child consumerism essay

The Child Consumer

Cat Lincoln and Laurel Pascal

Children’s Well-being: The effects of Child Consumerism

By Laurel Pascal

There has been serious concern today that child involvement in consumer culture has had a major effect on children’s well-being and their relationship with their parents. Marketers have essentially become the source of contention between the two parties as they create conflicts between the parent and the child. Marketers have developed advertising strategies, which aim to create this “utopian” (160) space for children in a rule-free zone in which parents essentially become the enemy. Through these antiadultism strategies, the main question becomes “Do children who are directly influenced by the marketers techniques experience more negative feelings towards their parents? Do they see their parents as the target getting in their way of acquiring the things they want?” Studies have proved that there is a direct causal link between higher levels of consumer involvement by children and poorer relationships between parents and children. Those kids who are much more involved with media tend to fight and disagree with their parents much more because their parents become the obstacle in their way of attaining goods. The study also suggests that as the relationship between parents and children become worse off, this leads to a negative effect on children’s well-being. When a child is not connecting with their parents, they face a much higher risk of facing depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem, and more psychosomatic complaints. Thus, consumer culture affects children both directly and indirectly.

The American culture is one that is centrally based off of consuming and spending. This creates many problems within society as people are constantly comparing and contrasting what they are consuming or in fact what they are not consuming. As society continues to progress and revolutionize, the age at which kids start thinking about consumption becomes lower and lower each year. Children are constantly exposed to various advertisements and become victims of marketers advertising strategies and messages. Every child wants the new best thing on the market. However, through constant exposure to media, each “new best thing” becomes old fast. Before you know it, new toys or foods or products are invented, and suddenly children feel as though what they have is no longer “cool” anymore. Children start nagging their parents for more and more and when the parent refuses to buy the item, the child sees the parents as the enemy. Thus, this drive and need for attaining the next new cool material good has left children feeling inadequate about themselves and their backgrounds.

Conclusively, in our world of constant exposure to the media, marketers have found a new market to target, which is the child population. The child market has become a greatly successful market as marketers take advantage of children’s naivety and their intense need to attain certain products. In an environment driven by consumption and the need to attain material goods, this has created troublesome relationships between kids and their parents as well as kids and themselves. The parent has become the target in kid’s way of getting what they want and see in the advertisements. Additionally, kids exposure to new products on a daily basis has driven them to suffer from self-esteem issues and feeling like what they have will never be enough.

SOURCE: Schor, Juliet. Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer. New York: Scribner, 2004.

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Children as Consumers

Author and page information.

by Anup Shah
This page last updated Sunday, November 21, 2010
This page: https://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers .
https://www.globalissues.org/print/article/237

Even in industrialized societies, where governments and campaigners fight for better child advertising standards and regulations, or improved food quality, industry fights back preferring self-regulation (which rarely happens, or is intentionally weak), and arguing that it is individual choices and parents that are the issue.

Advertising to children is big business, encouraging and increasing childhood consumerism, advertising to children considered harmful, manipulating children’s views of the world, banning ads and the fear or unintended consequences, can industry be trusted to self-regulate, taxing junk food, corporatization of education, a small example of effects of child consumerism, parental versus corporate influence., commercialization of childhood itself.

Consider the following:

Children are a captive audience: The average American child watches an estimate between 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year. In the UK, it is about 10,000
$15-17 billion is spent by companies advertising to children in the US. Over $4 billion was spent in 2009 by the fast food industry alone.
Teens in the US spend around $160 billion a year
Children (up to 11) spend around $18 billion a year
Tweens (8-12 year olds) heavily influence more than $30 billion in other spending by parents, and 80 percent of all global brands now deploy a tween strategy.
Children (under 12) and teens influence parental purchases totaling over $130-670 billion a year.

So what? Isn’t that good for business? As we will introduce here, while this might be good for business, there are also important economic, social, health and environmental and other costs to be considered.

As mentioned in the previous section looking at the rise in consumption, larger houses were an example of the things promoted to increase consumption. So too was the encouragement to provide more toys and other items for children:

The [U.S.] federal government played a major role in defining childhood. In 1929, Herbert Hoover sponsored a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. The conference report, The Home and the Child , concluded that children were independent beings with particular concerns of their own.… The report advised parents to give their children their own [furniture, toys, playrooms etc]. Generally a sleeping room for each person is desirable , it noted.… Take them shopping for their own things and let them pick them out for themselves. Through such experiences personality develops… [These] experiences have the advantage of also creating in the child a sense of personal as well as family pride in ownership, and eventually teaching him that his personality can be expressed through things . (White House, 1931, [Emphasis added by Robbins]; See also Leach 1993:371-372)

Thus in the space of some 30 years, the role of children in American life changed dramatically; they became, and remain, pillars of the consumer economy, with economic power rivaling that of adults.

Children wield enormous purchasing power, both directly and indirectly (indirectly in the sense that they are able to persuade and influence parents on what to buy).

Observe a child and parent in a store. That high-pitched whining you’ll hear coming from the cereal aisle is more than just the pleadings of single kid bent on getting a box of Fruit Loops into the shopping cart. It is the sound of thousands of hours of market research, of an immense coordination of people, ideas and resources, of decades of social and economic change all rolled into a single, Mommy, pleeease! If it’s within [kids’] reach, they will touch it, and if they touch it, there’s at least a chance that Mom or Dad will relent and buy it, writes retail anthropologist, Paco Underhill. The ideal placement of popular books and videos, he continues, should be on the lower shelves so the little ones can grab Barney or Teletubbies unimpeded by Mom or Dad, who possibly take a dim view of hypercommercialized critters.

And advertising to children isn’t just for purchasing children’s items; they influence other items:

The minivan was created, for example, because children demanded more room. Then they decided the three-door behemoth was uncool, helping give rise to the SUV. Every auto manufacturer has a strategy to target children, [James McNeal, a market researcher who specializes in the children’s market] adds.

This has long been understood:

The renowned behaviorist was also vice president of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and a spokesman for the idea, then novel, that marketing is not just about peddling products that people need; it's also about creating a society of consumers ever eager for more. Famous for claiming that any child, conditioned early enough, could be turned into anything— a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even into beggar-man and thief —he left a key vocation out. If shopper had been on his list, it would have been a prescient boast.

(The other key point in the quote above is that markets here are not meeting needs, but creating needs.)

Heavy advertising targeted at children

Marketers see children as a future — as well as current — market and hence brand loyalty at a young age helps in the quest of continued sales later.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has said that children between the ages of two and seventeen watch an annual average of 15,000 to 18,000 hours of television, compared with 12,000 hours spent per year in school. Children are also major targets for TV advertising, whose impact is greater than usual because there is an apparent lessening of influence by parents and others in the older generation.… According to the [Committee on Communications of the American Academy of Pediatrics], children under the age of two should not watch television at all because at that age, brain development depends heavily on real human interactions.

In the European Union, by 2001, revenues to television networks and producers have reached between $620 and $930 million . Revenues since have increased further.

Sweden, since 1991 has banned all advertising during children’s prime time due to findings that children under 10 are incapable of telling the difference between a commercial and a program, and cannot understand the purpose of a commercial until the age of 12. (See previous link for more details.)

In the US, research from the American Psychological Association (APA) shows that children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased. This can lead to unhealthy eating habits as evidenced by today’s youth obesity epidemic. For these reasons, a task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) is recommending that advertising targeting children under the age of eight be restricted.

The research on children’s commercial recall and product preferences confirms that advertising does typically get young consumers to buy their products.… Findings show that children recall content from the ads to which they’ve been exposed and preference for a product has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and strengthened with repeated exposures. Furthermore, … these product preferences can affect children’s product purchase requests, which can put pressure on parents’ purchasing decisions and instigate parent-child conflicts when parents deny their children’s requests…. … there are concerns regarding certain commercial campaigns primarily targeting adults that pose risks for child-viewers. “For example, beer ads are commonly shown during sports events and seen by millions of children, creating both brand familiarity and more positive attitudes toward drinking in children as young as 9-10 years of age. Another area of sensitive advertising content involves commercials for violent media products such as motion pictures and video games. Such ads contribute to a violent media culture which increases the likelihood of youngsters’ aggressive behavior and desensitizes children to real-world violence,” said Dr. Kunkel [senior author of the task force’s scientific report].

As detailed further on this site’s section on Media and Advertising , manipulation of imagery, fake news and more are so prevalent that young people in particular are vulnerable to a lot of influences from all angles.

With such constant bombardment of images of what beauty, perfection etc are all supposed to be, it is no wonder that many related health issues are increasing in younger children, from anxiety and stress to bulimia and anorexia.

Bans, regulation, self-regulation, media-literacy

Advertising is in all areas of children’s lives, from television commercials, to ad placement within programs (and video games), to toys, the Internet, mobile telephones, and more.

The concerns of the impacts on children has led to many trying to control advertising in some way.

Writing in a publication from the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom), Ulla Carlsson summarizes some of the options and approaches:

After going into these in a bit more depth, Carlsson concludes that no one measure is necessarily effective on its own,

… the approaches to protecting minors from harm and offense in media content largely boil down to three kinds: law and regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation of the media. No one instrument of regulation is sufficient; today and in the future some form of effective interaction between all three kinds of media regulation—that is, between government, the media and civil society—will be required to reach satisfactory results. All the relevant stakeholders—within government, the media sector and civil society—need to develop effective means by which to collaborate.

Sweden, since 1991 has banned all advertising during children’s prime time due to those concerns mentioned above regarding advertising to children being harmful.

The European Union is now considering issues related to advertising targeted at children and whether there should be a Europe-wide ban or regulation.

Since April 2007, the has UK banned junk food advertising during television programs aimed at children aged 7 to 9. As of January 1, 2008, that ban has been extended to all children under 16.

Some argue that this industry provides jobs for people so banning advertising would be ill-advised.

Others question the effectiveness of outright bans in advertising. For example, a ban would mean lost revenues of media outlets, as many pour a large amount of advertising revenues back into programming.

