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Part of What actually protects a child actor, beyond the contract
What a child actors directory records, and what it refuses
This article explains what a child actors directory should record, which fields it should refuse, where minor work rules live, and how to handle removals.
A directory covering young performers is mostly a set of decisions about what not to hold. That is an unusual thing to say about a reference product, and it is the correct starting point, because the ordinary directory fields are the ones that cause harm here.
This page sets out how such a record should be structured, which fields to refuse, and where the actual rules come from. It names no child and no adult, and it states no rule as current fact.
What to take away
- The record holds credited work in released productions. Age, school, location and family are not fields.
- A child with no public role belongs in no list at all, including as a relative of someone who does.
- Every rule about what a production may ask of a minor is set by a public body and changes. Read it from the body, for the place and the year.
What the record is about
The unit is a credited role in a released production. That is a published fact, created by the production, appearing on the finished work.
Everything else a general directory collects is out of scope by default: date of birth, current age, town, school, siblings, parents, health. So is any photograph the production did not publish as promotional material for the credited work.
None of these is needed to describe a credit. Each one turns a work record into a locator for a minor.
Reference projects that carry biographical material publish their own reasoning about restraint. Before writing your own policy, read the encyclopedic policy on material about living people. It argues the case from inside a project that could not simply opt out.
The field list, and the refusals
| Field | Keep | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Production and role as credited | Yes | It is the published fact the record exists to hold |
| Credit type and billing wording | Yes | It describes the engagement, not the person |
| Production dates and release dates | Yes | They date the work |
| Source and checked date | Yes | Without them nothing can be audited or corrected |
| Date of birth or age | No | A sensitive identifier, and not a property of the work |
| Current location, school, or region | No | It locates a minor and describes nothing about a credit |
| Family members | No | A relative with no public role has no entry and no mention |
| Physical description or measurements | No | Casting data belongs to a casting process, not to a public index |
| Contact details of any kind | No | Approach routes belong with representation, not with a directory |
One record, filled in: Production, a drama series and its second season. Role as credited, the character name as the screen credits carry it. Credit type, guest cast. Production dates, the shoot block. Release date, first broadcast.
Source, the production's own credit list. Checked, the date you looked. Nothing else is a field.
The general field rules for a television record are in the fields a television record needs. For this group the refusals above are mandatory rather than default, and two of them, age and location, stay out even when a production has published them.
Fields kept vs refused
Keep
- Production and role
- Yes
- Credit type and billing
- Yes
- Production and release dates
- Yes
- Source and checked date
- Yes
- Date of birth or age
- —
- Location, school, region
- —
- Family members
- —
- Physical description
- —
Refuse
- Production and role
- —
- Credit type and billing
- —
- Production and release dates
- —
- Source and checked date
- —
- Date of birth or age
- No
- Location, school, region
- No
- Family members
- No
- Physical description
- No
Where the rules actually live
What a production may ask of a young performer, and under what supervision, is set by public authorities and by agreements. It varies by country, by state or province, by the child's age, and by the year. There is no single rule and no summary that stays true.
So the directory's job is to point rather than to state. Name the body, and link to it.
In the United States that means two bodies: the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division and the state labor office that issues entertainment work permits. California's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and the New York State Department of Labor are examples of the second.
In Canada the same role is provincial. Ontario's Ministry of Labour issues child performance permits, and British Columbia's Employment Standards Branch administers permits for children in entertainment. The third body, in both countries, is the school authority that governs lessons during a booking.
The Wage and Hour Division publishes its own overview of child labor protections and where the state rules sit, and every jurisdiction with a working entertainment industry publishes an equivalent. Read it at the source, for the place and the year that matter to you.
Financial protections for a minor's earnings are set the same way, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The encyclopedia summary of the best known of those provisions shows the shape of such a rule. It is not a statement of what applies to anyone.
Structuring around a person who grows up
Structuring for growing up
- Build records on credits with dates, not on a person
- Store no derived label like child star
- Write removal and correction policy before first request
- Weight policy toward the subject for minor-era work
- Log and source every correction
Someone who worked as a minor becomes an adult with a career and, frequently, a wish that the early material were less prominent. If the record is a list of credits with dates, that is a display decision. If the record is a profile built around childhood, there is nothing to adjust.
Two practical consequences. Store no derived label like "child star." It is a judgment that follows a person for life and describes no production. Write the removal and correction policy before the first request arrives, weighted toward the subject where the work was done as a minor.
The general maintenance case for logged, sourced corrections is in why a stage entry goes stale.
The scope statement and the removal policy
State the scope on the page: this holds credited work in released productions and nothing else. State the refusals. State that requests about entries concerning work done as a minor are treated differently from other requests.
Saying it does two things. It tells readers what a missing field means, so nobody mistakes restraint for incompleteness. It also commits you in advance, the only time that commitment is easy.
The removal policy needs three parts. Who may ask: the subject, and for work done as a minor, a parent or guardian, or a representative acting for either.
What comes off: the fields that identify the person rather than the credit, which in practice means age, location, school, family and contact data. How fast: the directory sets its own clock, and a typical shape is an acknowledgement within five working days and a decision within thirty.
The wider treatment of working conditions and protections is in the rules around young performers. The way genre and category labels attach to productions rather than people is in how a genre label attaches.
Common questions
Why exclude age when it is on a dozen other sites?
Because a date of birth is a sensitive identifier, it is not a fact about any credit, and the fact that other people publish it is not a reason. Nothing in a work record needs it.
What about a child who appears in publicity for a production?
Promotional material published by the production for the credited work is within scope for that credit. Anything beyond it, including material about the person outside the production, is not.
A parent asks to be listed as a contact. Should the directory hold it?
No. Contact routes belong with representation. A public index holding a route to a minor is a risk with no offsetting benefit.
Where do I check what a production is allowed to ask?
From the authority for the jurisdiction where the work will happen, for the current year, before agreeing to anything. The guide to verifying a production and its representatives sets out the order to do that in.
