Resource: Tips for Parenting in a Commercial Culture

Title:	Tips for Parenting in a Commercial Culture
Resource type:	Booklet
Topics:	Individual Choices
Keywords:	marketing, consumption, advertising, children
Audience:	All
Region:	Minnesota Statewide, Outside Minnesota
Summary:	The Center for a New American Dream in Maryland has produced a free 32-page informational booklet with tips, personal stories and resources to help parents understand and address the effects of advertising and marketing on children.
Content:	Aggressive marketing to kids - annually over $15 billion/year in the U.S. - contributes to what many people (especially those from the Great Depression) see as excessive materialism and consumption/waste of resources. An increasing accumulation of research suggests that this deluge of marketing and materialism leads to a host of psychological and behavioral problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, childhood obesity, eating disorders, increased violence, and family stress. The Center for a New American Dream in Maryland has produced a free 32-page informational booklet with tips, personal stories and resources to help parents deal with the effects of advertising and marketing on children. Its purpose: to give adults a greater understanding of what children face today, and to offer resources to help parents and caregivers band together to protect children from intrusive and harmful advertising. The Center believes it's vitally important to help children reclaim valuable noncommercial "mental space" in their lives - time to be innocent children, time to be in nature, to be with family and loved ones - and time to not be mere consumers. The April 2006 booklet is useful to schools, community centers, camps, physicians' offices, faith-based organizations and daycare centers, as well as to parents and other caregivers. To download this booklet, visit the web site below.
Website:	http://www.newdream.org/resources/publications/2011-05-tips-for-parenting-in-a-commercial-culture
Suggested by:	Philipp Muessig
Added:	09/11/06
Updated:	07/29/11