Evaluation of Influential Factors in the Activity Process of Working Children in Sari City

Background &

Social issues and harms caused by rapid changes in human societies are essential issues that have always occupied the minds of sociologists and thinkers. Children and teenagers are one of the most vulnerable groups in today's society. Working children are all people who are under 18 years of age and are directly or indirectly involved in earning money. The theory of social pathology is more reliable than the theory of social disorganization to explain the problem of children. According to this statement, it can be said that the working children of the poor marginalized classes have not been able to adapt in the face of social changes in Iran. It seems that the increase in working children is due to the adaptation of deprived families from the process of power, wealth, and dignity in an unbalanced society. The mutual influence approach is valuable for understanding specific images about children. In general, the importance of working and street children in the city due to the lack of social abilities and skills to correctly and dynamically face the social environment and their dependence on adults to meet their needs and go through the stages of their growth and development is more than other groups. It should be noted that this social phenomenon is understood as a part of the general structure of society. Today, child labor is more prevalent in developing countries of the world. Millions of children are working at a young age to support themselves and their families. Children work in different forms in factories, mines, farms, and different service sectors. Their work is part-time, full-time, seasonal, or permanent. Child laborers receive their wages in various forms of money, some of them do not receive money for their work, and in return for their work, they receive little housing and food. Institutions such as family, education and religious institutions, government, and mass media under social changes cannot fulfill their obligations towards socialization and normalization of children and adolescents. The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors affecting the expansion of child labor in Sari City.

This survey study was approved by the code of ethics IR.IAU.BABOL.REC.1399.142 in the Code of Ethics Commission of the Islamic Azad University of Babol branch. This research is of applied type and descriptive-correlation branch. The statistical population of the research includes all the working children of Sari City and the statistical sample was selected based on Cochran's formula, 200 people. In this research, multi-stage cluster sampling and simple random sampling were used.

To analyze the research data, correlation coefficient tests were used with spss24 software. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated and evaluated using Cronbach's alpha method, based on which the coefficient of the research variables and its dimensions was more than 0.7. In this research, by using inferential statistics, the relationship between the variables of weak social cohesion, class inequality, inequality of access to public services, weakness of support programs, and breaking of social norms and working children were measured, and the relationship of all variables was confirmed.

According to the theoretical issues and theories of the current research and the results obtained from the current research and the previous research that has been done in this field, it can be said that various micro and macro factors are involved in the formation of the phenomenon of working children, including At the macro level, they can be pointed to economic and class inequality, lack of support from organizations and institutions, and marginalization, and at the micro level, they can be the family's cultural poverty, family breakdown (parents' addiction, parents' divorce, parents' death, (they are going to prison) and being physically abused by their parents, which brings with it social harms, including children turning to deviant jobs, delinquency and engaging in risky behaviors. Child labor has an internal contradiction that goes back to the two concepts of play and belonging to the world of adults and play to the world of children. This definition refers to the excessive exploitation of children by rich people in the early period of industrialization. In the past, children participated in food production and services. The results showed that these variables of weak social cohesion, class inequality inequality of access to public services weak support programs, and breaking social norms have a significant relationship with working children.