The Responsible Advertising and Children Programme (RACP) is an industry organization representing advertisers, agencies and media worldwide. They argue that education and self-regulation is the way to go (as most companies in most sectors tend to argue), and also warn of job losses if there are outright bans:

We believe that educating children to understand the purpose and context of marketing communications helps them to develop the skills to critically interpret commercial communications in the context of their daily lives. This is crucial in preparing them for interaction with the reality of a media-filled world. … advertising finances children’s programming on free-to-air television…. 94% of the net revenues coming from advertising aimed at children are reinvested in children's programmes. In the digital economy, there is no alternative method to ensure investment in original children's programming and in the acquisition of programme rights. … Not only does marketing communications help to guarantee quality children’s programming, it also aids competition in the wider economy, creates jobs and enhances consumer’s choices of goods and services. In return, advertisers are active and enthusiastic supporters of strong self-regulation ensuring that we meet the expectations of parents, regulators, and society at large. Education and self-regulation deliver effective and responsible marketing communications.

With less programming for children, they may end up watching more adult content, as Juliet Schor notes, also writing in the Nordicom publication mentioned earlier. However, she seems to disagree with the view above, that there is no alternative to advertising for financing children’s programming:

Bans also raise the possibility of negative unintended consequences. For example, if a ban on advertising to children were to be enacted, it would reduce the financing available for children’s programming. If the quantity and quality of their programming declined, children would be likely to watch more adult media. This, in turn, would expose them to other types of inappropriate advertising and content. At the very least, government regulations on advertising need to be coupled with adequate financing mechanisms for quality children’s programming.

Schor also notes that one exception to the above concerns would be in schools, where the additional concerns with bans (legal, logistical, pragmatic) are not as difficult in a controlled environment such as school.

In addition, a study for the European Commission finds that,

restrictive national regulatory measures do not necessarily have a direct negative impact on advertising investment for children’s products. This being the case, the different situations that exist in the European Union countries do not appear to favour the adoption of uniform regulatory measures via a Directive. National provisions or self-regulatory measure codes appear to be more adequate.

A paper in Pediatrics , the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, notes that media education has been shown to be effective in mitigating some of the negative effects of advertising on children and adolescents .

Schor also makes the interesting point that while education may be important (also one of the things suggested above by the RACP), it doesn’t always work when needed:

Industry practitioners point to [a study showing children] mistrust [advertising] as proof that children cannot be influenced. But the available research finds that the presence of skepticism does not affect desire for the advertised product, even for nine and ten year olds. Despite expressing doubts about ads, kids remain vulnerable to their persuasive powers. Furthermore, although media literacy has been encouraged as a solution to some of the problems raised by children’s inability to watch ads critically, at least some research finds that it does not affect children while they are actually watching ads. In one study of nine and ten year olds, exposure to a media literacy film did not subsequently affect their thoughts while they viewed advertisements, because they did not retrieve the consumer knowledge they learned from the film.

In food advertising, for example, Schor notes that Decades of studies show that food marketing to children is effective (p.108. See also Pediatric Studies Link TV Advertising with 'Global Fattening' from the W. P. Carey School of Business, University of Arizona, March 29, 2006).

In addition, food advertising is contributing to major changes in eating habits, leading to concerns of obesity epidemics in the US and elsewhere. Over the long term, food marketing is likely to prove to be the most harmful commercial influence on children, because it will affect so much a large fraction of children, with such serious consequences for their health and well-being. (p.109).

Schor also find claims of self-regulation by food companies to be dubious and is quoted again:

The food corporations have also tried to control the discourse by making some concessions, and through skillful use of public relations concerning those concessions. For example, Kraft recently got wide coverage for an announcement that was interpreted as a commitment to stop advertising a subset of its most unhealthy products to children, although the actual change will likely be less significant than was widely interpreted… McDonald’s garnered widespread positive attention for an announcement that it was abandoning the use of trans-fats, a shift it has failed to carry out. The Center for Consumer Freedom, a group originally funded by Philip Morris, which also receives funding from restaurant chains, soft drink companies and other food corporations, has engaged in substantial public relations, advertising, research and lobbying activity in order to discredit food industry critics.… In January 2005, industry formed the Alliance for American Advertising (AAA), a new organization whose purpose is to protect companies’ rights to advertise to children. The Alliance includes Kellogg, General Mills and Kraft, and has openly questioned the link between advertising and obesity, a reprise of tobacco strategy. The formation of the AAA should be interpreted as a sign that the critics are making progress—however, the current political environment is hardly favorable.

Since writing the above, a number of food companies have said they will volunteer to cut ads directed towards children , as reported by the International Herald Tribune (December 11, 2007). The companies, Coca-Cola, Groupe Danone, Burger King, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Ferrero and Unilever, agreed not to advertise food and beverages on television programs, Web sites or in print media where children under age 12 could be considered a target audience, except for products that met specific nutrition criteria.

While such an announcement seems welcome, given Schor’s concerns above, some skepticism may be wise. With public awareness of such issues in Europe increasing in recent years, companies may have a harder time avoiding such responsibilities, self-imposed or not, so maybe critics of advertising have that to hold on to as hope that this is indeed a positive move.

3 years on from the above announcement, The Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score (FACTS) — an organization developed by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity to scientifically measure food marketing to youth — found that some of the pledges to reduce advertising to children had actually reversed.

In a detailed study, it found that the fast food industry continues to relentlessly market to youth. For example,

The average preschooler (2-5) sees almost three ads per day for fast food; children (6-11) see three-and-a-half; and teens see almost five.
Children’s exposure to fast food TV ads is increasing, even for ads from companies who have pledged to reduce unhealthy marketing to children.
Children see more than just ads intended for kids. More than 60% of fast food ads viewed by children (2-11) were for foods other than kids’ meals.

Some $4.2 billion was spent in 2009, a fifth of which was by McDonald’s alone. TV accounted for the bulk of the advertising (86%) though Internet marketing was increasing. (See p.51 of their main report, Evaluating Fast Food Nutrition and Marketing to Youth (November 2010), for the details)

The organization suggested changing the industry-defined definition of television programs that require restrictions on the type of advertising aimed at children. Rather than restrictions only applying when the program is created solely for children, it wants a broader standard, such as the total number of children that watch a program. That would extend the reach of child friendly advertising guidelines to such broadly popular shows as American Idol and Glee . (See p.14 of the report)

As of January 1, 2008, the UK has extended the April 2007 ban of junk food ads aimed at 7 to 9 year olds to ban junk food ads for all children under 16 . However, campaigners feel the ban is flawed as it only applies to children’s programming, not say family shows. They want the ban extended to all programs before the watershed (9pm).

In addition, the concerns raised above by Schor and others about less ad revenue and thus reduced quality programming are all surfacing here. A BBC news television broadcast reporting on this also noted that some broadcasters are considering advertising from other sectors, even car manufacturers. If this occurs, then this will be using so-called nag factor marketing, where such advertising aims to get children to nag their parents to buy a product/service (discussed more below).

A Channel 4 broadcast in the UK (January 8, 2008) also noted that some companies, rather then directly advertising to children, are sponsoring children’s programs so that their branding is still prevalent and increasing advertising on the Internet.

In that same broadcast, the reporter interviewed the Chief Executive of the Advertising Association, Baroness Buscombe who said that this type of advertising is responsible, and its fun! its entertaining! It is hard to tell what is more surprising, that she said it was fun and entertaining, or that the reporter didn’t challenge her as to what that had to do with advertisers trying to skirt around the ban and still target children.

Another type of approach that has been taken to address some of these concerns are counter-ads. These have been reasonably successful in campaigning against tobacco use by children, for example. But it has not been as successful on wider issues as Schor once again is quoted:

To date, this strategy has been stymied by the fact that truly powerful anti-ad messaging is difficult to get on the airwaves and almost impossible to sustain. The Truth campaign was ended quickly. The networks have repeatedly refused to show Adbusters anti-consumerist ads, in part on grounds that they will offend their advertisers. Surprisingly, there are no First Amendment rights for groups that want to promote an anti-consumerist message. Media outlets are corporate entities that depend on other corporate entities to earn profits, and they have historically resisted messages that jeopardize that relationship.

Some studies suggest that economic instruments (such as price rises or taxation) of unhealthy foods might have an effect, but it is not guaranteed. For example,

This review found no direct scientific evidence of a causal relationship between policy-related economic instruments and food consumption, including foods high in saturated fats. Indirect evidence suggests that such a causal relationship is plausible, though it remains to be demonstrated by rigorous studies in community settings.

What is not clear from such studies is does it measure the impact of habituation? That is, once you open Pandora’s box, is it harder to close? Does this mean that different measures could apply to different age groups? E.g. if price rises or some kind of regulation on advertising to older children and adults has limited effect, does that necessarily apply to younger children? And if younger children have less advertising targeted at them in early ages, will such regulation be needed as they grow older or would cultural norms just result in less of it, naturally?

The food industry will of course be against measures such as taxing junk food, instead preferring things like exercise and individual responsibility instead (though an individual — often poor on time — versus professional marketing usually suggests an imbalance in available information and decision-making).

In mid-November, 2010, the BBC’s Panorama explored this notion of taxing the fat , saying that Britain is the fattest nation in Europe, and wondered whether it was time to consider such a tax as it may help the National Health Service afford the various costs associated with this problem.

The documentary also went to Denmark — the first country in the world to implement such a tax — to see how it was working there, and to the US, where it explained how a proposal to tax sugary drinks like Coca Cola has met with fierce opposition.

It found that there were signs of young people losing weight in the already heavily taxed Denmark, although older adults were still gaining weight.

The documentary also implied that the current UK Health Secretary wasn’t keen on the idea and that his view was in line with the fast food industry, as targets and other measures may be lowered, as well as funding for current health campaigns for more active lives.

Exercise and individual responsibility has been the food industry’s preferred alternative to regulation (it avoids extra costs on the industry, which industry representatives claim would cost jobs and competitiveness, and while it transfers extra burden and cost onto consumers, they are often ready to sell more in relation to that as described further below).

However, the documentary also noted that more and more studies are showing that while both diet and exercise are crucial to healthy lives, the balance isn’t necessarily 50-50. Instead, diet appears to have a much larger bearing on people’s health and obesity. In addition, the numerous amounts of calories now available in fast foods are so high that the levels of exercise needed to burn the excess off is immense. Many people wouldn’t have that time.

One potential use of the tax would be to subsidize healthier foods such as fruits and vegetables. But, a potential problem with taxing junk food is that many fruits and other healthy ingredients are often used in unhealthy foods such as sweets and sugary drinks, and even cosmetics and other products such as shampoos. So how can you ensure the tax proceeds are used appropriately?)

