Education. You can have parents teaching their children but that creates an endless cycle were those born into poverty can never escape except by incredibly luck. Minimum wage and work place safety. Before the gov't stepped in during the industrial revolution children were mining in dangerous coal mines for barely enough money to survive.
Fair enough but what you call the institution that built the schools and determines minimum wage? Even if you consider them to be established by some non gov't entity it is still the authoritarianism gov't that enforces these rules. It is by authority you pay taxes thus funding education. It is by authority employers must obey to work place regulations. A little authority is needed to keep order, although to much and you have a police state. Moderation is the key.
Actually unions are the main reason those even exist in the first place, government had to have their hands forced by the people to make those laws, if it were up to the government and authoritarian business leaders we wouldn't even have a minimum wage, government has historically drug their heels on any kind of progressive reform in the US and only changed things when they had no other alternative. Looks to me they are just a barrier for progress that takes credit after the fact.