Born to Buy – Decommercializing Childhood

Schor makes no doubt about it – “constructing a less commercial childhood experience will not be easy.” Ads have infiltrated everything. Scholastic book order forms, “once a cheap and convenient way of getting books,” are now loaded with media and toys. “Beginning in 1995, the Girls Scouts began offering the ‘Fashion Adventure’ experience with the Limited Too.” And Schor points out even the children’s hospital at UCLA was renamed after Mattel. Places of worship are the only safe spots, at least for now.

“The strong presumption against active consumer policy remains. Parents know best. If they don’t like what’s on offer, they can turn off the TV, just say no, or ban the offending T-shirt, lyrics, Web site, or caffeinated sodas. Consumer culture is not an imperative, it’s a choice.” While this is certainly true to some extent, Schor does an excellent job of presenting the flaw in this argument. “In truth, consumption is a thoroughly social activity, and what one person buys, wears, drives, or eats affects the desires and behaviors of those around them.” This is especially when you consider how ads have also infiltrated schools.

Born to Buy - The Virus Unleashed

Long before The Truman Show came to the movies in 1998, ads were slowly infiltrating our everyday lives. Whether it was a corporation sponsoring a coliseum or Carrie, of Sex and the City, typing on her Mac, Schor argues the virus had been unleashed. Continuing to captivate me, Born to Buy tackles how an advertiser’s need to create a buzz is transforming friendships.

Apparently, there is a company called Girls Intelligence Agency, which capitalizes on the growing business of peer-to-peer marketing. “Girls as young as six are recruited to become GIA agents, and once they’re accepted, they become part of an active online network.” According to Schor, in 2002, at the company’s start, 40,000 girls, aged eight to eighteen, were ready to “swing into action on the drop of a dime to create buzz for whatever product the company sends their way.”

Born to Buy – The Explosion of Youth Spending

I recently purchased closet organizers in an attempt to address the stuffed animal issues in my daughters’ rooms. We gathered all the creatures we could find and piled on the floor. At which point, my oldest exclaimed, “We don’t need any more stuffed animals. That’s for sure.” While I was pleased Annabelle agreed with me, I figure the excess must have gotten pretty bad for a seven-year-old to acknowledge it.

“A recent poll by the Center for a New American Dream reveals that children are well aware, and even critical, of (advertisers) efforts,” reports Schor. “Among those aged nine to fourteen, 63 percent expressed concern that there is too much advertising that tries to get kids to buy things, 74 percent say ‘it’s too bad you have to buy certain things to be cool,’ and 81 percent believe that ‘lots of kids place way too much important on buying things.’” Still, as Born to Buy points out, “Companies are advertising because kids are buying. Every half-second, somewhere in the world another Barbie is sold.” Frightening, I know.

As I read this, I found myself asking, ‘How can this be?’ According to Schor, a big factor is parental time pressure; something like longer working hours has really driven this trend. “Guilt money,” as they call it, is one of the factors that accounts for the rise in children’s purchasing power. “Children aged four to twelve made $6.1 billion in purchases in 1989…and $30.0 billion in 2002, an increase of 400 percent.” Schor explains, the way time pressure operates parents have less time to cajole kids to eat products they don’t like or to return rejected purchases to stores. “This is part of why 89 percent of parents of tweens report that they ask their children’s opinions about products they are about to buy for them.”

Born to Buy – The Commercialization of Childhood

While walking down the grocery aisle last week, my four-year-old shouted, “Mom! Wait! I want princess soup.” I explained to my ever-fancy child that it wasn’t actually princess soup; it was just chicken noodle soup with a picture of the Disney Princesses on the label. “So?” she persisted. I reminded her that we don’t eat chicken since we’re vegetarian. And in typical Lily fashion, she replied, “Well, if that’s what I’ve got to do…” I left the store, minus the soup, worrying about my daughter’s moral fiber and knowing my nightmare was a marketer’s dream.

“The United States is the most consumer-oriented society in the world,” writes Juliet B. Schor, author of Born to Buy. “People work longer hours than in any other industrialized country. Savings rates are lower. Consumer credit has exploded, and roughly a million and a half households declare bankruptcy every year.” Why? One of the reasons, according to Schor, is that “kids and teens are now the epicenter of American consumer culture.”

To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First – Looking for the Problem in Yourself First

Psychologist Carl Jung said, “If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.” More often than not, our children’s behavior is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why we worry so much about it in the first place. To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First argues, “We can spot our own faults more easily in others than in ourselves. What irritates us most about others is often a fault we actually possess in our own character.”