The education system in the USA, for example, has turned into a hugely profitable business estimated to be worth around $650 billion. From commercial-filled Channel One which many students must watch, sponsored and selective educational material , to commercialized school field trips the school system is bombarded by commercialism.

As well as children being targeted via the education system in the USA, as mentioned above, there is increasing concern at ad campaigns that are increasingly targeting children to be consumers and overly conscious about materialistic things, perhaps even at the expense of human qualities. One of the main reasons for such a fascination in children in this way is because of the potential purchasing power that children have.

In my practice I see kids becoming incredibly consumerist, said Kanner, who is based at the Wright Institute, a graduate psychology school in Berkeley, Calif. The most stark example is when I ask them what they want to do when they grow up. They all say they want to make money. When they talk about their friends, they talk about the clothes they wear, the designer labels they wear, not the person’s human qualities. … In the 1960s, children aged 2 to 14 directly influenced about $5 billion in parental purchases, McNeal [professor of marketing at Texas A&M University] wrote [in an April 1998 article in American Demographics]. In the mid-1970s, the figure was $20 billion, and it rose to $50 billion by 1984. By 1990, kids’ direct influence had reached $132 billion, and in 1997, it may have peaked at around $188 billion. Estimates show that children’s aggregate spending roughly doubled during each decade of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and has tripled so far in the 1990s.

And possibly as an example of a more bizarre sounding use of resources to get children to become more active, in Britain, a chocolate company was promoting sports equipment in return for vouchers and coupons from chocolate bars. The more you ate, the more sports equipment you would get, presumably to burn off the excesses eaten! The UK’s Food Commission called this absurd and contradictory and pointed out that if children consumed all the promotional chocolate bars they would eat nearly two million kilos of fat and more than 36 billion calories.

The BBC, reporting on this ( April 29, 2003 ), commented the following, amongst other things:

One set of posts and nets for volleyball would require tokens from 5,440 bars of chocolate
This would require spending £2,000 (about $3,500) on chocolate and wolfing their way through 1.25 million calories, some 2 million kilos of fat.
A basketball would be 170 bars of chocolate, which, if it were to be burned off, a 10-year-old child would need to play for 90 hours.

While the confectionary companies suggested that children were going to eat these anyway, others raised concerns that this is promoting more unhealthy eating. The chairman of the UK government’s obesity task force, Professor Phil James, said: This is a classic example of how the food and soft drink industry are failing to take on board that they are major contributors to obesity problems throughout the world. They always try to divert attention to physical activity.

What is more, as most British media outlets also highlighted, then Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn, endorsed it.

But this is not the only example. For years, other companies have linked their foods to such schemes for educational or sports equipment for schools. What they get for selling this is branding and future consumers.

This has also been an example of controversial school commercialization which was unanimously condemned at a large teachers union conference in England around the same time.

And towards the end of 2007, as the UK Government launches an inquiry into the possible harmful effects of advertising on children , the BBC reports examples of companies in the classroom , such as a sweet company’s products being used in science experiments, and documentaries being funded in part by commercial agendas.

Candy and sweets are often put on stands in shops at the eye level of children. While it would be healthier to have foods, like fruits and vegetables in those places, the bright colors and packaging used to sell sweets are more likely to attract children’s attention.

The dictum of consumerism and corporate capitalism dictates that social good comes through subtle greed and meeting demands of people. Yet, putting candy at the eye level of children creates a demand that otherwise may not have been there, or not have been there in as much intensity. Likewise, highly caffeinated soft drinks that are being consumed more and more, have negative health effects .

In a later section, we will see a deeper pattern of waste of which this is a part. That is, the sugar and related industries, such as confectionaries, soda drinks etc, expend many resources (natural resources, labor, capital etc) on something that is so costly to society (which requires spending even more resources to deal with those costs). Yet, within our current system, all these expenditures are counted towards GDPs! Hence, this waste is not recognized as it is built into our system!

And the influential impact on children provides a longer lasting effect that can continue these cycles.

What is most troubling is that children’s culture has become virtually indistinguishable from consumer culture over the course of the last century. The cultural marketplace is now a key arena for the formation of the sense of self and of peer relationships, so much so that parents often are stuck between giving into a kid’s purchase demands or risking their child becoming an outcast on the playground. Children consumers grow up to be more than just adult consumers. They become mothers and fathers, administrative assistants and bus drivers, nurses and realtors, online magazine editors and assistant professors—in short, they become us who, in turn, make more of them. Childhood makes capitalism hum over the long haul.

To some extent, the criticisms leveled at parents for not being responsible for their children is well-placed. There are many children who appear not to be adversely affected by all these things, so perhaps their parents have instilled good values in them. Yet, at the same time, parents are contending with many commercial entities which all have professional psychologists, sales and marketing experts as well as corporate lawyers and lobbyists to help continue such trends.

Parents also have a hard time providing guidance and influence on their children when there are so many conflicting influences from outside:

Kids not only want things, but have acquired the socially sanctioned right to want—a right which parents are loath to violate. Layered onto direct child enticement and the supposed autonomy of the child-consumer are the day-to-day circumstances of overworked parents: a daily barrage of requests, tricky financial negotiations, and that nagging, unspoken desire to build the life/style they have learned to want during their childhoods.

It is especially hard for parents if they themselves grew up with aspects of that consumerist culture:

The children’s market works because it lives off of deeply-held beliefs about self-expression and freedom of choice—originally applied to the political sphere, and now almost inseparable from the culture of consumption. Children’s commercial culture has quite successfully usurped kids’ boundless creativity and personal agency, selling these back to them—and us—as empowerment, a term that appeases parents while shielding marketers. Linking one’s sense of self to the choices offered by the marketplace confuses personal autonomy with consumer behavior. But, try telling that to a kid who only sees you standing in the way of the Chuck-E-Cheese-ified version of fun and happiness. Kids are keen to the adult-child power imbalance and to adult hypocrisy, especially when they are told to hold their desires in check by a parent who is blind to her or his own materialistic impulses.

Juliet Schor, cited earlier, also takes issue with the approach that many companies take when faced with criticism for their advertising: to imply that it is parents responsibility to oversee what their children do and see.

In response to the critics, industry has been vigilant about fending off government regulation and control. In cases where industry accepts the need to ‘protect’ children (e.g., alcohol, violence and other adult content), it has turned to ‘self-regulation’ and voluntary ratings schemes. Typically, these rely on parental oversight. (This is consistent with an over-arching industry position, which is that the responsibility for protecting children lies mainly with parents, not corporations or the government.)

However, companies have far more power and influence generally:

Today, the bulk of advertising to children is done by a small number of multi-billion dollar corporations. … These corporations not only have enormous economic power, but their political influence has never been greater. They have funneled unprecedented sums of money to political parties and officials. … The power wielded by these corporations is evident in many ways, from their ability to eliminate competitors to their ability to mobilize state power in their interest.

Schor also takes exception to what seems to be companies’ attempts to limit accountability by shifting extra burdens and responsibilities to parents:

Corporate and state abdication of responsibility is rationalized on the grounds that responsibility for adverse child outcomes (e.g., obesity, psychological disorders) lies with parents. Both the ad agencies and their client companies take this point of view. The corporation’s mandate is to make money, the government’s is to help them do so. While sometimes corporations act in superficially pro-social ways which might seem to indicate responsibility (e.g., funding exercise programs or positive nutritional messages), they are usually quite open about the fact that they are acting to forestall regulatory action, and avoid adverse publicity, rather than because they are willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. However, the industry position relies on an excessively ‘heroic’ view of parents, and their ability to prevail against the corporate giants. Indeed, parents are losing control over their children’s environments in profound ways. This is due to a number of factors, including the concerted attempts of the corporations to wrest that control. At the core of the corporate strategy is the attempt to undermine parental authority, through direct targeting of children, so-called ‘nag factor’ marketing, deliberate anti-parent messages, and infiltration of parent-free environments such as schools. … Economic pressures, such as the need for households to work many more hours to support themselves have also undermined parental control.

Schor also asks why it is that governments typically acknowledge their own role when parents fail to prevent or engage in violence, neglect, and abuse, yet when it comes to addressing harm induced from commercialism, governments are less visible in their actions. (p.117)

Baroness Buscombe, Chief Executive of the Advertising Association in UK, was mentioned earlier when talking of companies trying to work around the UK ban of junk food advertising during children’s programs. She also voiced the line that Schor finds typical from such associations and related interest, saying that it is not advertising that is affecting the volume of food they are eating, it is parental responsibility

So, if advertisers claim it is parental responsibility and advertising has little or no effect on children, then why are they doing it?

Commercialization of public and religious holidays helps promote sales as well. Christmas time in numerous countries, such as the United States, sees a very high amount of consumerism. The toy industry for example depends on Christmas quite a lot. The promotion of St. Nicholas/Santa Claus/Father Christmas and an almost benign factory (or workshop) of elves and so forth producing toys for free, was a boost to commercialize Christmas, especially for children.

The recent hype and success of Harry Potter, as well as other children’s characters has led to further sales for toy manufacturers. But as well as perhaps bringing joy and fun to children, as a report from U.S.-based National Labor Committee says, for workers who have to make these toys, these can be Toys of Misery. Quoted from that report here at length, is part of the preface:

When you go into a Wal-Mart or a Toys 'R' Us store to purchase Harry Potter or Disney’s Monsters Inc ., Mattel’s Barbie , Sesame Street , Hasbro’s Star Wars or Pokemon do you ever think of the young women in China forced to work 16 hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 12 midnight, seven days a week, 30 days a month, for months on end, for wages of 17 cents an hour? Workers forced to work overtime, but cheated of their pay? Do you ever imagine women working all day long in 104-degree temperatures, handling toxic glues, paints and solvents, women fainting, nauseous, sick to their stomachs? Women housed 16 to a dorm room and trying to get by on four hours of sleep a night? Workers whose bodies ache, who are exhausted from racing through the same operations 3,000 times a day, day in and day out? Women who are fired when they get sick? Workers who have no rights, and who--if they try to defend their most basic, internationally recognized human and worker rights, will be immediately fired and blacklisted? Workers who are worn out and used up by the time they reach 30 or 35 years of age and are removed to be replaced with another crop of young teenagers? Unfortunately, this is the real world behind the toys we purchase in the United States. And we do purchase a staggering number of toys each year: 3.6 billion toys in the year 2000 alone—76 million dolls, 349 million plush toys, 125 million action figures, 279 million hot wheels and matchbox cars, 88 million sporting goods items and so on. This is big industry. We spend $29.4 billion a year on toys. Eighty percent of all the toys we purchase are imports, and 71 percent of those are from China. More than one out of every two toys we purchase in the U.S. is made in China. We purchase hundreds of millions of toys each year that are made in China, but when was the last time we heard from a toy worker in China about their working conditions and lives? Even once? Ever? Isn’t it a little strange that we know so little? In 2000, U.S. toy companies spent $837 million on advertising. The companies do not want us to know or to think, just to buy.

