Where Do the Children Play? is a one-hour documentary for public television that examines how restrictive patterns of sprawl, congestion, and endless suburban development across America are impacting children’s mental and physical health and development.
Using the adage that children represent 20 percent of the world’s population but 100 percent of its future, the film opens by examining differences between growing up today, with all its inherent obstacles and temptations, and childhood as it was lived 50 years ago.
“…the film looked at suburbs today, which have the greatest problems. Explosive growth patterns, massive highways, distant malls, create an isolated environment lacking in sidewalks or places to ride bikes, walk or play. Children tend to be driven indoors to computers and television for recreation, and then driven to a mall or a friend’s house by parents. Suburban kids, those ironically with the most opportunity in some areas, suffer the greatest health and psychological problems.”
The film can be purchased for $19.95, and a companion book, A Place for Play, is also available. The making of the film began in 2001 with the work of Dr. Elizabeth Goodenough on Secret Spaces of Childhood (University of Michigan Press, 2003), which the producers developed into an idea for a film.
“…the film examines the impact of the media and stranger-danger television stories. But it also looks at the role of parents themselves, specifically to the over-programmed child of professionals who run their child’s life as if it were a business.”
Tags: A Place for Play, child development, children, children's play, Elizabeth Goodenough, PBS Documentary, stranger-danger, Where Do the Children Play?
