Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
If Corporations Are Making Your Child Fat, Run Crying to Mommy
If Corporations Are Making Your Child Fat, Run Crying to Mommy
Jun 4, 2025 12:07 PM

The New York Times ran an op-ed yesterday by Canadian legal scholar Joel Bakan, the author of a new book titled Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.Bakan argues that the 20th century has seen an increase in legal protections for two classes of persons, children and corporations, and that one of these is good and one is terribly, terribly bad—mean, even. That furthermore, there has been a kind of inexorable, Hegelian clash between the Corporation and the Child, but that the Corporation is steamrolling the Child, and we’ve got to step in with governmental protections.

The first problem with Bakan’s analysis is his history of personhood. In his words, children were not legal persons until the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959. And as he understands it, corporations are granted certain rights of personhood simply because they have lots of money to pay lobbyists with—not because they are risk allocating mechanisms that must function semi-autonomously from the men and women who run them.

It is ridiculous to assert that “the 20th century also witnessed another momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation.” A Canadian lawyer should have some history of mon law and should know of the numerous 18th and 19th century for-profit corporations. And you can’t talk of fin de siècle child welfare reforms without corporate dark satanic mills already abusing the children.

Worse than these blunders, though, is Bakan’s view of the condition of children vis-à-vis corporations today.

Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising.

We medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices.

We also know that corporations often use [toxic] chemicals as key ingredients in children’s products, saturating their environments.

It is not even considered that children’s parents might be responsible for the food they eat, the medicines they take, or the toys they play with. Indeed, the piece begins with a reflection on Bakan’s own children’s absorption in the digital world and a sense that something is wrong with their lives, but nowhere does it occur to him to do anything about it, except to raise awareness in the pages of the New YorkTimes. If the progressive state is to solve his own problems of parenting just as it is to solve his children’s problems, how is our brave muser any different than a child?

Bakan ends with a quotation of Nelson Mandela: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Mandela was right, and Bakan is a ward of the nanny state—it treats him as it treats his offspring, and makes children of them both. It is frightening to remember what Chesterton said—that “education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another”—if there is no difference between generations.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Rev. Robert Sirico: Remembering The Faith of Oscar Romero
The Rev. Robert Sirico, in The Detroit News today, remembers the faith of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, whom Pope Francis recently declared a martyr. Rev. Sirico recalls his trip to the church where the Salvadoran archbishop was killed. While on a lecture tour of El Salvador about a year ago, I asked my hosts if it were possible to visit the church where Oscar Romero celebrated his last Mass in 1980. The Salvadorian archbishop was assassinated by a government hit...
Would Kuyper go to Mars?
In his otherwise excellent work The Problem of Poverty, the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, as a man of his time (the late-nineteenth and early twentieth mended the merits of colonialism as if there were not already people in other lands with their own calling to “till the earth” that God had made. While unfortunate for his time and context, recent events may open up a case in which colonization may be the Christian duty Kuyper believed it to be: Mars....
Coptic Orthodox Bishop on the Islamic State Mass Murder of Christians in Libya
When asked by the BBC interviewer what he would say to the terrorists if they were sitting in the studio at that moment, the bishop replied: I would say that any religion starts from a premise of a sanctity of life. And no matter what differences there are, this doesn’t justify by any means the taking of a life and especially so horrifically. I pray for them and I pray that somehow hearts are touched. I’m sure that not everyone...
More Than 300 Trafficking Victims Set Free In India
International Justice Mission [IJM] works around the world to bolster rule of law, fight corruption and help human trafficking victims. In India, human trafficking – both sex trafficking and labor trafficking – is rampant. IJM announced that government officials (who had been trained by and working with IJM) were able to free 333 people from labor trafficking at a brick factory last week. They [the trafficking victims] lived in tiny, thatched-roof huts. Each couple was responsible to make 2,000 bricks...
Battlefield Entrepreneurs: The Secret of Israeli Innovation?
Over the past 60+ years, Israel has emerged as an economic powerhouse despite all odds. With only 7.1 million people, no natural resources, and surrounded by enemies and constant threats, it has somehow managed to attract nearly $2 billion in venture capital. It produces more panies than large countries like Japan, India, Korea, and the United Kingdom, and has panies on the NASDAQ than any country other the United States. Given its range of challenges, how can this be? In...
Unemployment Tied to One in Five Suicides
Unemployment is a spiritual problem. When a person loses their job, they’ve lost a means to provide for their family, an important aspect of their human flourishing, and the primary way they serve their neighbors. With the loss in es a loss in meaning. Not surprisingly, unemployment can have long-term negative effects munities, families, and a person’s subjective well-being and self-esteem. The most disturbing effect of unemployment is the despair that can lead people to take their own lives. One...
5 Things You Should Know About Washington’s Birthday
Today in the United States is the federal holiday known as Washington’s Birthday (not “Presidents Day—see item #1). In honor of George Washington’s birthday, here are 5 things you should know about the day set aside for our America’s founding father. 1. Although some state and local governments and private businesses refer to today as President’s Day, the legal public holiday is designated as “Washington’s Birthday” in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code. The observance of...
A Week Of Hellish Religious Persecution
Last week was a nightmarish week. Each day brought forth new violence, visited upon men and women of faith. Attacks against Christians were carried out by both Boko Haram and the Islamic State. Stephen Hicks, a non-believer, shot and killed three young Muslims in North Carolina. Al Qaeda continues to terrorize people in Yemen, and in Copenhagen, a synagogue was the target of a gunman during a bat mitzvah. In November 2012, then-Pope Benedict XVI spoke to members of INTERPOL...
New Report: Orthodox Monastic Communities in the United States
The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America has published a new report on Orthodox Monastic Communities in the United States (here). The report contains a lot of great information (“great” for nerds like me, anyway), including a whole section entitled, “‘Monastic Economy:’ Ownership of Property and Sources of e in US Orthodox Monasteries.” According to the report, In summary, the three mon sources of e in US Orthodox monasteries are: Occasional private donations including bequests and...
African Bishop: ‘Our Values Are Not For Sale’
Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, Nigeria and newly appointed Chairman of Communications for the African bishops, has some strong words for the West. Bishop Badejo believes help for Nigeria in fighting Boko Haram has been withheld because of Nigerians refusal to accept population control tactics from the Western world. In a lengthy interview given in Rome, Badejo discusses his thoughts the Nigerian government, Boko Haram and Western policies and values. In Yorubaland, human dignity and human life are sacred. Christianity...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved