Of course, it is also widespread in the free trade zone, where foreign companies go to avoid union and labour laws. Child labour results from a system, which creates poverty on a massive scale. We can not look at child labour just at the level of the individual family - we need to understand the class and cultural politics behind it. Child labour is also part of the economic structure in many countries, just like it used to be in Canada. Parents of child labourers are often unemployed or underemployed and so employers need to hire adults, so that their children do not need to work.
Employers use children because kids are cheap to hire and often uneducated.
Children are not likely to organize trade unions and they have little power to demand better health and safety, fair wages or decent treatment. All over North America, children are employed in sweatshops, pizza delivery, car washes, agriculture and fast food restaurants. In town after town, city after city, they serve our fast food meals late at night and prepare our coffee in the morning. Sometimes they are scalded, burned, sliced up by food processors, exposed to pesticides in fields or choked by fumes in factories. Some are just working to buy bikes, some to feed their families, some to save for education or some just to feel independent.