Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood Targets Child Exploitation in the Media

I've just returned from the 8th annual conference on early childhood education held in Monterrey, Mexico.  There were a number of excellent presentations on early childhood development, but in particular I was impressed with the work of  Susan Linn, author of The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, who described her work with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), which has been attempting to stop corporations from using characters like Sponge Bob Square Pants,Sesame Street's Elmo, and cartoon movie figures to advertise everything from sugar-rich cereals and unhealthy McDonald's "happy meals" to fish food and worthless technological toys.  I thought it was interesting when she described how certain advertising companies had developed techniques to get young children to improve their "nagging skills" in asking their parents to purchase products for them.  Thanks to the efforts of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, Scholastic Inc. will no longer be promoting the highly sexualized Bratz brand in schools. They have just published a press release directed at toy marketers to suspend holiday marketing aimed directly at children during the current economic crisis and target parents instead.

Comments

[Shay]

Thank you for the interesting article, which fits well with one of my annual themes this time of year. My children and I went back to a simpler, more loving celebration” about 10 years ago, and have been nothing but pleased since.

I began to turn down the holiday volume 10 years ago, when Christmas Eve at my father’s had turned into a materialistic feeding frenzy where we could not see the tree for the trash around it.

As a first step toward a more satisfying holiday season, I purchased copies of “Unplug the Christmas Machine” and “New Traditions,” books that helped my family define how we want to celebrate. Gift giving did not disappear, but we downplay the material. When we do open gifts, we do it over a long course, so we can take time to fully appreciate each one.

My children, now 18 and 15, have repeatedly expressed pleasure at our having opted out of perpetuating the cycle of insatiable material gluttony that defines the holiday season for numerous Americans.
They appreciate that this time of year no longer strains us from purchase angst to the gift aftermath and emotional letdown.

Instead, we serenely enjoy not mall hopping, not lining up with the unhappy multitudes, not being constantly barraged with the same music ad nauseum, not worrying about finding “just the right gift” for the person who already has more than enough, not worrying about how much to spend on whom, not wondering if the children’s concept of the reason for the season is a glut of new stuff, not worrying where we will put a flood of new belongings, not stressing over how to pay for it all, and not planning to get up early the day after Christmas to stand in the cattle chute with herds of other grumpy post-
Christmas “reverse shoppers” who are glumly returning the junk they didn’t want or need.

My family’s holiday activities are now low key, keeping our observances simple and meaningful. We spend little, stress none, and find great satisfaction. I highly recommend it, whatever the holiday, no
matter the economic climate.

[Thomas Armstrong]

Thanks for sharing your refreshing approach for a stress-free holiday season. My wife and I have been experimenting with a low-key Christmas as well this year, for the first time, and it certainly has been a relief from the usual "ten things to do" lists we are usually fretting about.