Another example related both to children as well as the more general culture and media, is that of Disney, as mentioned on this web site’s media ownership section.

No one’s really worrying about what it’s [advertising to children] is teaching impressionable youth. Hey, I’m in the business of convincing people to buy things they don’t need.

Schor is concerned about the implications of all this:

The unchecked growth of corporate power, and its fusion with state power, has led to a situation in which children’s interests and well-being cannot be adequately ensured . What children eat, the programming they watch, the toys they play with, the curriculums they learn in schools, perhaps the name of their school gymnasium (or school), and even the books they read … are provided by companies whose commitment to their welfare is minimal or absent.… Public policy to protect children, which for decades has been the basis of society’s response to problems generated in the market, will not be forthcoming. This is the new reality that children’s advocates must confront.

Some may still argue that there is not anything wrong with businesses trying to make sales and profit. However, the effects of things like mass consumption, the intense advertising, and targeting to children and its impacts over so many aspects of daily lives is of concern.

The effects of constantly buying things while discarding older but often functioning things, also increases demands on the world’s resources for this consumption, resulting in more waste to be managed and even more exploitation other people to labor over this (in some cases, poor children are producing items such as toys that rich children play with), and so on.

From a different perspective altogether, the labor employed by the advertising industry directed towards children could be another example of wasted labor , (which therefore wastes capital and resources), and that labor could be used more effectively and efficiently elsewhere. (We will look at this notion of wasted labor a bit further on in this section on consumption and consumerism.)

And all this while many still go hungry and poor because their lands are being used to export away food and other resources for producing products to be consumed elsewhere. It is in this way that the pressure and drive for profits has led to an over-commercialized consumerism, which has wider effects around the world and on the unseen majority peoples of the world, which we look at next.

Image credits: Variation in body fat , by Walter Siegmund ; Kyoto arcade , by Ethan Hein ; McDonald’s Happy Meal by Christina Kennedy

Author and Page Information

Created: Friday, September 07, 2001
Last updated: Sunday, November 21, 2010

Document revision history

Alternatives for broken links.

Sometimes links to other sites may break beyond my control. Where possible, alternative links are provided to backups or reposted versions here.

Actual link:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2004/02/children-ads.aspx

Alternative:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/advertising-children.aspx
http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org/
This was also reported in the British Medical Journal, November 10, 2010, BMJ 2010;341:c6406 http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6406.full
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featcook_124.shtml
http://www.alternet.org/story/11370/lunchbox_hegemony_kids_%26_the_marketplace%2C_then_%26_now
'Television Advertising Leads to Unhealthy Habits in Children; Says APA Task Force', American Pyschological Association (APA), February 23, 2004 http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2004/02/children-ads.aspx
http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org/media/FastFoodFACTS_Report.pdf

Alternatives:

Their summary report is a bit shorter http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org/media/FastFoodFACTS_Report_Summary.pdf
The British Medical Journal also provides a useful summary http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6406.full
http://www.aeforum.org/aeforum.nsf/88e10e9813be5a4780256c5100355eb1/8692c6dfc8234279802571f8004129f6?OpenDocument
http://www.euro.who.int/document/e88909.pdf
http://www.nlcnet.org/CHINA/1201/ToysOfMisery.pdf
This is a press release from War on Want about the report http://www.waronwant.org/?lid=24

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Critiquing Children’s Consumer Culture: An Introduction to The Marketing of Children’s Toys

First Online: 31 March 2021

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Rebecca C. Hains 3 &
Nancy A. Jennings 4

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As a multi-billion-dollar industry, toys and their marketing warrant sustained scholarly critique—a task this volume, The Marketing of Children’s Toys: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Consumer Culture , undertakes. This book applies a critical/cultural perspective to better understand how the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions of the times impact children’s socialization, childhood, and children’s play through toy marketing. We find these aspects worthy of study and share these perspectives as they relate to larger socializing practices. This book’s first few chapters focus on the marketing of broad product categories—toy firearms, grotesque toys, minimalist toys, and international toys—followed by chapters that interrogate specific brands’ marketing tactics and strategies.

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Hains, R.C., Jennings, N.A. (2021). Critiquing Children’s Consumer Culture: An Introduction to The Marketing of Children’s Toys . In: Hains, R.C., Jennings, N.A. (eds) The Marketing of Children’s Toys. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62881-9_1

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Children as Future Consumers Essay

Introduction, materialism and consumerism, factors leading to increased consumerism, positive and negative effects of consumerism, current policies.

Materialism and consumerism may not seem like a problem to many, but it defines majority of the current population. The most gullible group is of course the children, whose innocence captures advertisers and marketers, who in turn force parents to spend on the products being sold.

There are a variety of factors leading to a lot of consumption by children, for example, advertisement and peer influence. This paper will deal with the topic of materialism and consumerism; the positive and negative effects of consumerism especially on children; and finally mitigation strategies to be undertaken to ensure that children are better future consumers.

Materialism has been defined as the tendency to be materialistic i.e. have the desire to spend the resources one owns on material things and attaining a comfortable lifestyle in general. Consumerism on the other hand puts a direct link between how many things one owns and their happiness (Chapter7, 2009, p. 1).

These two go hand in hand and the distinction line between them is very thin. Both go beyond the necessity of satisfaction of needs and they create the desire to want to own more and consequently create an image. Hence majority of the reference in this paper will be on consumerism, though the terms may not be used interchangeably.

Capitalism is heavily influential on consumerism (Chapter7, 2009, p.2). A capitalist economy will have the mindset of creating more market for themselves, ensuring “same consumers buy more of the same” or having innovations that will definitely increase demand (Kapur, n.d. p.1).

When there is an “economic crisis”, government will go to the extent of ensuring that people consume more just so as to sustain the economy (Chapter7, 2009, p.3). Thus consumerism is a concept that goes beyond the individual and has far reaching effects even to the economy of any particular state. As Kapur (n.d., p.1) stated, “children were invented as consumers” (Kapur, n.d., p. 1), a sad but a real truth and fact, and they are serving their purpose in fuelling the economy.

Children between the age of 9 and 14 are more susceptible to being materialistic and hence end up being heavy consumers (Goldberg, 2002, p.1). This age group has been called the “tweens” a name given because the 9-year-olds have not reached puberty while the 14-year-olds are past puberty (Goldberg, 2002, p.1).

Children are majorly targeted for the following reasons: they have their own money, they determine how their parents spending trend and they are the major future consumers (Zoll, n.d. p.1). In the US, $36bn in sales per year, is directly connected to children consumers (Goldberg, 2002, p.1), while in the UK, £30bn is from the child market (BBC, 2008, p.1).

In Australia, a lot is invested to advertisements targeting the “tweens” to the point that when they are young adults, their sense of choice has been heavily corrupted and they can barely make independent choices without being influenced by brands (Hamilton, 2006, p.8).

In the past, there was a huge difference between goods or services available to the ordinary people and those who could afford the highly priced ones; not anymore indicates Hamilton in what he called “democratisation of luxury” (Hamilton, 2006, p.1).

The poor are competing with the wealthy as regards their consumption (Hamilton, 2006, p.1). A definite sign that consumerism in the society has increased, can also be observed from the number of cars owned by individuals, the cars they drive, mobile phones, different home devices, entertainment gadgets, obesity in children among others (DeAngelis, 2004, p.52).

In an article by Zoll (n.d., p.1), she quotes a clinical psychologist who states children are so inclined to their friends possessions and how their desire is to make money when they grow up or become older (Young, 2011, p. 1). How did children become so obsessed with their looks and possessions? What has led to the increase of consumerism?

Advertisement in this day and age is part and parcel of our world and its effect is felt everywhere, from online sites, to mobile phones to billboards on the streets, to commercial breaks in between television shows. They not only promote products but also sell “cultural practices” for example it’s the in-thing to have this or that (Nordicom, 2006, p.110).

These advertisements are geared to lure the consumers, especially children who watch about “25,000 ads a year” in the US (Chapter7, 2009, p.1), while in the UK, the numbers are much lower at about 10,000 (Shah, 2010, p.1).

Children are also a prone target since they will not only enhance current markets but also enhance continuity since they will be identifying particular brands (Shah, 2010, p.1). Children are expected to nag their parents to the point of driving them to buy the advertised good (Chapter7, 2009, p.4). Marketing and advertising is not a concept that appeared out of the blues, but it’s been evolving with time, meaning in the future it may even get worse (Abela, 2006, p.3).

Past History and Peer Pressure

Children with a less fortunate background are also prone to materialistic behaviour, in a sense to try and make up for their misfortune (DeAngelis, 2004, p.1). In the UK, as stated in an article by Bennett, over 69% of “poorer children” desired jobs with very good salaries and were more involved in shopping as compared to 28% of the children who came from well-to-do families (Bennett, 2008, p.1).

A different study also showed a connection between low income and “mental health problems” in children: for weekly incomes below £100, 16% of children were affected, for £300- £499, only 8.6% children are affected and for incomes over £700 only 5.3% (Bennett, 2008, p.1)

. When the children themselves were asked they admitted to wanting to fit in with all the latest fashions or technologies (Bennett, 2008, p.1). Peers use commodities to gauge the value of their opponents a trend to “keep score with each other” (Lawson, 2006, p.1).

Parental Influence

The blame should not only be placed on outside influence but parents are also considered to have a part to play (Shah, 2010, p.1). There are those who will encourage good values to their children and hence to some extent shield children, but its generally hard for them to beat the advertisers and marketers who even have qualified professionals to make sure that advertisements achieve the desired effect (Shah, 2010, p.1). Absenteeism of parents is also another thing to be considered since they are normally busy working in order to give the child a better future but in the process, it leaves the child unattended and unshielded (Nordicom, 2006, p.117).

