Cover Your Child In The Entertainment Industry

Cover Your Child in the Entertainment Industry is the essential safety guide for every parent of a child working in the spotlight. Written by Jackie Braden — mother of two working actors and founder of the nonprofit Cover Your Child Inc. — this fully revised second edition pulls back the curtain on what really happens when a child steps onto a set, a stage, a field, a content shoot, or into any space where adults work directly with minors.

Drawing on more than a decade of firsthand experience raising children in film, television, commercials, print, theatre, and music, Braden walks parents through the permits, protections, and red flags every family must know. She covers California’s Child Performer Protection Law, Coogan accounts, studio teachers, set etiquette, on-set dangers, social media and digital platforms, youth sports, and the people who surround a working child — managers, coaches, agents, and more.

But this book is about more than rules. Through honest, often unflinching personal stories — including her own — Braden shows parents how to protect not just their child’s career, but their childhood. She confronts the industry’s hardest truths about exploitation and abuse, and offers a clear, empowering standard of safety that any family can follow, in any state.

Part memoir, part field guide, and part call to action, this second edition expands the mission nationwide: that every child — in entertainment, sports, digital media, and beyond — deserves the same protection, no matter where they live or what spotlight they stand in.

Whether your child is booking their first commercial or signing with a major studio, Cover Your Child in the Entertainment Industry gives you the knowledge, the questions, and the confidence to keep them safe.