Assignment task:
In this paragraph answer this question in simple words how did the rise of cities affect the lives of children and families Canadian Orphans and Street Kids By the mid-to-late 1800s, cities in Canada began to grow rapidly. Families that left their harsh rural existence with the hope of finding paid employment in the cities often found that their lives were not easier. Every bite of food had to be purchased from their wages. Often, male children leave school to find some means of making money to help out. Jobs such as shoeshine boys, paper boys, and delivery boys earned them only a small amount of money. To complicate matters, many children lost their parents to illness, disease, or accidents before they reached their teen years. There were some orphanages, and relatives were sometimes able to take them in, but quite often they ended up on their own or even in prison. Children living on the streets became known as street urchins, waifs, strays, or guttersnipes and were considered a menace to society because children living on the streets had little or no education or training, and they were unlikely to find a paying position. Those who did work for wages earned so little that it barely paid for food, let alone lodgings. In winter, the situation became dire, and many died of exposure or had their feet amputated because of frostbite. Young women also began to move to the cities to find work in service positions. Some worked for well-to-do families, but those who could not earn their keep often turned to prostitution. Youth unemployment became a problem. As in Europe, the answer was schooling. High schools became more common in the early 1900s when more and more children between the ages of 13 and 16 stayed in school. Street children gained skills in reform schools and training schools. In the end, most provinces made schooling mandatory for children up to 16 years of age. This kept young people out of the workforce and off the streets while providing them with the education and training needed for employment. According to Margaret Visser in an article for The Vanier Institute's Transition magazine (December 1990), the term "teenage" was first used on March 11, 1921. A journalist for the Daily Colonist in Victoria, British Columbia, is credited with creating the term, and, subsequently, its use spread widely.