Education and Consumerism

The school institution which is supposed to be a safe haven for children has become otherwise and education has been “commercialized” (Shah, 2010, p.1). All fields have been infiltrated from trips to school materials that are sponsored by different companies who ensure the children are aware of the products that are on offer for them (Shah, 2010, p.1).

“Educational news programs provided free to schools contain advertisement” (Chapter7, 2009, p.4). A case in point is that of a company in Britain which had the promotion that “the more chocolate one ate, the more sports equipment one gets” all in an effort to get the kids to be actively involved in sports (Shah, 2010, p.1).

For instance, “a basketball would be about 170bars of chocolate” a very ironic promotion since the children would now have health risks and issues to deal with (Shah, 2010, p.1). The same case goes for the US, where the “education system” is a booming business netting around “$650bn” (Shah, 2010, p.1).

With all the aforementioned factors leading to increased consumerism among children, there are visible effects that act as a signal. The positive and negative effects of consumerism are discussed below.

Consumerism is mostly associated with the negative aspects, which are quite many in comparison, but there are positive aspects to be considered. Among them: a country’s economy is heavily influenced by the spending power of the population, hence the higher people spend, the more a country benefits; higher productivity; availability and variety of goods and services offered; creation of job opportunities; better lifestyles, among others (Shukla, 2009, p.1).

The many negative effects include: children being exposed to environments not appropriate for their age, hence very detrimental to their growing up (Goldberg, 2002, p.1); the saving culture especially in the youth, is destroyed and replaced with a spending trend (Goldberg, 2002, p.1); high risks of depression, “less happiness”, and various “social pathology” (DeAngelis, 2004, p.1).

There are increased rates of crime, especially among the youth, due to the gap between those who have and those who don’t (Lawson, 2006, p.1). In order for “failed consumers” to obtain what the “rich have”, they will definitely result to theft (Lawson, 2006, p.1). There is also a connection between “materialism and a reduced well being”, since people will be chasing after desires instead of meeting their necessities (Abela, 2006, p.2).

Another detrimental effect is the impact consumerism has on the environment (Chapter7, 2009, p.2); lands are used to build houses, malls, warehouses (Verdant, n.d. p.1). The pressure is also put on natural resources due to the ever increasing production of various commodities (Shah, 2010, p.1).

Debt is also not far off from individuals who are trying to maintain a lifestyle that they cannot afford; this is especially in reference to parents who turn to credit cards for solutions (Chapter7, 2009, p.1). This is no wonder why children cannot learn the saving culture since the credit card has taught them the concept of buying now, and pay later (Chapter7, 2009, p.1).

Children should be taught from an early age that they should not chase after what the advertisers are out to sell, but should in fact place more value to who they are rather than what they own (Bennett, 2008, p.1).

Different states and nations are trying to curb the effects of advertising since it is the one that heavily influences consumerism to children: advertising in Sweden has been stopped since the year 1991, especially during “children’s prime time”; in UK, as of 2008, “junk food advertising” shown to children during their television program time below 16 has been enforced (Shah, 2010, p.1).

Greece for instance has also banned the “advertising of toys to children between the hours of 7am and 10pm” while Quebec put a stop to all advertising targeting children under 13 years of age (Zoll, n.d. p.1). Despite all these restrictions gaining a lot more popularity in Europe, in the US it’s not so because marketing to children are seen as a First Amendment right.

The industries themselves have not been left behind in trying to take up control measures to ensure that children are well guarded (Nordicom, 2006, p.111). Some of the products that industries have taken initiative to “self-regulate” are to do with alcohol, tobacco, junk food among others (Nordicom, 2006, p.111). As for the entertainment industry, parental guidance has been promoted but only with so much success (Nordicom, 2006, p.112).

Dr. Elliot Barker, who is a Canadian psychiatrist and child advocate, offers the following recommendations with regards to the current consumerism: meeting children’s emotional needs so as to eliminate the need to substitute this by being materialistic; families participating in activities that are “non- commercial”; effective parenting, among others (Hunt, 2004, p.1).

Young also proposed focusing on “spirituality, relationships, philosophy, learning and ethics” as the greater solution to not falling in the trap of consumerism (20011, p.1). Other than these methods that are aimed at increasing the persons value, different methods have also been proposed including: “higher gasoline taxes”, “progressive consumption tax” i.e. the more one consumes, the more they are taxed, and tax is exempted for money that is saved, improving public goods and services so that people do not fall back on privatized goods and services (Chapter7, 2009, p.13).

The children are definitely to be protected from all the “insanity” of advertisement and they are to be allowed to grow up in environments that allow them to make independent choices as consumers and not to be arm-twisted per se.

When children follow the right path of consumption, then future generations will not be enslaved by consumerism since they will have good examples to emulate and hopefully positive values will have been instilled in them.

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IvyPanda. (2019, March 26). Children as Future Consumers. https://ivypanda.com/essays/children-as-future-consumers/

"Children as Future Consumers." IvyPanda , 26 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/children-as-future-consumers/.

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IvyPanda . 2019. "Children as Future Consumers." March 26, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/children-as-future-consumers/.

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Bibliography

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Research-based ideas to help kids thrive

107: the impact of consumerism on children.

A few weeks ago we talked with Dr. Brad Klontz about the ‘money scripts’ that we pass on to our children – perhaps unintentionally – if we fail to examine these and make conscious decisions about the messages we want to convey about money to our children.

Today we continue our series on the intersection of parenting and money with a conversation with Dr. Allison Pugh, whose doctoral dissertation (and subsequent book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture ) remain seminal works in this field even a decade after their publication.

In this interview, we take the position that advertising to children is happening – so what do we do with that? How do children make meaning out of the messages sent to them through our consumerist culture? How do parents attempt to resist the effects of this culture, and how successful are they?

In our next episode in this series we’ll dig more deeply into the effects of advertising itself on children’s brains, so stay tuned for that!

Book mentioned in the episode

Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture (Affiliate link).

Other episodes on this series

This episode is the second in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series:

038: The Opposite of Spoiled

105: How to pass on mental wealth to your child

112: How to Set up a Play Room

115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children

118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?

Click here to read the full transcript

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode is part of a series that I’m doing on the Intersection of Childhood and Money. A while back now I interviewed New York Times columnist Ron Lieber, on his book The Opposite of Spoiled and we do use his approach to several topics related to money. But it seemed to me for a while now that there’s a lot more to say on this. So more recently, I interviewed Dr. Brad Klontz on his concept of Money Scripts, which are the ideas about money that were passed on to us by our parents and that we will probably pass on to our children as well if we don’t critically examine these and potentially make a conscious decision to choose a different path. Another avenue I’ve been wanting to explore is consumerism since I come from England, which is certainly becoming more Americanized than many other places, but where consumerism still doesn’t have the same force that it does here in the US where buying things to express love or because you’re feeling sad or just because you feel like it is pretty much considered a birthright. And I spent a lot of time looking for someone to talk with on this topic and finally found our guest today Dr. Allison Pugh. Dr. Pugh is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia whose teaching and research focuses on contemporary work and relationships, and particularly the intertwining of culture, emotions, intimacy and economic life. She’s currently a fellow at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles while she writes a book about her research on the automation of work that’s historically relied on relationships between people like the caring professions. She wrote the book Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture back in 2009, in which she studies how children and parents in both affluent and working class communities in the East Bay Area of California where I live, manage the commercialization of childhood. The book was named by contemporary sociology as one of the 12 most influential books on the family written since 2000 and received several awards. A decade later, it remains the seminal work on this topic. So I’m excited that Dr. Pugh is here today to talk with us and help us think through this important topic. Welcome, Dr. Pugh.

Dr. Pugh 03:26

Thank you so much.

All right, so I’d like to start by quoting a few of the very first sentences from the preface of your book. So you say “Ask them straight out and most upper income parents will tell you they don’t buy much for their children because they have the ‘right values’. Meanwhile, low income parents will try to convince you they buy quite a bit because they are not ‘in trouble’. Go into their children’s bedrooms, however, and you will find many of the same objects Nintendo or Sony gaming system, the collectible cards, the Hello Kitty pencils.” You go on to describe how nine in 10 Americans feel that children today want too many material things. And four out of five parents think Americans overly materialistic society produces over commercialized children. Oh, my goodness. So what are some of the popular reasons why we might think this situation exists?

Dr. Pugh 04:17

Well, the first thing I would say is what is the situation?

Dr. Pugh 04:20

And the situation is that children have a lot of things and yet Americans are worried about how much children might attach to those things, how much kind of emotional attachment they might feel towards material things. And those two, that’s why I’m saying that, I’m describing that situation using those two things. They both have the things and Americans are worried about their feelings toward those things. That’s the situation we’re describing. And why do we have that situation? One issue is the kind of massive influence of consumer culture on Americans generally, not just children but children and adults, and that’s why children have those things. And then the question about like, or the issue about how Americans are worried about how children feel about those things, that’s a different issue. And that reflects our ambivalence towards consumer culture. As a culture, we both embrace it and we are worried about it. We are concerned about its impact on our own lives. And we express that concern with our concern around children. That’s what I would say, kind of writ large. Now, the question about like popular reasons why people think children might be materialistic. That is, you know, people are sure that children are just glued to the TV or to their screens and then very susceptible to the advertising that’s they’re more susceptible than they see themselves as being. That would be like the number one reason why people are afraid that children are too materialistic. Another thing that you hear sometimes popular reasons would be people are pretty sure that other people, other parents are less able to control themselves than they themselves are. So they’re pretty sure that other parents are, you know, kind of opening the spigot and just letting kids have whatever they ask. And then there’s often a lot of generational critique, like, oh, kids today, you know, that would be another kind of popular reason why people are afraid. They’re like, oh, kids today, they’re more materialistic. They’re more screen-focused, they’re more obsessed with stuff, you know, that kind of thing. So those are three potential reasons why people—those are reasons you hear batted about, like, why kids, they have so much and be maybe too attached to those things.

It’s like we’re caught in a really difficult bind here, isn’t it? We want the convenience of being able to make one click and buy something on Amazon that shows up tomorrow, whenever we feel like it. But at the same time, we’re so worried about what this means for our children’s futures. It’s a very difficult position to be in for parents, I think.

Dr. Pugh 07:04

Yes, I agree. And, yeah, my overall kind of conclusion from all the years of research that I did and talking to people about this subject after is that, you know, the overarching conclusion I would want people to walk away with is something like, you know, be aware that children live in the same culture that you do.

