By Max Lindberg •
March 20, 2008
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My guest today is Beth Bader, a very busy mom who juggles raising a family while working full-time, and writing three different blogs. In our interview, she talks about wrangling sharks, not for food, but tagging them, and what she’s discovered about the foods we’re eating.
Beth’s blog is The Expatriate’s Kitchen, “Musings on food and life, with my original recipes, and a cynical wit as sharp as my ten-inch French knife”.
beth-bader-final.mp3
By Beth Bader •
March 18, 2008
I’ve done my best to keep the Disney Princess invasion at bay. We have none of the movies or, uh, “books” which are just ads for the movies, and none of the merchandise or apparel or personal care items that feature the Royal Threat. Except. We do have one Disney Princess ball. No, not the kind with music and party dresses. The kind you can kick.
It was an Easter egg hunt prize, and as hard as I try to “lose” it, it keeps getting found. Lately, my preschooler has taken to asking me what each princess is named.
By Ali Benjamin •
March 10, 2008
This post reflects on the third week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.
40,000 television commercials a year. That’s what the average American child sees. That’s around 100 ads for every 4 hours of television.
What’s that, you say? No TV in your house? Oh, but your kids will still see plenty of ads. There’s online adver-gaming. There are ads on school buses. Ads in the classroom. There’s product placement in movies. Not to mention billboards, posters, textbook covers, …it’s all fair game.
Week 3 of the Healthy Children, Healthy Planet series, the 7-part parenting discussion course from the Northwest Earth Institute, was all about ads. Namely, the pervasiveness of ads in our children’s lives, and whether it is even possible to create ad-free spaces in their lives.
What’s clear is that advertising is different in both quantity and quality than it’s ever been before. The amount of money spent on marketing to children — $2 billion annually — is close to 10 times greater than it was even in 1990. And the nature of it has changed, too — mostly, because there’s no place safe from it. Not schools. Not movies. Not even your daughter’s sleepover party.
By Ali Benjamin •
February 29, 2008
Sometimes I think I’m like most parents: I want my kids to have a childhood, a real childhood. I don’t expect it to be pain-free — who among us got that? — but I believe it can also be filled with wonder and joy and laughter.
There are plenty of other times, however, that I feel like I’m not like any other parent I know. We restrict television to some carefully-chosen videos. My kids have never walked through the door of a McDonald’s, and they still have no idea what a Happy Meal is. They don’t use the computer. I regularly weed out the many Disney princess products that are given as gifts, crossing my fingers that my daughter won’t notice a toy’s sudden absence (she usually doesn’t).
What’s my problem? other parents sometimes ask. What’s the big deal?
