UC Irvine

The U.S. agricultural sector has a long history of child labor due to its exemption from many labor regulations (Human Rights Watch 2000; Jasis 2021; Jimenez 1997; Padilla-Rodriguez 2022; Rosas 2013; Schuman 2017). Hard labor, including farm work, or working in the fields, during childhood and adolescence contradicts models of “priceless childhood” and normal adolescence which entails the investment and protection of children and youth (Allen 2012; Bandelj 2025; Zelizer 1985). My dissertation draws upon 78 in-depth interviews to examine the experiences of former farmworker youth from the Central Coast of California and contributes to the “new sociology of childhood,” which examines the lives of youth who are responsible for labor to sustain their families (Canizales and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2022; Delgado 2023; Matthews 2007). This work examines why children and youth entered the fields and the impact of this experience on their gender socialization. Broadly, this dissertation finds that youth enter the fields to manage financial and social precarity. It also finds that eldest daughters play a key role in sustaining their families’ home lives in the absence of social safety nets and financial resources. Finally, it finds that as boys enter the fields to learn how to be workers, they are also learning how to be men. This study expands the scant literature on children who financially contribute to their families with a focus on the role of birth order, class, gender, and immigration status.