Dr. Pugh 07:28

And whatever you’re worried about for your children, kind of look at your own self, and what is the kind of modeling that you are doing? That’s kind of the main thing that I come away with.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks for giving that away early on.

And so you’d mentioned advertising, and I know that advertisements geared towards children isn’t a big focus of yours. And so I’m hoping to do a follow up episode on that with somebody else who does really focus on this, but I wonder if you could just tell us briefly before we move on, why do you take a different view on this topic?

Dr. Pugh 08:02

Right. Well, it’s not that I don’t think advertising is important. Advertising is very important. I’m not, you know, kind of discounting the findings of many, many psychologists and experimental scientists that find that, you know, you show children an ad in an experimental situation in a lab, and then they turn out they want it more later or, you know, like there’s a lot, not to mention all the corporate research finding efficacy, you know, they spent billions of dollars on advertising to children, and they’re not doing it for their health. They’re doing it because they believe it to be effective. So it’s not that I’m saying advertising is not effective. For me, I was less interested in tracking the effectiveness of advertising than I was in kind of how children what’s the meaning children make of the stuff in their lives when they’re out in the real world? What does it mean to them? And so the reason why I didn’t focus on the advertising is because I kind of made it a constant. I just assumed all kids are exposed to advertising to some degree. And I did this at a time when I myself had three young children ranging in age from about, I think it was about three to 10. And my kids, you know, we don’t have a TV, you know, like all these things, I was doing all these things to, I thought shelter my children from advertising.

As a good middle class parent does.

Dr. Pugh 09:29

You know, doing my best. And then they’re in school or just walking around, like they swim in this water just like we do. So, even if you’re doing some things, to keep them what you think sheltered or protected from advertising culture or consumer culture, they get it anyway from a whole bunch of other sources. And so that was part of the thinking that like, you know, advertising is everywhere. But that’s not the end of the conversation. That’s the beginning of a conversation like, given that advertising is everywhere, what do we know then? What’s next about what to know about the meaning that children make from stuff? That’s where I started. I wasn’t controlling the effect of advertising because I didn’t perceive that that was very possible. I was just like, okay, assuming advertising is everywhere, what next?

Yeah. And so that takes us nicely to one of the key themes in your book, I think, which is the balance of needing to fit in, but also not be too different from people. So you want to be different enough to express your individuality, which is why you need Nike sneakers, right? The right logo on the side. So you have to fit in, but you also have to show your individuality. And of course, this exists both on the part of the children that you studied, as well as on the parents’ memories of their own childhoods and whether or not I as a parent felt like I fit in as a child really can have some profound impacts on how I want to raise my child. And so I’m curious, what can you tell us about the differences that you notice that were important to children and parents?

Dr. Pugh 11:05

Mm-hmm. Well, one thing I want to emphasize a little bit differently, put a slightly different emphasis on what you are saying, which is I found that everyone, I would say, was concerned about fitting in. And the concern about individuality seemed, I’d say, of course, that’s going to vary by temperament. So some kids are more concerned with that, but really, that was coming from the parents. So the kids were much more interested in belonging. And that’s why I came up with that title. That title says it all.

Yeah, longing and belonging.

Dr. Pugh 11:43

What’s the meaning? If the question is what is the meaning that kids make of the stuff in their lives? The answer is belonging. And that’s actually a really different thing than a lot of research I found thinks the existing research is like thinking about status and how to be better than, you know, the better than your neighbor or your, you know, in a hierarchy. And actually, the kids and I remember, you know, I sat with kids for three years.

You knew these kids really well.

Dr. Pugh 12:17

I knew them really well.There were three different locations that varied essentially by class. There was a kind of wealthy public school, a private school, and then a low income public school setting. And each of these the kids are using the meaning of the goods and the kind of services that they could buy or that the parents were buying to belong more than to assert their dominance. So it was like I kept seeing again and again, you know, kids sitting around going, you know, I have a Gameboy, which I realized is a rather outdated reference, so, whatever they’re talking about today. I have a Gameboy and then someone else would say, well, I have a We or something they would try and trump it. They would instead say, well, I have a Gameboy. Yeah, I have one too. Yeah, I have one too. And it was like, I have one too or I’ve done that too, was much more prevalent and much more prominent in the conversations that I was witnessing over three years. Then, well, that’s for losers and really everyone should have this or whatever, you know. Now, that’s the kids’ world that I was witnessing. And that was a surprise to me, because I had been kind of prepped by the culture, I think the Mean Girls trope, you know, the obsession with status that is a lot of popular culture as well as the existing research. But then you talk to the parents. So I also interviewed parents of the children that I was observing in each location, and the parents were worried like about belonging also. But they were also worried about their kids’ individuality or I should say the affluent parents in particular were most focused on their kids’ individuality in ways that the children were less so. And I can talk more about that, because that’s tied into all sorts of other things about parenting, but those things I found in their consumer.

And I think from the affluent parents’ side, that sort of, I’m thinking ahead to the college years and the getting into college years, and you’ve sort of got to show that your kid is different from the other 50,000 kids who are applying to Harvard, right? Is that a big part of the difference aspect?

Dr. Pugh 14:34

Isn’t that interesting? So I think that’s true. But it’s mediated through a kind of generalized parenting style of, you know, intensive concerted cultivation that I think you may have talked about before on the podcast. So Annette Lareau’s really important work diagnosing what middle class and above parents are trying to do, this concerted cultivation is figure out how your kids are unique individuals and then cultivate the things that they are going to make them particularly special that are their particular passions. That’s something that starts at very young, will say toddlers, and I think is powered by, in my opinion by rising inequality and the higher stakes of getting into college and which colleges, the college race.

Yup. So you mentioned Dr. Annette Lareau’s work there, and yeah, we have mentioned that on the podcast before and the term concerted cultivation is one that she used to describe how parents used organized activities and I guess consumption as well to foster their child’s talents and I’m going to quote you on this that you said,“From the perspective of upper income parents knowing children’s desires was also part of caring well, of listening, empathizing and reflecting back to their children their true natures, so they grew to know and love themselves. Upper income parents sought to understand their children’s individuals including their desires as part of diagnosing their individual strengths and weaknesses, the central task of every upper income caregiver before commencing on the path of concerted cultivation, plumbing the depths of children’s desires was good parenting.” And I have to say, I’m gonna go out on a limb here, this statement made me really feel kind of uncomfortable, because I see so much of myself and my daughter in it. And there’s a lot kind of going on in my personal life right now that I’m struggling with or related to not really knowing myself and I talked to Dr. Carol Gilligan recently about how patriarchy causes women to not really truly know and to use their true voice and men not to know and express their true feelings. And so I do want to help my daughter to know herself and to express herself from a very young age and we plan to homeschool and so we’re going to have the time and space for her to really know her own strengths and weaknesses. And kind of in a way cultivate herself and I think and hope this will help her to live a fulfilling life. But I also see Dr. Lareau is arguing I’m essentially preparing her to function as an upper middle class White person in society. And of course, the reason I’m able to do this is because I have economic privilege. And so what I’m trying to tease out here is, is it wrong of me to do it in some way?

It’s okay to say yes.

Dr. Pugh 17:15

I completely empathize with it. And I have a kind of two part answer.

Dr. Pugh 17:21

The first is that what you’re describing is kind of seeing another person with positive regard and reflecting that person back to her or him, you know, the child, that’s part of good parenting. That’s part of good caring on some level, like even the psychologists with their analysis of infant caregiver relations will tell you that that this is mirroring. And that’s part of good care. So on the most fundamental level, the answer is no, no, it’s not wrong. The problem is when it gets kind of activated as entitlement, and that’s the direction in which our culture is going. So there’s really great work after Lareau, which was published, you know, 15 years ago or more. There’s really great work showing that kids of middle class versus kids of working class or poor backgrounds, take that the streets you could say that they derive from being seen so regularly and so typically by their parents, and take it into the classroom and customize the classroom to their needs, in ways that accentuate the advantages that they have. You know, it’s not just their parents speak more vocabulary to them or that they have more books in the home, but that they assume that they can customize their environment to meet their needs in a way that working class and poor children do not. This is this great work by Jessica Calarco, who’s at Indiana. There’s additional work talking about, you know, kind of a customization of experience that kids take into high school, and may I say as a college professor, you know, I see these kids, which are my own kids as well, going in and being like, you know, I’ll just give you an example, you know, like just at the last semester that I was teaching, this girl was saying, oh, I didn’t see that the final exam was on this date, and I bought these very expensive plane tickets, can I get accommodation so that I can take it on another day, you know, that’s like, a classic example of kind of assuming on some level that you can customize your environment, because that’s what’s been done for you your whole life. And so I’m making a link between recognition or this mirroring, that is good care, and this kind of message that you can customize your entire environment that leads to a kind of entitlement that I do think is wrong. So, somehow, our task I think as middle class parents in particular, because we have all this privilege accruing to us is to somehow convey recognition, convey mirroring, convey that the person you see is a valuable person and these are their contours and you are an individual, convey this positive regard of who they actually are, but also say, as somehow convey a sense of humility and restraint with that.

I love that answer. And yeah, the idea that the world doesn’t revolve around you and that part of your role in society is to make society better for other people, not just make it better for yourself.

Dr. Pugh 20:50

Yes, but you can understand I mean, I think it’s completely understandable that it’s not clear like those are different, different messages. One might be the world like, I see you in all your uniqueness. And then the second message is all that uniqueness is fine at home I guess.

Dr. Pugh 21:13

But when you’re out there, be a little less unique and settle with the masses so that you’re not like assuming that the world revolves around you, you know, like it’s different message and that can be hard. That kind of subtlety can be hard to convey.

Yeah, for sure. And just as sort of a sidetrack here, we talk a lot about middle class parents. And Dr. Lareau’s research is getting a little older now. And she said that the low income parents are not as engaged in concerted cultivation and really use this different approach where they support the development of their child’s natural abilities. But some more recent research has observed and I know that you pointed me towards some research as well on slightly different topics related to buying food and that kind of thing that support the idea that low income mothers actually do engage in a lot of sacrifice, a lot of self-reliance and protection in the absence of really anything in the way of social support and a great cost to themselves. What do you make of that sort of discrepancy? Is it just a question of looking at different populations or a different way of thinking about things since Dr. Lareau was working on this?

