There are several issues surrounding the changing nature of child employment during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Child labor in British history has emerged in discussions of the Industrial Revolution and its social consequences. Three broad issues have come to the fore: criticism that an older generation of historical writing exaggerated the negative effects of child labor during the Industrial Revolution and underrepresented the child labor that existed prior to this period; debate over the extent of child labor during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and debate over the reasons why child labor declined in the latter half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. It is argued here that the Industrial Revolution did increase the exploitation of child labor but that all children were not exploited to the same degree.
