Consuming Kids:
How Marketing Undermines
Children’s Health, Values & Behavior

Call to Action

Enola G. Aird
The Motherhood Project

Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of our Summit—and the beginning of what we at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood intend to be a new, much more vigorous phase in the movement to end the commercialization of our children’s lives--the movement to secure children’s rights, as Hunter Adams said yesterday and today, “to the privacy of their own minds.”

Think with me for a few moments about the power of stories. A society’s stories help to shape its people—especially its young people. In the United States today, the chief storytellers are not mothers. They are not fathers, or grandparents, or teachers.

Our culture’s chief storytellers are not telling stories that uplift our children. They are not telling stories that give children a strong sense of self worth, stories that enliven their imaginations, stories that help teach children how to form strong, caring relationships with others, stories that help children to live healthy, whole lives. Our children’s chief storytellers are not driven by love for children or concern for their well-being.

No, the chief storytellers in our society today are marketers. And they are driven by a concern for the bottom line. In their quest to exploit the multi-billion dollar children’s market, marketers have chosen to tell stories that debase our children, stories that undermine their sense of self worth, stories that dull their imaginations and desensitize them to the needs of others, stories that encourage young men and young women to treat each other like disposable objects, stories that encourage children to live shallow, consumption-driven lives.

Susan Linn said yesterday that “corporations market values”--- and that “the values marketed to children are antithetical, not only to their health and well-being, but also to the health of democracy.”

I would go further. The values marketed by corporate interests are threats to our children’s humanity. They are threats to our children’s ability to grow to be healthy, caring, responsive, and responsible—the kinds of qualities that make us human.

In the face of this fundamental threat to our children’s humanity, much is required of those of us who love children and put their well-being first.

It has become fashionable in recent months for corporations to make gestures of corporate responsibility. Some, as was mentioned yesterday, send representatives to conferences like these. And some have even taken initiatives to suggest concern for the well-being of children.

While I do not think it is impossible that some corporation, somewhere, some day may put children’s interests above profits, history suggests that it is not probable. As Ralph Nader said yesterday afternoon, the “commercial instinct knows no bounds.” It cannot restrain itself; it must, therefore, be restrained.

That is where we--you and I—come in. We have got to do a much, much better job of building the movement to restrain corporations. We have to build public awareness, raise consciousness, and strengthen the public will to protect children from the excesses of corporations.

We need many, many more people in this movement—and we need your help to bring them on board.

First of all, we need you to help spread the word. We have twelve excellent fact sheets available on the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood web site. Make sure that every member of your family and all your friends and colleagues get access to these fact sheets. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each of us could bring at least 50-100 new, highly motivated people into this movement over the next year? Fifty to one hundred highly motivated, new people each of whom could reach out and bring in 50-100 more, and on and on.

As Josh Golin and Tim Kasser said, you can form a chapter of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) in your community using the fantastic resources developed by the Quad Cities chapter of the CCFC.

You can participate in TV Turn-Off Week, which is coming up next month.

You can support the CCFC Statement on the Rights of Children, Families, and Food Marketers.

You can inundate the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, the marketers’ self-regulatory body, with your complaints.

You can join the campaign to persuade TIAA-CREF to pressure Coca Cola to change its marketing practices to protect children.

And you can insist that the Congress restore the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to regulate marketing to children.

It is shameful that the Federal Trade Commission has more authority to regulate marketing to adults that it does to regulate marketing to children.

We need to stand up to marketers for our children. I, for one, want marketers to know that if they want my children, they will have to go through me.

The stories a society tells shapes its children and its future.

It is up to us to decide whether our children will continue to be awash in a steady stream of stories that debase them, or whether we will find a way to tell our children new, fresh stories that enliven them and lift them up.

It is up to us—you and me.

Thank you very much for coming. We wish you a safe journey home.

Let us go now. Let us go-- to help build this movement to protect our children

Enola Aird JD (egaird@juno.com) is an activist mother. She is founder and director of the Motherhood Project based at the Institute for American Values in New York City. A graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, she has worked for a variety of media corporations, including the National Association of Broadcasters and predecessor entities of Time Warner and Viacom, as well as the Children's Defense Fund.