In this episode we consider vital role of play, and what it does to expand a child’s creativity and resilience. Urban sociologist Tamara Mose is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, and author of The Playdate: Parents, Children and the New Expectations of Play (NYU Press, 2016). She tells us about the strengths and perils of playdates, and the need for children to have unstructured play.

In his new book, Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020), Tyler Bickford explores how the tween music market rose during the mid to late 2000s. Bickford addresses the ways in which the music industry seized only childishness as a key element in legitimizing children’s participation in public culture. 

 

In this episode, Priss Benbow, a fellow at Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, speaks with Sherrie Westin, president of Global Impact and Philanthropy at Sesame Workshop, about the process of applying to a “big bet” grant competition, developing new culturally appropriate Sesame Street characters, and how the two partner organizations will measure program impact.

Our guest today, Heather Williams, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a moving book about on the subject, Help Me Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery.

Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and is Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families. She has authored seven books on marriage and family life, including A Strange Stirring: ‘The Feminine Mystique’ and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. Coontz is a frequent guest columnist for the New York Times and CNN.com. Selected articles and tv appearances can be found at www.stephaniecoontz.com 

Drawing on the insights of experts, industry insiders, and children themselves, CONSUMING KIDS traces the evolution and impact of this disturbing and unprecedented phenomenon, exposing the youth marketing industry's controversial tactics and exploring the effect of hyper-consumerism on the actual lived experience of children.

"Provides gripping evidence of the importance of early life experiences for children - and that programs and public policies can create much healthier children for the future." James M. Perrin, MD, FAAP Past President, American Academy of Pediatrics, Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School