Peer-reviewed article
Child labour in high performance and professional sport: The struggle for children’s rights
Peter Donnelly ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper examines how children's participation in high-performance and professional sport has become increasingly work-like, violating their right to play and leisure. It explores the challenge of defining intensive sports participation as child labour and how children's rights are being violated through the structuring of their time in programmed activities. The paper proposes transforming sport to protect children under labour and children's rights frameworks while still allowing them to develop their sporting abilities without exploitation or abuse.
Key points
- Children's right to play and leisure is being violated by the intensive demands of organized sport
- Participation in high-performance and professional sport has become work-like for many children
- There is ongoing struggle to define such intensive sports participation as child labour
- Current frameworks do not adequately protect children in professional and high-performance sport
- Sport can be transformed to nurture accomplishment while protecting children's rights and preventing exploitation
Limitations
This is a conceptual paper that examines definitions and frameworks rather than providing empirical evidence about the prevalence or impact of child labour in sport. It does not appear to present primary research data or evaluate interventions to address the problem.
Abstract
Children’s right to play and leisure has historically and currently been violated by the many demands of adults. This is now evident in the widespread structuring of the time of middle-class children in programmed activities, including sports. In a contribution to this special issue on leisure, citizenship and human rights the paper begins with an overview of how participation in sports became so work-like for many children. This is followed by an examination of the struggle to define such work as child labour. And the paper concludes with a consideration of how it may be possible to transform sport, protecting participants under the framework of children’s and labour rights – nurturing children accomplished in sport without exploiting or abusing them.