I hope the wood splitting picture was staged. Those girls are a few feet from a man swinging an axe splitting wood. That's an accident waiting to happen.
I do not believe it was staged. While there is a risk of danger, I believe it is a small risk. Perhaps a the axe head flies off, or a block of wood shoots out and hits the kid. But those risks are small, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to spare a child the experience of physically working to heat your dwelling in order to insure they are safe from an unlikely accident.
Anecdotally, my dad and I drove into the woods and cut down trees for the fireplace in my family's house. After he cut down the tree, he would cut the tree into 1 foot rounds and then split them with a maul. The cut, triangular pieces had to be loaded and stacked into the back of a pickup, and it was back breaking work.
However, every time the work was done, I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment and contemplating how it was the drudgery that ultimately created that feeling.
I think that we should not spare our children these enormously valuable learning experiences in the name of safety.
Your dad could have stacked logs in the truck and cut them to length and split them near the permanent stack location. Otherwise, you're stacking once in the truck bed and then again at the woodpile. Perhaps he was building your character instead of seeking efficiency.
A little bit of gratuitous labor helps the lesson sink in. So maybe you set up a little contest with your victi-er, kid. You each take half the logs and whoever finishes first wins. You even let the kid get a head start. They're concentrating hard because they want to win. But behind their back, you're using a log splitter instead of a maul. When you yell out "done!" they look around, and see that you "cheated". Hopefully, they learn the value of appropriate technology over brow sweat.
That guy shouldn't be swinging that maul so close to his kids, not for safety reasons, because he should be using at least a lever-operated log splitter instead.
I guess risk acceptance is different person to person. I know that when splitting wood, there is often pieces flying in random directions. I would at least have my kids wearing safety glasses. It doesn't take much to lose vision in an eye and all because you don't want to wear safety glasses?! Not for me.
This seems to be a modern, Western approach to thing. I've seen South American tribal folk give a 5 year old a machete to do actual work. I didn't see a lot of dismembered children.
A lot of it comes down to family training. The older kids teach the younger kids what to do and not do. This doesn't protect from every little thing, but life is not that safe.
You do need training however. I was in Montana as a child with my dad on business. The client lived way out in the middle of nowhere. He was a big man (bigger than my father who's 6' 1"). He reached into a drawer, pulled out two bear size handfuls of .22lr, showed me how to load the riffle (fortunately I'd been trained by my dad and grandfather on hunting small game around the farm) and told me the adults need to talk. What he didn't tell me is that it was a modified .22lr: full auto. I was in for a surprise when 10 rounds cracked out at supersonic speed. I was fine and had fun. It could have been bad though.
I may not be from a rural area, but it doesn't take a genius to know that wearing safety glasses is simply a smart thing to do.
>SUMMARY: Wood chopping is still present in many homes in rural regions. In some cases, it may lead to serious ocular injury and potential loss of vision.
