she made me to go her commercial agency and tell the children’s agent, “I want to do what mommy does,” which she has lied to herself about for 40 years. I clearly remember sitting at the kitchen table at our house in Sunland, while she coached me on how the meeting was going to go. She played the agent and I was me. She gave me commercial copy to practice. She coached and prepped me and I went along with it because I WAS SEVEN.
Or they can be scared for life and have never get any of that money, as in this instance.
We don't force or even allow children to work in any other industry. It is ridiculous and offensive to say that calling for the end of the exception for child actors is somehow equivalent to saying "we should cut a hole in a cardboard box and put them in it until they’re 18"
At least theoretically, you could accommodate children by only giving them small roles that require very infrequent time investment on their part, and a bunch of people keeping an eye on everything going on.
The question is whether such a thing can be worked out at all, or whether it's safer just to jinx the entire idea, reasoning that there will be too much rule breaking despite good intentions.
It's definitely going to depend on the country and legal system -- it seems in Russia there's a fair amount of series with child actors in them, and I wonder how well they're treated, because a long running series is definitely going to be very demanding even on adults.