They spend their childhood working. Many infants and toddlers spend summers in vans parked in shade at field's edge. Others commonly hoe, pick crops or just play in the fields while parents work. It's hard to have them in the fields because of the sun and pesticide. So babies as young as 3 months may accompany parents.
Day care is too expensive.
Roger Rosenthal, executive director of the Migrant Legal Action Program in Washington, D.C., called lack of day care for infants and toddlers the real problem. Much of the state's agriculture labor, and some of the nation's, comes from the Rio Grande Valley. In Hidalgo County, four of 10 county residents live in poverty, and one in four is unemployed. During harvests, they work hard. Their labor puts our food on our table, and we treat them the worst of any labor.