Working While in High School?

When I was in high school, my family was poor enough that we qualified for food stamps and I qualified for free lunch at school, but my Dad was too proud to accept either. My Dad said that if HIS Dad could make it through the Great Depression raising 6 kids as a single parent and never take a "handout" (his words) from the Government, then "By God, I can do it too." He insisted that my mom not work outside the home so that she could focus on raising me, and that I not get a job and focus on school so that I could get financial aid and scholarships for college. When I graduated from high school in 1979, my Mom had made $324 that year sewing for people (at $3 per piece of clothing) and my Dad made a little over $12,000 that year. I remember from sitting at the kitchen table with him and trying to figure out how we were going to pay for my education, because I didn't get enough scholarships and financial aid to pay for everything. I wanted to get a job but my Dad insisted that I not even try getting a job. But then in my junior year in college, I got my very first job, making $5 per hour (an astronomical sum to me at the time) working 10 hours a week tutoring international students in English. My Dad hit the ceiling and said if I didn't continue to make Dean's List every quarter, I had to quit the job. When I started my Master's program, I added a job working at the public library on a work-study program shelving books for 10 hours per week, and a Graduate Assistantship as a secretary in the Education department. I kept all three of those jobs until I graduated with my Master's Degree. The reason my Dad did not allow me to work during high school is because he wanted to be sure I was qualified for something better than a factory job, which is what he had, and that I was able to take care of myself financially. He only had a GED himself, and my Mom graduated from the 7th grade and went right to work in a factory. It worked...the first year out of college, I made three times the amount of money he did.