Overview

Corporations have found a new resource to be mined for profit: our children. In this shocking and indelible behind-the-scenes journey, Joel Bakan, acclaimed author and award-winning maker of the renowned film and international bestselling book The Corporation, uncovers the astonishing degree to which companies exploit the special vulnerabilities of children, manipulate parents' fears, and operate with callous disregard for children's health and well-being. The number of children taking dangerous psychotropic drugs has skyrocketed as pharmaceutical companies employ insidious, often illegal tactics to inflate diagnoses of disorders and convince parents their children require medication. A highly sophisticated marketing industry deploys increasingly subtle and powerful tactics to play on children's intense emotions and desires and to lure them into obsessive consumerism. Computer game designers craft techniques to titillate children with sex and violence, while social media developers infiltrate and shape children's social and emotional worlds to compel them to spend more and more monetizable time online. America's schools are being transformed into profit centers while children are subjected to increasingly regimented teaching that thwarts curiosity and creativity, numbing the joy of learning. And children's chronic health problems, from asthma to cancer, autism, and birth defects, steadily escalate as thousands of new industrial chemicals are dumped into their environments. Nelson Mandela once sagely remarked that there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats its children. The problem today, as Joel Bakan reveals, is that business interests have made protecting children extremely difficult. Corporations pump billions into rendering parents and governments powerless to shield children from an unrelenting commercial assault, with the result that after a century of progress, during which protective laws and regulations were widely promulgated, children are once again exposed to substantial harms at the hands of economic actors. Childhood Under Siege leaves no room for doubt that this assault on childhood is a major crisis of our time. A powerful manifesto for urgent change, it empowers us to shield our own children while offering concrete and realistic proposals for legal reforms that would protect all children from these predatory practices.

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9781439121207

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Joel Bakan's new bookis a compelling, informed alarm about the insidious and invisible ways childrenare being manipulated into thoughtless consumers. Childhood Under Seige is anessential read for anyone who works for or cares about children because wesimply can't advocate for and teach them effectively if we don't know what weare up against. As a mother and a teacher, it was sometimes overwhelming toread this book, but for my own work and parenting I forced myself to keep going.At times it was deeply frightening--and I do media literacy training as partof my work. It's very simple: If you want to be relevant in a child's life, you need to read this book. --Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queenbees and Wannabees

Childhood Under Siege outlines the powerful strategies at play in the corporate war against children. Bakan maintains that, while most families do their best, they are outmaneuvered by well-paid experts serving the needs of greedy and heartless corporations. This engaging, carefully researched and important book is a call to action to those who believe we have a responsibility to protect all our children with our laws and public policies as well as our hearts. <p>--Mary Pipher, author of The Shelter of Each Other and Seeking Peace

Joel Bakan's new book is a compelling, informed alarm about the insidious and invisible ways children are being manipulated into thoughtless consumers. Childhood Under Seige is an essential read for anyone who works for or cares about children because we simply can't advocate for and teach them effectively if we don't know what we are up against. As a mother and a teacher, it was sometimes overwhelming to read this book, but for my own work and parenting I forced myself to keep going. At times it was deeply frightening--and I do media literacy training as part of my work. It's very simple: If you want to be relevant in a child's life, you need to read this book. --Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queenbees and Wannabees

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