OH: Parents Only Matter Sometimes (Example #154,233)

One of the hot new trends is to loosen up those child labor laws, for reasons that are not terribly clear. Need for cheap, compliant workers? Help with the process of sorting people into their proper class and place? Larger pool of workers who won't mind that the minimum wage is not a living wage because they are still living off their parents? Get out of having to give them an allowance? Not really sure.

But as Ohio considers opening up child labor, a curious argument turns up. The legislature was debating whether or not to include a "minor work hours notification form" that would, in effect, require parents to sign off on their children's new job. And this popped up.

State Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, did not object to the amendment, but said parental guidance isn’t always a good thing when it comes to children working.

“I am concerned about that, in the long term, those kids who really want to do something with their lives, want to get a job, can still do it, even if they can’t get their parents to cooperate with them,” Reineke said.

This would be the same Bill Reineke, sponsor ofSenate Bill 178, a bill to reconfigure the Ohio Department of Education while stripping it of power. He wrote an impassioned defense of the bill for the Columbus Dispatch, and he led with this line:

Parents matter. Grades matter. And results matter.

It's the same old pattern. Parents matter, and their rights matter, unless they conflict with what we want to do. Parents should have the final say in their kids' health care, unless their kids are trans. Parents should get to choose where their child goes to school, unless the parents aren't religious enough in the right way, or unless they're LGBTQ persons. Parents should be part of any decision the student makes about what name to be called, but shouldn't have a say about whether their child gets a job.

It's remarkable how fluid the belief in the importance of parents is for some of these politicians.