Monthly Archives: August 2011

Consumerism is really bad to children. Also, advertisements trigger kids want to buy what they don’t need and parents are pressured to pay for it. Children are educated by advertisement that is ok to have nice things. Children want to be the most fashionable and they want to wear the most expensive clothing or high-end products. Children often want to but the products that are advertised and they will do anything to get their parents to buy by giving tantrums that their parents easily give in. Parents can no longer afford their Children demands. Consumerism has reached a new level of dangerous pursuits for children. The news outlet chinadaily.com.cn recently posted an article online that a 17 year old student who sold one of his kidneys to a dealer he met online to buy an iPad 2. His parents learned about it called the police on the dealer. As the article shows, children can put themselves in grave danger when their desire for certain items makes them act in ways that can create disastrous consequences. This is a phenomenon that if left unchecked it can cause tremendous damage to children growing up in today’s consumer society.

This article: “TV Contestants: Tired, Tispy and Pushed to Brink from The New York Times (August 2nd, 2009) is about how contestants are treated mainly off camera in different reality shows. There is definitley an injustice in how people who participate in these shows are handled. They are without a doubt, according to this article, treated poorly.

In this article it says, that contestants on reality shows find themselves having long workdays and “communication blackouts” (pg.#1 of this article by Edward Wyatt). These shows have “…. evolved arguably into Hollywood’s sweatshop” (pg. #1- of this article).

Most contestants recieve either no pay at all or very little pay. Also most contestants (of most shows) do not have any union representation.

In this article: “Makeover television, governmentality and the good citizen” (by Laurie Ouelette and James Hay) they talk about programmes that try to”…. transform floundering individuals into successful self- managers” (pg. #472- of this article). Supposedly, what comes with this — as the article says, is freedom and burdens that goes into changing the person with the help of coaches, lifestyle experts and motivators.

But to what length do these shows go to to try to intervene in in another human’s life or lifestyle? If these shows are getting a bad rap for how they treat contestants on their shows– then how is this contributing to the well-being of the actual person who is a contestant?  Is it so important for them to be their own self-managers that they must endure not getting paid and working too much. All of this for an outcome that may or may not be even good for them or have longevity?

In this article from the New York Times, it talks about how certain contestants are treated by producers. The object of these producers’ goals is to get people (contestants) into a state where they are tired, stressed and emotionally vulnerable. This makes them more easily manipulated.

How is this helping people to feel good about themselves? I think it does the opposite. Does this help people get away from the State and encourage them to help themselves? Even if in some ways if it does the tactics and strategies are all wrong, in my opinion. This says something unfavorable about human nature. These shows are overly aggressive in manipulating people and their ways of getting people to participate are discouraging in many aspects.

The whole concept of marriage is being lost. Getting a divorce has become so common that marriage doesn’t hold as much power as it used to. It’s not the sacred vow that once upon a time held so much power. Many people are now choosing not to get married. In some cases the only reason people do get married is solely for legal purposes and that’s where the advantage lies. Love is something that is and not many people find marriage necessary to bind that love.

The following article argues that because marriage is not as sacred as it used to be that it doesn’t really seem right to restrict some people who do desire it from marrying. The issue of raising children is also raised and it becomes apparent that there is no longer a traditional and ideal way that children are being raised. Many children are already being raised by single parents and if that so happened to be a gay couple then how could that be so different?

The traditional idea of marriage that so many are trying to keep alive is already being lost all over the world. Living together without being married is normal and even having a child out of wedlock is not so uncommon. Times are changing and people are beginning to see gay marriage as not that big of an issue. Its becoming a ‘why not?’ kind of discussion. People are becoming more open minded about marriage because its become a loose term and it’s not as serious as it once used to be.

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/25/us-children-report-idUSTRE65O53O20100625      

I wanted to know why some women do not want children. When I was doing research I found an article by Daniel Lippman who explained why more women decide not to have children these days.  Since we are in the 21^st century women do not feel the big pressure anymore to have children. The tradition has always been the same: Women get married and have kids; However, according to the article this no longer the norm.  Also, couples want to enjoy their lives to the fullest; they do not want to deal with the giant responsibility of raising children.  Some people believe that children are not the most important element for a successful marriage. Statistically, only 41% of adults think that children are necessary in marriage compared to 65% in 1990. Education is an important factor when it comes to not having kids, according to Lippman the more educated a women is the less likely she will be to have children.  In my opinion I think this is primarily because women want time to study and focus in their professions.  Children may just break their plans because they will need to get a good babysitter for them, and they will need to spend a lot of time with them.  As a result, the rate of childless women has increased because more educated women decide to postpone having children at older ages than the less educated ones.

I think that is better to wait to have children when you’re older, because you will have more responsibility, money and time for your child. A lot of us want to enjoy our life to its fullest and then have children in our late 20’s or early 30’s.  Children can cause too much stress plus we do not want to go to the extreme pain of labor.

The case against having kids

The link I found called “Child domestic work in India”. The reason I choose that link because the link showed some similar object that we watched movie last week based on domestic workers problem and situation.  According to this link, it found the issue of highest concern of children as a domestic worker in India; such as children who is under 18 years old and girls. In India it’s often being observe that there are many children is working as a domestic worker in other’s people’s household. Those children usually come from rural area to urban area by their relatives, friends, or traffickers. They are only choosing this occupation because of their family’s poverty. Often they work as a condition of food or shelter. They are being disadvantages of getting an education. They work for long hours or stays employer’s house but get pay very little amount of money. Often they even can’t visit their family or household members. Moreover, often these children’s are frequently face verbally and physically abuse. In some case even they become victimize of sexual abuse by their employer.  On the other hand some of these girl child domestic workers find themselves in trapped and get involve in prostitution.

Similar to movie we watched in the class, we can see here that domestic worker mostly experience of staying away from their own family and often get abuse by their employers.