Parents Don't Change, Coogan Does

On January 1st, 2000, the Revised Coogan Law goes into effect in California.  It's main features are these:  The ownership of the child's income now will belong to the child. Fifteen percent of all gross income from professional activities in Sports, Show Business in all its forms, and acts of creation in any field, will be placed in a Trust Account and held for the benefit of the Minor until the age of majority. Finally, the person or persons responsible for this child's money must act with due diligence in the management of this income...seeing to the payment of all commissions, related business expenses and relevant taxes while maintaining accurate accounts which are subject to review.

One hundred years from now it won't matter what kind of car I drove, or where I lived, but I will have made a difference if I took the time to help a child. Parents, of course, take this one step further; creating the child, raising it, and thus setting in motion their living legacy.

Stage Parents are in a peculiar place because they share their child (or children) with the world. The "uncommon denominator" between these parents and their counterparts in sports and other pursuits is that the child in Show Business gets paid.

It is this business of money that changes an ordinary supportive parent into a Stage Parent.

The American Psychology Association recognizes the overly-ambitious parent.  They are measured by Time. 20 hours per week is the marker, a span of time that, if exceeded, should set off alarm bells in a wide range of professionals: teachers, coaches, therapists and adult family members. Put simply, if you see a ten year old putting in more than three hours a day in any endeavor you are looking at potential abuse.

Clearly, 20 hours is not a hard and fast number. 10 hours may be excessive if the child subjected to "training" is six years old. Conversely, 20 hours in the life of an ambitious 16 year old may find this sort of youngster just getting warmed up.

Many of you have seen the commercial featuring our Gold Medal winning female soccer star, Ms. Ham. She practices 1,400 hours per year. In the years before her untimely death, Florence Griffith-Joyner said many times that a world-class athlete must put in 80 hours a week in order to be competitive.

The business of being a child is wrapped up in personal growth and development...in secrets and silences...in observing the world and getting educated. That's a full time job. The child gets but one crack at childhood.

If a child demonstrates an early flair for the performing arts and is born into a certain type of family this "flair" begins to be channeled into lessons, and those lessons turn into a life style, and that life style demands that the child's "gifts" be shared with others. This is of little consequence if you're in Boise, Idaho simply because the avenues of "professional" expression are limited. Oh, it is easy enough to see an entire family devoted night and day to an endless string of lessons and recitals and performances, even in Idaho, or a merry band of young athletes who play their particular sport five nights a week and put a thousand miles on the family van every week, but our focus in A Minor Consideration is on the professional child. Believe me, there is a difference between the parent who is doing their best to support their child's interest or talent in baseball and the parent who is stuck in traffic trying to get to their child's audition (along with dozens of other parents) for a theatrical job that pays $500.

The Reader should know that there is a group of parents within the Industry who detest the efforts of A Minor Consideration. They share a common feature: They live off the work of their children. And they think everything is just fine. Despite years of explanation they do not understand the thrust of this organization. So, for those who have not yet grasped our priority list, let me repeat it.;

The child is our first priority, then the relationship between child and parent. Then comes the interests of the professional organizations like Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA that see to the workplace in which the child labors, and finally the Industry that works with and employs these children. That's it; One, Two, Three, Four.

Far too many professional stage parents say, "We did a movie last year" when the truth is that the child learned the lines, hit the marks, and has to deal with the consequences of their success.

We are not unsympathetic to Stage Parents. You will read elsewhere in this site just how difficult is their role. Stage Parents are chauffeurs, nutritionists, psychologists, dialogue coaches, baby-sitters and policemen. And they don't get paid. The absurdity of their position is that they are laboring under threat of Law to be "within sight and hearing of their child at all times" yet they receive no compensation. What other adult would accept such a position?

Similarly, the working child is expected to pay for their own baby-sitter! Children in Show Business are less equal than their adult co-workers, and it is this situation that A Minor Consideration is seeking to change...and has changed, at least in California.

Keep these two factors in mind...Money and the generic term, Business. We do not call this work Show Art. Or Volunteer Performing. It's Show Business.

Elsewhere we have discussed the kind of child that takes to this sort of work...generally the best and the brightest at school, physically under-sized and possessed of enormous communications skills. That's almost a given. The family structure often finds one or the other parent consumed with an interest in movies and television and the celebrity of show business. There will be an emphasis on "appearance" and a tendency to place a great deal of emphasis on budding talent in the Performing Arts as expressed by the child. There is also a great deal of naiveté within the family as to the true costs of pursuing these "gifts," especially in a professional setting.

