Kids' Risky TV Habits

American Prospect: Call To Reshape Kids' Media Habits

(The American Prospect) 
Politics is another big problem. If progressive leaders say anything that can be remotely interpreted as critical of parents, it would reinforce a stereotype that Howard Dean recently warned against: that of liberals as know-it-alls who talk down to average citizens. That would be especially hypocritical for politicians of any stripe, whose jobs by their nature tend to relegate them to absentee relationships with their children.

But therein may lie the beginning of a response that will resonate with the public. Parenting is a job that, perhaps more than any other, nurtures a sense of inadequacy. Maybe it would be constructive for more politicians with kids to talk in specific ways about how they, their spouses, and -- no use pretending -- their paid caregivers find raising children to be difficult. And maybe they could spend some of that time talking about how seductive the television is in making that challenge a little easier day in and day out. Further, if appropriate, they could talk about anything they may have done in their own household to reduce their dependence on that crutch -- paying closer attention to what their children are watching, rejecting pleas for a television in the bedroom, muting advertisements, initiating other activities to fill time once devoted to the tube, and so on.

Sharing such stories would convey a sense of empathy that parents could relate to; get them to at least think twice about the access to TV that they provide at home; and maybe, over time, fundamentally transform the nature of the debate from one in which the entertainment and advertising industries are to blame to one in which parents reassert greater control in nurturing the development of their own children. Dean himself got a lot of mileage from the phrase, "You have the power," and parents really do have the power to reduce the extent to which the media influence their children (even if they have to do so through their instructions to caregivers). Support for other progressive causes, like better child care and after-school programs, could be integrated with a new message about how they help promote values by enabling parents to keep their kids away from the TV. Progressive leaders can create momentum, which really should be bipartisan, in creating institutions akin to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which would help convey to parents that their kids will do better in school -- and in life -- if they don't get hooked on television. We can do better than Dan Quayle.


Greg Anrig Jr. is vice president of The Century Foundation and co-editor of Social Security: Beyond the Basics.