"My sister and I grew pumpkins to sell at our roadside farm stand" You didn't work the fields. You had your own small business you owned and managed. Congrats,

"My sister and I grew pumpkins to sell at our roadside farm stand" You didn't work the fields. You had your own small business you owned and managed. Congrats, sounds like you did a great job, set your own schedule, learned loads and enjoyed yourself. This is real world project based learning - I applaud and support it. It is absolutely nothing like being employed as a child, by a profit making enterprise. That's being subject to an employment contract without the cognitive comprehension or legal protections of an adult. Being an employee means being a productive tool of an enterprise - employees are protected from exploitation to the precise amount they have the economic power and social status to protect themselves. We're not talking about kids running a fruit stand, or even helping their parents with some hours in a shop here. We're talking about hard manual labour, for someone else, likely for a pittance. It's like comparing playing doctors and nurses to child marriage. One is natural unforced experimentation between kids, the other is exploitation of children by adults.