Dr. Pugh 22:13

Well, two things, first, I don’t think it’s necessarily a discrepancy. And I think Lareau would definitely agree that the working class parents that she saw had a lot of self-sacrifice. It’s not that they weren’t sacrificing, they did withhold a lot from themselves to make sure their kids could get it, you know, they could pay rent, they could house them, they could, you know, like they’re doing a lot. It’s not that they weren’t doing self-sacrifice, it’s that they thought good parenting was about establishing right and wrong, and kind of letting the child kind of come to who they were going to be kind of. As opposed to this kind of active cultivation through daily scheduling of activities and stuff like that. But in addition to that slight difference in emphasis, I would also say there has been some changes. What’s interesting is this is a hotbed of scholarly research people are really in this area and have been for the last 10 or 15 years since this book came out. It just started spawned this enormous industry of experiments and surveys and extensive research and the reason why it’s spawned the so much activity is because people are arguing, and they’re arguing about two things. They’re saying, is it a cultural difference, which is what Lareau was arguing like that by which she means working class people had a different values about parenting compared to the middle class people.They had a different cultural approach to parenting, you know. A whole other category of scholars are instead arguing no, no, no, this is about material resources. And if we gave working class people more advantages, you know, more money, more, etc, their parenting would look more like the middle class parenting. It’s not a cultural difference, it’s material. That’s a fight that’s happening. And there is some research suggesting that the two groups are getting closer. By two groups I mean these middle class working class family parents. The most pithy summary I’ve seen says that working class parents in the kind of parenting they value and what they’re kind of doing like after school activities, etc, working class parents are moving towards middle class parents in scheduling kids, in reading to kids, etc. They’re about where the middle class parents were 25 years ago.

Okay, interesting. So things are changing. And I want to pursue this line of thinking on the differences between affluent families and parents with less income, but I don’t want to let drop something when I asked question about a while ago, when we were talking about how children are using their possessions as a way to belong to indicate their belonging and it just made me feel so sad when you said that. I mean, it just feels so wrong to me in some way that we need to have physical things that are produced at great environmental cost and great social cost to people in often other countries living in atrocious conditions, so that they can make us a Gameboy that we can use to express our belonging in a culture. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Pugh 25:29

Yeah. Well, the first is kids will do this with anything. So actually not necessary that it’d be a Gameboy.

It could be a stick.

Dr. Pugh 25:38

Right. In fact, they’ll do it with rocks that they like gave different, you know, some of them would like there was a kind of painting rocks. In my book, I talked about this puff balls and they were like creating out of these little strings or whatever. Like it doesn’t have to be a Gameboy. They create meaning from the stuff that’s around them and then the others want to join in. If it’s got enough, I don’t know, charisma to it or magnetism to it, the others want to join in and then that creates its own economy of sorts. And so it’s not necessarily something that is, you know, has that whiff of tragedy to it that you are sensing. The tragedy, I agree, though, that when it’s attached to expensive goods made in other countries that, you know, with under terrible labor conditions, and you know, with horrible environmental effects, and purchased by working class parents who are just trying to help their kids feel normal at school, that is a tragedy.

That is a whiff of tragedy.

Dr. Pugh 26:42

That’s a bad situation. And so actually, in my book, and actually in talks that I’ve given since then, I’ve been thinking about what’s to do? Like if this is something that kids do with anything, but it’s been attached to this pretty high priced and damaging consumer economy, what’s to do here? And I kind of went down, I go down two paths. One is to help people in their neighborhoods and schools, in their small communities, control to some degree the meaning of difference and the meaning of sameness. That’s what it comes down to. So what that means is if you’re in a neighborhood and everyone and like the birthday gifts are getting out of hand or not just the birthday gifts, but the party gifts are out of hand, that’s something that was happening when I was raising young kids. You can get together as a group and just kind of agree like, okay, actually, we’re just going to spend X on party gifts or how about we just do you know, like kind of collectively decide things. Similarly with school uniforms can kind of often bracket a whole area of spending out, you know, take it out of the equation. There’s ways in which our communities kind of almost established sameness that just may takes a little bit of the heat off of this for kids. That’s one path to go down as a group. And I have to say my research says these solutions are going to be by group.

Yeah. Ron Lieber describes that too in his book, doesn’t he, where he talks about that parents getting together for Hanukkah celebrations and realizing they’re collectively going to spend like 30 grand on this, and they decided to set up a fund that the children were going to administer and decide how it would be split among different charities that everybody could participate in whether or not they contributed money.

Dr. Pugh 28:39

Yeah, I think his work is pretty terrific. So the other thing though is to make difference safer, and that’s a much more complicated. But also it’s one that I think actually, you know, adults benefit from too like I’m a real believer and do as I do, kind of like walk the walk is what I think like parents and parenting and myself, I’m no exception, we think that we can talk our way through these issues, but kids aren’t actually listening that much. They’re watching, and they’re really watching. And so if your own life doesn’t really include a lot of difference, then how are we to assume that the kids are going to do that too, so they’re going to look for difference themselves. So thinking about difference, thinking about who your friendship group is, and who their friendship group is, thinking about like how it is to walk out and someone else might perceive you as weird or strange, you know, like doing that more and articulating that more, I think is actually a powerful parenting tool.

Interesting, okay. And so to keep going on this point about how parents from different economic backgrounds think about consumerism because this was another major theme in your book, and I wonder if you can tell us some of the things that you identified among affluent families and parents with less income as well.

Dr. Pugh 30:01

You mean like the differences between them?

Yeah. What were the major ideas that that each of the different groups of parents had about money and how they were spending it?

Dr. Pugh 30:10

Yeah. So I found this core similarity among the children. And I was looking at children with vastly different resources. You know, people who spent the summer in Oakland in their tiny little apartment and someone who went to Brazil and Germany in the summer, like totally different universes.The patterns were the same, the wanting to use stuff to belong, etc. But among the parents of these children, they really had markedly different ways of talking about spending that showed me that they were kind of, I would say, responding to different pressures. So the way I captured that was with the term symbolic deprivation, and symbolic indulgence and symbolic deprivation is what I found the affluent parents doing by which I meant I would be talking to affluent parents and they would be saying, you know, we don’t spend, I’m not very materialistic, my neighbor, now my neighbor, that’s another. Like oh, my sister, she’s really bad or whatever, you know, like, they would have these kind of people that they saw themselves as not us and those people were almost cautionary tales for themselves and they were kind of trying to cue a different line of honorable parenting that was not materialistic. And then you go into the kids’ bedrooms and the kids bedrooms have a ton of stuff, you know, it’s just what it was. They had like all of the basics, obviously, but then also some other stuff. But the parents would like kind of point to particular items that they didn’t buy, that other people were buying to tell themselves that they were kind of honorable, as I say, or you know, not materialistic parents. So I had one family that I use as an example, they were going to Australia for the summer and you know, all the stuff, but the kid didn’t have a Gameboy. And again, I know that the data differs but like, you know, didn’t have the electronic thing that all other boys his age in his school had. So he had to kind of figure out a path to belonging without it. And a lot of my observations were charting how interesting and adept he was at making those paths, but also the parents’ tactic of bringing him to Australia and outfitting with all this stuff, but then like not getting him the Gameboy, as if that was a kind of statement of, I’m not materialistic. I kind of saw that as in some way characteristic of that kind of dimension or that level of parenting. Then on the low income side, they didn’t care about being materialistic, that was not their problem. And that was actually a very powerful transformation that I experienced when I began this research, the research question itself was a middle class question. You know, how do we handle the commodification of childhood? You know, like that is a middle class question. The low income parents did not care about my question. The kind of parenting they were, they’re kind of cautionary tale. It was not the overly materialistic neighbor or sister. It was the person who couldn’t provide, it was the person down the street whose kids were neglected or abandoned or the homeless person or like they were like I’m a good provider. And so that’s what they were proving. So they did not care about, you know, how much stuff their kids has. So, their language, what I’m talking they were like, he’s got this and that and this and that. I’m like, oh my god, and then you go in their bedrooms and they have very little very, very little. In some cases, because I was speaking to parents who were quite destitute, the kids would have almost nothing. And they definitely would not have what a middle class family would consider the basics, they wouldn’t have blocks, they wouldn’t have bikes, they wouldn’t have, you know, things that are the first order of business for a middle class family. The low income family wouldn’t have those items, but instead, they’d have a few of the items that got a lot of conversation at school. So people don’t really talk about their bikes at school, but they might talk—no, there’s a lot of that, but they might talk about their We or their Gameboy or whatever. They talked about their electronic item, they talked about, you know, and that’s what these people would have.

Dr. Pugh 34:47

So it was the like the mirror opposite of what I saw going on in the middle class families. And so I call that symbolic indulgence. Because they were doing what they could to prove that they were good providers, and in some cases, they’re holding back on their own very basic purchases, even rent or food to be able to afford these kind of big ticket. But I would say also kind of big bang for the buck socially for their child in school. And so those were very different. But yeah, those were the primary differences I saw.

Yeah. I recall one anecdote from your book about how a mother subsisted on one meal a day for I think three months so that she could spend $50 on something that was really important to her child.

Dr. Pugh 35:34

So yeah, and you summarize these differences so succinctly and I guess this is why this book got so many flipping awards because there were so many quotable statements on it. You said affluent overspending is a bad idea, but low income overspending is in decent. The affluent parents have a responsibility to teach their children restraint. But it is shameful for low income parents to spend money on toys and branded sneakers when there isn’t enough money for food and you go on to say that to be able to…

Dr. Pugh 36:01

Look, if I can interrupt that?

Yes, please.

Dr. Pugh 36:03

You’re saying that I mean I hope you realize that I’m saying that as this is what the culture says.

Absolutely, yes.

Dr. Pugh 36:10

Not what I am saying.

Dr. Pugh 36:12

Not part of the shame and indecency. I’m just saying what the culture is telling these parents basically.

Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. And so people buy again quote “To be able to create their experiences, their lives, their identities, their very selves.” And also the people that you interviewed spend money on their children to compensate for something, either something amiss in their own lives or something they perceive as amiss in their children’s lives. And I guess it sort of goes to what we were talking about buying things to belong, you know, is buying things the best way to accomplish these goals?

