Sacrificing Development for Dollars:
The Corruption of Child Play

Michael Brody M.D.

This presentation deals with play and toys, which are vital for the development of language and motor skills. Watch a child absorbed in play alone, or with others, and you notice immediately that play is all about story telling, the child’s own story. The stories are often about over coming a separation or grievance, making the unfamiliar familiar, or the rehearsal for adult roles. The activity should be light and happy. It is absorbing and is meant to help transcend the everydayness of life. Toys, like the generic baby doll, should act as a catalyst, for the child’s own narrative. But unfortunately these narratives are constantly contaminated, and altered by the mega-media and toy corporations who want to tell their own stories.

A recent trend in toys, as observed by the presenter on a visit to this years Toy Fair, other than scripted media character toys, carries the most seductive sales pitch for Boomer parents–“Its Educational.” Demographics have made childhood Darwinian, as kids need CVs just to get into Pre School. One of the top sales people from Melissa and Doug a quality toy manufacturer based in Westport, Connecticut told the presenter at Toy Fair that” Childhood is no longer innocent, play is a dirty word, achievement is where its at.”

Many of the toys highlighted at Toy Fair also serve as prototypes for the world’s number one toy distributor- McDonalds- whose Happy Meals sales dwarf even Wal- Marts toy grosses. Talk about super sizing!

As a psychiatrist/educator, the presenter wonders how all this impacts on a child’s psyche? As a physician, the Public Health crisis of childhood obesity and Type II diabetes is also a major concern, as Ronald McDonald and Captain Crunch pour fats and sugars directly into our kid’s blood streams. Has the sick child as viewer/consumer replaced the healthy child of play, sports and make-believe?

MICHAEL BRODY MD (mikebro@erols.com) is a child psychiatrist and Chair of the Television and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, where he teaches a course on Children and Television and has just completed a documentary film: Fifty Years of Children's Television from Howdy Doody to SpongeBob.