Endangered Childhoods: How Consumerism Impacts Child and Youth Identity

For assignmnet 1, students will be asked to conduct research on their own and create a report that presents information on adoption in their home state. In our learning materials for this week, we covered open and closed adoptions. We briefly discussed problems that could occur with either one. Your task for this week is to conduct research on open and closed adoption policies in the state where you are from. Check the Department of Child and Family Services, local adoption agencies, or other family resources for answers. Create a report that tells me how your state handles these types of adoptions, what the policies are, and how they are initiated. Furthermore, discuss what you see as pros or cons to the policies. Do they help or hurt families? Help or hurt children? Submit your report with citations.

In your article "Endangered Childhoods" the authors argue that "while people believe they are expressing their selves and attaining happiness they are, in fact, developing, monitoring, and molding their identities with respect to unrealistic ideals promoted by consumer culture through advertising." For this assignment please create an argument for against that statement. Do you agree or disagree? In your argument please discuss the impact of branding, product placement, and gender identity (as it is discussed in the article). Please cite the article. Lastly, use one example (not present in the article) to demonstrate your points.

To summarize you are creating a 1-2 page paper that argues for or against the author's point above, using the role of branding, product placement, and gender identity to support your argument and incorporating one example at the end that specifically shows why and how your argument is true.