Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Friday, May 29, 2009

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ: Receiving an alleged $75k per episode and having committed, also reportedly, for another 40+ episodes of their family's daily life, Jon and Kate Gosselin and their kids are going through an emotional meat grinder, or are they? The wonders of software like Avid and the talents of producers, associate producers, production assistants, etc. have all come to bear to create what they believe is a ratings goldmine for them, if not the Gosselin family.

Commenting on The View recently, Whoopi Goldberg, asked something no one seems to be interested in; child labor laws. Kids used to labor in factories, lose their limbs, be beaten and starved and worse until the US passed strict child labor laws. Kids can't work in factories, the age at which they may work at all is set by law and then the pay they receive and the hours they can work are also regulated. Hmmmm, so how many hours are child actors allowed to work?

Are children in TV reality shows "actors" if they are being paid, via their parents, to appear in these shows and how many hours are they working, anyway? If you have cameras filming your every move for how many days of the week, how many hours per day, is this tantamount to a form of cruel and unusual punishment for just having been born? What do the unions have to say about all this or are reality shows outside the governance of union rules? If they are not union jobs, the actors receive no healthcare, retirement or other benefits. Anyone ever hear of "An American Family," the 1973 show on the comings and goings of the Loud family? Take a look at this link http://www.current.org/prog/prog90-20L.html) and you'll see the sad results. And they only had five kids.

Should the kids have agents to represent them? Are there clauses in the contracts to protect the kids' rights and access to earnings from the show in the future? Good parents, of course, would provide this in any contract, but I'm certainly not privy to the contract and hope that Jon and Kate had a good attorney. Child stars have earned fortunes which have been found to have evaporated once they became of age and, in fact, I've seen former child actors on the wards of psychiatric hospitals. No one would have known they were those little curly-headed darlings that made us laugh and cry in all those days in the dark movie houses.

What emotional toll will this have on the kids in the future? Suppose you were a kid, no a toddler, and you had cameras around you most of the time, people creating "scenes" for you or "scenes" to be reshot, tantrums recorded for all to see for all time, housekeepers, nannies, etc. and then it all stopped. What would it be like? What kind of "normal" childhood are these kids having or going to have in the future? When we think in legal terms, and I'm not an attorney, we always hear "in the best interests of the child" and I'm wondering where that is in this equation.

http://www.drfarrell.net

Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D.

Licensed Psychologist

Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D., LLC

Englewood Cliffs, NJ