Many of them are just old and have cognitive dissonance about their own experience as a child. They simply believe that children today have the identical, fantasized experience they think they remember. Not only is what they remember untrue and most likely a collage of half-memories, stories from other people, and propaganda, but they have no incentive to scrutinize their decisions and beliefs because they've been in a comfortable insular community for most of their life that rewards them for thinking this way.

I say old but you don't have to be that old to be brainwashed by a religious community and a comfortable job.

Here's the thing: Lots of Republican leaning business owners see it as their right to retaliate against their workers without the gov intervening. So to them, the only thing they see wrong with this is the "child" part, because retaliation against children makes them look bad.

Hence the "they aren't children" rhetoric.

By the way, this part of the bill was explicitly included by a congressman who owns some franchises and says his underage workers "don't even want lunch breaks".

So this is one dude trying to squeeze 20 extra hours of labor from literal children who's dictating this for the entire state.