be so good at it! ) to the brutally frank ( It’s not a choice; we need the money ).
    A child contributing financial support to her/his family is in a very different situation from a child doing household “chores,” which is in turn distinct from a child helping out on the family farm or in the family store (albeit too often with little or no wages and little or no respect). Being a breadwinner child is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different. Being the sole breadwinner is a terrifying assignment—because under all the adult propaganda runs a core message:
    Without your labor, the family will starve. Then who will care for you?
    You