What about child labor?

My appetite has been insatiable in these past few days. Just as happens to me every once in a while, I cannot seem to be satisfied. (I'm pretty sure its a hormone thing.)

As I sat enjoying some chocolate that my roommate brought from valentines day, my mind began to spin over about what I recently learned about the Hershey's and Nestle's company. I do not know how many others engage in this. It became newsworthy that these companies were exploiting young children, using their little nimble fingers to collect a greater crop of cacao and employing them in their cocoa factories, making quite a living, and paying unfair wages.

Then on the flip side of this unfair work, I remember fondly stories from my father about the days that he worked on his uncle and aunts farm in fifth grade. After school, he would go out into the fields and drove a tractor mowing the fields and caring for the incoming harvest. He got up at 4 am to milk cows and was up sometimes until midnight finishing schoolwork. Was he a victim of child labor?? NO. He remembers fondly those days, and it was a year that had great impression upon him. It was hard work, yes, but enjoyable, and although he may not have enjoyed every day's work, he got the great pleasure of freshly baked bread from his auntie, speaks of drinking ice cold lemonade after a hot afternoon, and enjoyed driving the tractor around the land.

The questions I have been pondering include but are not limited to:
1. When do children chores become child labor or when is it part of the development and maturity of that child?

UNICEF says of child labor that it is "when a child is required to work Full Time for minimum pay" and it effects their ability to do well in school.

2. What happens if I take away that child's job by trying to protect him, instead suffering his family those 3 extra dollars he would have brought in per day?

3. How does the child feel about it? Is he being forced to work, does he enjoy other things children enjoy? Is he being OPRESSED?

4. How much is society willing to sacrifice? Do we make exceptions and give conditions to children working? What are people doing about it?

5. How does Fair Trade certification actually diminish the problem? Can we impact the world through Fair Trade development and working with local farmers?

6. How should we be praying? What kind of impact can we have on these children?

7. What kind of mission can I have that will cause children to move from merely surviving to thriving?

I have many more questions, and as many of you know, have a stirring passion in my heart towards the suffering children whose voices have yet to be heard.

I'm interested in hearing from you about this.

Yours.