Indeed, the rural impoverishment that was a feature of the early industrial capitalist era forced peasant families to exploit all available labor power. Few families could survive on the produce of their lands; they had to send family members to work on the farms of wealthier neighbors or in the growing number of rural industries. In both rural and urban areas, children helped with cottage industrial pursuits. And in the developing areas of Europe, employment opportunities for children in the new factories added to the variety of jobs done by children.

Wherever child labor was necessary to the family economy, this reduced the time that the children had available for schooling. This was the more true, ironically, the more formal the schooling situation became. The growing insistence upon regular attendance and longer hours made a combination of work and schooling more difficult than it had been in the past.

This problem was explicitly recognized by the proponents of special schooling legislation for children employed in factories. School hours were becoming more established precisely at the same time as factory discipline made work hours more rigid as well. It was clear that unless special provisions were made for them, the children who worked in the factories could not attend school. And they were deemed more in need of schooling than almost anyone else. Despite the variety of approaches to schooling policy in Western European states in the reform period, it is significant that England, France, and Germany had all passed legislation making school attendance mandatory for child factory workers, and regulating the hours of work and schooling for this highly visible and threatening substratum of "the people." Needless to say, these early laws were virtually impossible to enforce since they ran up against the interests both of the proletarian families and of the entrepreneurs who relied on cheap child labor.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 86)