Parenting & Family Quote by Carol Bellamy

Bellamy’s line is a warning against the feel-good reform that photographs well and fails quietly. The target isn’t just child labor; it’s the policy reflex that treats export factories as the whole story because they’re legible to outsiders, auditors, and headlines. “Export industry” signals the arena where pressure is easiest to apply: brands can be shamed, supply chains can be monitored, governments can point to a crackdown and call it progress. Bellamy’s real concern is what happens next, when the camera crew leaves.

The pivot word is “also.” It exposes a substitution problem: eliminating child labor in one visible sector can shove it into the informal economy, where enforcement is weak and power is personal. “More invisible to public scrutiny” is doing heavy work here. It’s not just about lack of data; it’s about lack of witnesses. Informal labor happens in homes, small workshops, street vending, agriculture - places where children are isolated, dependent, and less able to claim rights. The subtext is blunt: a policy that optimizes for appearances can increase risk, not reduce it.

Bellamy’s intent reads as a critique of narrow compliance culture and trade-driven moralism. If reform is built primarily to satisfy consumers in wealthy markets, it will chase the labor that embarrasses corporations, not the labor that harms children most. The sentence insists on a harder standard: measure success by whether children’s vulnerability decreases, not whether a country’s exports look cleaner. It’s an educator’s framing, but it lands like an indictment of our preference for visible victories over durable protections.