Suffer the Children

Someone burst my balloon today, again.  The news of Balloon Boy's exploitation at the hands of his parents and a media that is happy to help if there's a buck in it for them is disheartening. 

This is a classic case of misdirection.  Everyone thought the little boy was on the family's weather balloon, people around the world concerened that something bad could happen to him so many feet above earth, when all the while something very bad was happening to him in the attic of his home.

There is little doubt in my mind that the child is the victim here.  The victim of his underserving parents and the victim of the media structure that permits parents like these to thrive.

There has sadly always been a certain exploitation of children.  Shirley Temple, the Little Rascals, the Olsen twins, so many, many more.  But in the past, only a few children got these priced roles, and they made a fortune for themselves or for their parents as a result.  Exploitation was a recognized evil, there were laws created to limit the amount of hours that the child could be allowed to work, the conditions under which they were expected to work, and the rate of pay they were to receive.  Even then the result has been extremely damaging to most of the children who were raised in the spotlight.  But that was never as prevalent as it is today.

I love the You Tube video of the laughing babies as much as the next person, and to a certain extent, those are innocuous.  But as more Reality TV dinamic grows and more free floating 'volunteers' of our video-social experiments arise, I fear for the implications to the children.

One need only consider the case of Balloon Boy, whose parents were not only exposing him on television during their Wife Swap episodes, but who seem now to have gone through an insane conspiracy to attract more attention to themselves by conspiring to raise the alarm about their six-year-old's disappearance on a weather balloon.  They are putting so much pressure on the child that he becomes physically ill not once but twice on national television. 

Or Jon & Kate and their eight. Not only are these two exploiting their eight children, they are exploiting each other and fighting a very public divorce with the eight children strung together as a pathetic rope in their Tug of War.  And why?  Because they both care more for how much money they can make from their infamy than the eight children over whom they protest so much. 

How much are these children being paid for their time on camera? Where is the Trust in THEIR name, managed by an independent third party, so it can not be squandered by their irresponsible 'guardians' before they graduate from high-school.   Who is ensuring that they are not overly exposed, that they get a chance to rest adequately, that they receive a decent education, that their privacy is not violated before it has even been nurtured, that their innocence is not lost before they even get to appreciate having it?  None of us.

Parents who expose their children on television without ensuring them these basic protections are abusing them.  Production companies who encourage parents to do so are exploiting them.

We talk a lot about the many forms of child exploitation in our society that disturb us.  We see horror stories of missing children, and children falling prey to pedofiles, and we cringe.  But these other exploitations are not any more legitimate because they appear on legitimate media circuits.

I confess that I have never followed the ABC show 'Wife Swap' or the TLC show 'Jon & Kate Plus 8.'  There may well be some nuance I am missing because of my ignorance, but I have also not ever directly seen a number of other ways in which children are exploited, but I know they exist and I can recognize them as corrupt. 

I hate to say we ever need new laws and regulations, as generally laws do more harm than good, and often the state does its best work when it backs off our lives.  But that premise is based on independent adults who are able to defend themselves in the hostile everyday.  Children are not able to do any of this for themselves.  It is the job of their parents to ensure their protection, and the job of government to protect children from bad parents. 

We need to see new regulations to forbid the use of any minors on Reality TV shows.  There I said it.  I won't mince words.  I'll say more.  I believe that any children appearing in the media should be considered child actors, regardless of the form and method of their exposure, and that they should be compensated at an hourly rate equivalent to five times the rate of adult actors in prime time slots.

Why?  We are robbing these children of the most valuable years of their lives.  I do not romanticize childhood when I say this.  I am being realistic about its intended purpose.  The years when one is free and clear of responsibilities and exposure to grim realities are golden.  They alow us to develop.  They allow us to dream.  They allow us to try and fail, fall and rise, with impunity and in privacy, so we can gain the confidence and the courage to face the real world effectively and strongly support our society.  If we rob children of this invaluable 1/5 of their time on earth, then we should pay them at a rate five times greater than what they will earn as adults to compensate.  So that when those children have to spend hours and money in therapy, when they have to be 'coached' into adapting like normal human beings into our society they have the resources on hand with which to do this. 

And I do believe that all children who are compensated in this fashion should have a Trust in their name that is managed by an independent third party that is neither their parents the production company or any agent representing either of those two.

We can never forget that what our children suffer today, we will suffer from them tomorrow.  The sins of the father may be visited on his children, but the children eventually strike back.