In Childhood Under Siege, Joel Bakan reveals the callous and widespread exploitation of children by profit-seeking corporations and society's failure to protect them. The creator of the award-winning film and internationally best-selling book The Corporation, Bakan shows how corporations pump billions of dollars into rendering parents and governments powerless to shield children from a relentless commercial assault designed solely to exploit their unique needs and vulnerabilities.
Focusing on the United States in particular, Bakan demonstrates how:
"As governments retreat from their previous roles of protecting children from harm at the hands of corporations," Bakan writes, "we, as a society, increasingly neglect children's needs, expose them to exploitation, and thus betray what we, as individuals, cherish most in our lives."
Childhood Under Siege is a call to action to reverse these trends, and provides the necessary insights, information, and concrete proposals to do so.
©2011 Joel Bakan (P)2012 Post Hypnotic Press, Inc
"Joel Bakan’s powerful, well-documented polemic is just what we need to hear right now, if we are to even begin to reverse the toxic consumerist legacy we are bequeathing to future generations." (Literary Review of Canada)
"The information in Bakan's book is...stunning....The book sounds alarms about issues that go under most parents' radar." (USA Today)
"The assault on childhood in our corporate-dominated and profit-driven society, painfully dissected in this penetrating study, is a tragedy not only for the immediate victims but for hopes for a better future. It can be resisted, as Joel Bakan discusses. And it is urgent not to delay." (Noam Chomsky)