Maybe you have a little job on the weekend? Me, as a child, I worked two hours a week at the florist in my neighborhood. However, the Quebec government has just announced new rules that will limit child labor. I explain this decision to you.

Fourteen years old. This is the minimum working age set by the government. This means that now, if the bill is passed, children under 14 will no longer be able to work.

According to Minister of Labor Jean Boulet, a child’s place is in school or in extracurricular activities. “First and foremost, his first job is to be a student,” he said.

However, this new bill includes some exceptions.

The Minister clarified the cases where children under the age of 14 will be able to work. There is babysitting, homework help, summer camps and day camps. YouTubers, artistic practices and small family businesses will also escape the future law.

However, exception does not mean total freedom. In any case, young people aged 16 and under will not be able to work more than 17 hours per week during the school year.

In recent years, the number of work accidents among children has exploded. According to a study, it increased by 540% among children aged 14 and under between 2017 and 2019. For Minister Jean Boulet, rules are absolutely necessary to protect children.

The government also wants to fight against school dropouts. A study by the Quebec Institute of Statistics shows that the more hours a young person works in a week, the higher the risk of dropping out. The government therefore hopes to keep young people on the school benches rather than seeing them head to the labor market too soon.

The Minister of Labor added that the child needs diversity in his activities to develop, such as sports, cinema, theater… The Minister forgot a very important extracurricular activity: reading the articles of the As of info !

You, do questions of gender identity and sexual orientation intrigue you, bother you, interest you? It may seem complicated, all these notions, which is why we wanted to explain them to you. Melanie walks you through four definitions in this video.

When parents separate, it is a very difficult event, for them as well as for their children. But good news, in the last few years, parental separations have decreased! We explain this to you.

There are researchers who have counted several figures on the separation of parents. These researchers work for the Ministère de la Famille, of the Government of Quebec.

They found that among parents who had children between 1990 and 2009, there were 21% separations. This means that in 1 out of 5 families, the parents have separated.

The good news is that, among parents who had children since 2010, the separation rate fell to 13%. So about 1 in 10 families has experienced a breakup.

The graph below can help you visualize these numbers.

And the impact of the pandemic in all of this?

The Ministry of Family says the results are from 2017 data. That means they don’t take into account a rather major event that happened from 2020 onwards… Yup, the pandemic!

However, we know that the pandemic, with confinements and job losses, in particular, has caused a lot of stress and conflict for many couples.

On the other hand, many parents said they were spending more quality time with family during the pandemic, explained a spokeswoman for the Ministry, Esther Chouinard.

In short, the pandemic could have contributed to the separations, as it could have helped to avoid them! We just don’t know at the moment, because we don’t yet have a study to verify it.

Esther Chouinard concludes that researchers will need to do further analyzes to know the impact of COVID-19 on parental separations.

Other interesting facts about parents born between the 1960s and 1990s:

“Married parents separate less than unmarried parents.

“Parents who have been more educated separate less, whereas before it was the other way around.

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