This dissertation is the result of a study about child work in the south zone of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, held with a group of children and adolescents, who took part in the Program of Eradication of Child Work (PETI) of CEMASI Maria Lima de Castro. The study had as an objective the identification of the features of this type of child work, based on socio-economic and cultural indicators of the families assisted by the Program. In this way, documental research, observation, and interviews with the children, adolescents and their parents were used as technique. As a starting point, a rescue of the trajectory of child work in Brazil was carried out, as well as the Brazilian government acting in the confrontation of this problematic, identifying its legal marks and governmental strategies used, with emphasis on the implementation of PETI and its current reformulations. As for the results of the research which helped this dissertation, these reinforce the studies about child work in Brazil, which, aside from the issue of poverty, present other determinants to the incidence of precocious work of children and adolescents.