Overview

""Bakan offers passionate argument and copious research in this compelling call for parents to stand up for their children"" (Booklist). Now in paperback, from the author of the internationally bestselling The Corporation, this vital call to arms has been praised by leading experts on children's lives as ""an essential read for anyone who works for or cares about children"" (Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queenbees and Wannabees) and ""engaging, carefully researched, and important"" (Mary Pipher, author of The Shelter of Each Other and Seeking Peace).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 problem today, 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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9781439121221

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Reviews

The assault on childhood in our corporate-dominated and profit-driven society, painfully dissected in this penetrating study, is a tragedy not only for the immediate victims but for hopes for a better future. It can be resisted, as Joel Bakan discusses. And it is urgent not to delay. <p>--Noam Chomsky, author of Hopes and Prospects

[Bakan] calls for government regulation of big business, citing examples sure to make parents take notice...A provocative argument.

Our new century of unlimited private profits has put an end to the era of publicly protected childhood. Separated by corporate design from their parents, kids have become capitalism's newest and most lucrative (and most vulnerable) consumers. In his Childhood Under Siege , Joel Bakan offers an angry but careful analysis of how the market flourishes today by selling our children everything from dangerous drugs, toxic plastics and unhealthy snack foods to violent and addictive video games and for-profit standardized tests. The villains here are not playground stalkers but supposedly child-friendly companies like Nickelodeon, Facebook, Pfizer and Edison Schools, along with a trillion dollar children's marketing machine and a government is the problem ideology that hasmade public regulation of the interests of children all but impossible. If they read Bakan carefully, once they get over their rage, both parents and policy makers may be ready to lift the corporate siege that is threatening not just our children but childhood itself. <p>--Benjamin R. Barber, author of Consumed: How Markets Infantilize Adults, Corrupt Children andSwallow Citizens Whole

Author Information

Joel Bakan is a professor of law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His book The Corporation was published in twenty languages, was an international bestseller, and inspired the critically acclaimed hit documentary of the same name.

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