Parental Educational Status and Child Labour: Implication for Sustainable Child Development in Lagos Metropolis, Nigeria

Child labour is one of the socioeconomic violence against children and violation of Child Right Act that hampers sustainable child development in most of the Nigerian popular cities including Lagos metropolis. Children involve in street hawking, domestic servant, trading, street begging to mention but few have become common endemic features of economic means of survival for many Nigerian children. Reason for this largely depends on factors like urbanization, high rate of illiteracy, high level of unemployment, adoption of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), excruciating poverty, communal clashes, insecurity, rural-urban migration, passive social welfare policy and other attendants’ socio-economic crisis of contradiction of underdevelopment confronting the Nigeria state. This paper surmises with empirical evidence that child labour impacts negatively on child development and breaches the United Nations charter on child’s rights. To extrapolate the issue critically, this paper anchored on social interaction theory of the family to explain the correlation between parental educational status and child labour in Lagos Metropolis which has not been sufficiently documented in extant Nigeria literature. In a cross-sectional survey that involved a four-stage sampling technique, 400 respondents, aged 7-17, took part in the survey. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tools were used to analyze both the univariate and bivariate variables. Findings show a significant relationship between parental educational status and child labour; employment status and child labor. It concluded that free education policy in Lagos State has not exonerated children from the economic violence of child labour while the literacy level of the parent can largely influence the involvement of children in child labour in Lagos state. The study, however, recommended among other measures affordable compulsory adult education for illiterate parent and employment opportunities for unemployed adult parents in order to protect and safeguard Nigerian children from the detrimental implications of child labour on child sustainable development