Let me repeat the obvious. A talent in the performing arts or athletics is only rarely able to sustain a career throughout adulthood. The parent who trades adolescent success for future necessities, who ignores the very real need to prepare a child for adult accomplishments is taking a very real risk to the welfare of their child. There have been far too many tales of illiterate athletes for this to be ignored.

A Stage Parent may defend the time and expenses inherent in pursuing a career by saying, "This is a family endeavor and we get to spend quality time with our children."

That's true, as far as it goes.

The child, however, takes a different lesson out of the experience. The child is well-aware that Mommy stays home only if he or she gets that job. Remember what the drop-out rate is among professional children: 20% per year.

Stage Parents often feel guilty about the money they are spending on headshots, travel expenses, time off from work and ordinary maintenance of their career-bound child. Other parents, they argue, are doing the same thing in Little League or High School sports. That's true, of course, except the pay-off for the kid in Show Business is a real job with real money paid. Pay-off is quickly translated into "pay-back."

Some Stage Parents arrange this pay-back in terms of Management commissions, taking a hefty percentage of their child's income (as high as 25%) for their "assistance" in shepherding the career-bound child. Never mind that they have only their own experience to go on. They have never managed another professional child and are themselves blissfully unaware of the true workings of Show Business.

There oughtta be a Law...and there will be.

The factor that is seldom mentioned by these Stage Parents is the Time they are taking away from their own role in the work place. The Law is rather specific in this area. It is the parent's responsibility to care for the child...to maintain a home and provide ordinary nourishment and see to the education of their off-spring. That's the deal.

Having a successful child does not exempt a parent from providing for that child within the limits of their own ability to care for and maintain the most precious possession they have.

The complications are almost endless when a Stage Parent has ambitions to, in effect, sell their child. What are the effects on non-working siblings? What about school? What about family dynamics. What if the Stage Parent is divorced? What if that parent has no job of their own? What if the child's early skills melt away? Who pays back the parent if the child gets just one job, or none?;

Fortunately, most parents handle these stresses and strains rather well, and given the realities of a child's actual chances within Show Business the procedure mercifully comes to an end on its own as the child and the parents eventually recognize that the time and the money are not worth the effort. The odds of getting a paying job are intimidating, and the chances of having a real career are, for a child, nearly astronomical. Sustaining an acting or athletic career into adulthood is not so much possible as improbable. 40 million kids are involved in athletics. How many professional athletes are there? Parents are supposed to be adults. What adult takes this sort of wager?

Consider the reality of the various lotteries States have created. For all the hoopla associated with big pay-offs the facts are these: Give the State lottery One Dollar and they give you back 46 Cents.

We do not argue against participation in Show Business. Far from it. We urge caution and safety. We plead with parents to always have an Exit Strategy. We ask that accurate records be kept, because in the business of Show Business the money is the way you keep score.

Very few high-income parents put their kids in Show Business for the simple reason that it doesn't pay. The reality is that the kids who come into the Business in their thousands every year come from families with almost no knowledge of how to earn and manage money. This doesn't make them bad people, nor should we be too hostile to honest ambition.

What we have to do is count the time! What every parent must do is keep track of the money!

Above all we must help parents with "special children" to do what is best for all concerned in the specific order mentioned above.

A Minor Consideration came into being to deal with the End Game for child actors. In the interest of ordinary reasoning it became clear that Prevention beats Intervention every time. Rather than continuing to deal with the troubles that beset so many professional children it became clear to us that we had to change the way the Industry treats its children while the process is underway.

Stage Parents who think we don't care about them would be wise to remember that it took a whole bunch of "vintage celebrities" to turn their truants into recognized students, who passed the Law to prevent Hollywood from hiring premature babies, who beat back the effort to lower the teaching standards for studio teachers, and who passed the Law that will end the predatory scam artists that prey on innocent children and their parents who want to break in to Show Business.

It is not Stage Parents who are leading the fight to finally establish Child Labor Laws for Entertainment on a national level, but former kid actors.

The Revised Coogan Law goes into effect shortly. It's details will scarcely impact on those stage parents who are already handling things wisely...and that is most stage parents.

The only Stage Parents who have anything to fear are those who think it's okay to be supported by a child.

A Minor Consideration is fighting to find a way to compensate parents who serve so many functions in the workplace, to extend healthcare benefits to them as well, and we remain active in repairing broken ties between parents and their children when the game is over. We are here to help in precisely the order stated above.

First, the child. Second, the parents and their lifelong relationship to that child. Third, we pledge allegiance to those organizations concerned for the welfare of working children (unions and athletic associations). Fourth, the health and well-being of the Industry that makes use of child labor, sells to children, and impacts all of our lives.

It's just that simple.