Dr. Pugh 36:45

Yeah, I mean, exactly. I would say that there’s a lot of different reasons people buy and there’s been a lot of research that documents all those different reasons. You know, people buy to connect to their child, to make their child smile or feel joy or feel wonder, you know, there’s a lot of reasons why people buy for their kids. The reasons that kept coming up in my conversations with them because I was coming from their kids’ classroom maybe these were kind of accentuated in these conversations or maybe they were able to articulate reasons that we don’t hear in other places or another research but in any case, I heard mostly parents talking about wanting their kids to fit in. And that I think speaks to it’s their anxiety about their kids fitting in was so much stronger than I thought warranted having watched their kids. Like I watched kids really manage those moments. All kids at some point, no matter how wealthy didn’t have the thing or hadn’t experienced the thing that everyone was talking about at some point in the school, like everyone had that experience. It was not something you could protect your children from ever experiencing, ever. And kids manage those moments like they manage them well, you know, they do a lot of different things. And I actually have a whole chapter where I talked about that. You know, they learn a lot about the culture so that they can talk knowledgeably about it, even though they don’t own one. That’s what I saw that was so interesting to me. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they borrow. You know, like they just do a lot of different things that suggest they’re really good at their own cultures, I would say. And, of course, their facility or their competence at managing these moments is going to vary by child, but I saw a lot of really adept management of these slightly uncomfortable experiences. As parents we’re really, this was a motivator for them. So if kids had figured that out and would say that to their parents in some way, couch their requests to parents in ways that emphasize belonging. That was a powerful motivator for parents and I saw parents respond in ways that made me think they’re working from their own memories of their own childhood, feeling undue shame, or just those moments where you don’t have where you’re feeling left out, like parents response to the children’s, you know, fitting in motivations, or fitting in questions, you know, nagging around fitting in. They responded so quickly and so strongly that it made me feel like oh, this is responding to something in your own childhood because the kids are actually fine.

So yeah, that reminded me of something that you had said in the book where, just to draw this out more fully, the parents would purchase toys that were otherwise prohibited if their children said they needed something to fit in with their peers to participate in their social worlds, and yet it does seem as though we’re looking back to our childhoods and thinking that I think there was a Greek woman particular in your study who really seemed to have this experience when she was younger of not fitting in and possibly even continuing today, when her daughter saying don’t speak Greek to me, when you come pick me up, that’s a pretty obvious marker that there’s some kind of difference there, some feeling of difference, and that we don’t want our children to feel as outcasts. And if we can buy something to make that feeling go away, we’re going to do it.

Dr. Pugh 40:37

Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Dr. Pugh 40:39

Yeah. And I noticed that, you know, so that’s affluent, as well as low income parents are responding to that. As some parents were able to say, you are unique, we are unique. We’re not like these other people in our neighborhood. You are not like those other kids in the class. We’re not buying. But those people, the people who could say no on a regular basis were few and far between and many more people told me that they said no than actually said no. Just based on what I saw in there.

Dr. Pugh 41:19

Bedrooms or saw their kids with.

Yeah. So do you think we should say no more often? I guess I’m thinking back to the child that you mentioned earlier who didn’t have Gameboy. So his parents had the right values. Should more parents be saying no to the Gameboys? And I guess that’s maybe a bad example, because that child was going to Brazil and Germany and all the other places as well. But is this a lacking skill in parents?

Dr. Pugh 41:43

Oh, that’s such a hard question. My feeling is that it’s not a bad thing to say no. Part of my message is, you know, kind of, I would say Postcards from children’s world. Hey, I’m watching them and they’re doing just fine in those moments there, you know, that they’re not suffering as much as you think from not belonging. And I can’t remember exactly what he said. But Ron Lieber I think has a very nice way of parsing this moment, which is something like you don’t want to be the first by and you don’t want to be the last by, but you wanna be the two thirds in.

Yup. Something like that. Yeah.

Dr. Pugh 42:21

Again, I don’t remember how he does it, but I actually thought that was not a terrible thing because I also, in talking to the parents who could say no, there was this one family that I profile in particular, and they were refugee family who had recently moved to Oakland, and they view themselves as separate from their low income neighbors and better and they were like, we are, you know, we are not like them. You know, what? Buy you a Halloween costume? Why would I do that? You know, and so they were had a very hard line, even though they had a lot of affection and care for their kids. There was no doubt that they care for the kids. But their kids had a lot of work to do in the classroom to overcome not having even a Halloween costume, you know, not having even the most basic even in a low income environment. So it looked fatalist to me. It looked rough. It looked tough on those kids to me. So I think is that my American middle class self saying, oh, but the kids just want to belong, you know, like it’s really a balance. I don’t think you want them to be the first as Lieber would say and you don’t want them to be the last and you want them to be somewhere towards the end.

Somebody does have to be first.

Dr. Pugh 43:37

Somebody has to be first. Don’t let that be your child.

Yeah, and I remember that anecdote about the immigrant child. And I think you described him as picking up something in the store and not even asking for it. Just picking it up and looking at it and putting it back and already knowing that there’s no point in asking for it.

Dr. Pugh 43:55

And there was a sort of sadness in that as well. You know, it’s sad that we have, to me at least, that we have to buy these things with huge impacts to express belonging. But it’s also sad to know that this child is seeing something that could help him to belong and he knows that it’s not even worth making the request because the answer is going to be no.

Dr. Pugh 44:13

Right. I mean, I agree. And that’s why I, you know, told that story, that’s why I let the readers see what I was seeing.

Dr. Pugh 44:24

But I also want to remind us that, you know, how many times we live in our consumer paradise, where we’re surrounded by things we want, and would love to have maybe, you know, like, so how many times as an adult are you looking at something and then going, I’m not, you know, can’t do that. I’ll put that back in or whatever, you know, so it’s actually not a terrible experience, not to look at something and then put it back. It’s not a terrible experience.

Jen 44:48

Life will go on.

Dr. Pugh 44:50

So, we see it in all of its points, but it’s not absolutely terrible. And actually, the other thing that I saw him do in the same shopping trip was pickup magazine about I think Gameboys and like kind of leaf through it, basically picking up the cultural symbols and language so that he could bring that right into the classroom and be like, Oh yeah, the latest Na-na-na-na, you know, and that was him learning the culture so then be more fluent in it, even though he didn’t have the stuff and I should say, again, going back to this theme, like children are not an alien creature but they actually are just like, living in the world that we do. Adults do the same thing. So I see my, you know, my husband talk about why, you know, like what are the things that is important that you are knowledgeable about? And you may not be spending all that or, you know, you might not have everything but you’re learning about it so you can talk about it and whatever is important in your world, you know, sure some of it is politics or, you know, more high fluent language but it’s also could be consumer goods. We do this as adults also.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so as we…

Dr. Pugh 46:08

And how do I know? I should even mention this, but those fancy shoes that have red on the bottom, why do I even know that there’s a brand of pump that has, well, I will never afford those. I will never wear those. And why go about that?

Right. Yeah. If somebody mentions them someday you have some idea of what they’re talking about.

Dr. Pugh 46:27

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. So let’s look at kind of the other end of the spectrum for a minute before we end on a really practical note. I think you mentioned in the book, the idea of noblesse oblige. And I wonder if you can describe that term for us and then talk about how you see it playing out among affluent families.

Dr. Pugh 46:45

Right. So, noblesse oblige is when I would say privilege or advantage group people who have more money, see that money and privilege as coming with obligations to help people who are worse off. It is not generally tax me at a higher rate things are redistributed or I’m going to pay myself less and my lowest paid worker more so that the ratio is less so that we have more equality. It is more an emphasis on I would say philanthropy and giving back in a way, but not necessarily taking away from what gives you riches in the first place. So I would say, you know, my radical children and you know, my leftist colleagues and you know, people would critique noblesse oblige, as not really changing the inequality that makes so much trouble in our society. Nonetheless, without noblesse oblige you’re left with a kind of, you know, oligarchy of wealthy that feel no obligations to others and don’t have that purpose in their lives kind of structuring their spending and their practices. So, some wealthy parents communicate noblesse oblige to their wealthy children and some do not. And you can do that through the kind of consumer practices that you model, and you suggest for your children. There’s a writer who’s really good on this that I would recommend, called Rachel Sherman, who wrote a book called Uneasy Street, which is about she interviewed, you know, the ultra rich in New York City and how they manage parenting as well as other things. And it’s a really interesting book. Yeah, so I had some people talking about what we owe others and how we do that through what we buy, or we’re spending and others did not.

Yeah. And so I’m thinking particularly of an example of one parent who’s saying to her child, you have so much stuff, don’t tell me you need four teddy bears or whatever. There’s a kid out there who doesn’t have one. I think she’s a recounting this anecdote to you. And then of course, my question was why do we have four teddy bears in the first place? And then the same parent refused to take her child to places where poor people live in Oakland. And she said, “I don’t want my kids to have to see that much. I don’t take them to most places where homeless people are. I’d much rather write a check and deal with it on that level than expose them to anything”. And so your summary of this was most of the affluent parents seem to prefer the inequality serve as an abstract lesson and charity and the responsibilities of the wealthy rather than as a concrete experience of empathy and what we owe each other as humans. I mean, where do we go with that?

Dr. Pugh 49:34

Yeah, I think that example and this problem really like crystallizes so much that’s a problem right now because what we have there is a case of ultra responsible parenting on one level, you know, she’s trying to help her kids be safe, be protected, be sheltered. She views her, what is good parenting is sheltering them from the coarseness, the kind of strife of modern society and I am deeply sympathetic to that, you know, that’s why we have say movie picture ratings, you know, like we don’t show them R rated movies. There are reasons why we shelter children on some level. But on another level, what does not seeing it in your daily life when it’s all around? What does that do to the child growing up? And what does that tell them? Is there place in the world, this kind of bubble that is, okay, it’s okay to be in a bubble. So real attention. So if we think that’s wrong, somehow, that’s kind of perversion of the ultra responsibility of the good parents, you know, how do you introduce children to inequality safely? How do you do it in a way that doesn’t kind of dislodge all that they think is secure in the world. You know what I mean?

Dr. Pugh 51:02

It’s like a conflict between parenting as communicating security and parenting as communicating connectedness to others. And community basically, and who is your community kind of? And I am sympathetic to those who want to communicate security, especially in a world that seems just rife with insecurity. But at the same time I’ve seen the real costs, and what that does to the child’s emerging sense of who we are connected to and who is our community and who was the distant other.

Mm-hmm. I wonder if the answer is maybe imagining that our children can handle probably just a little bit more than we think they can handle or maybe that we’re comfortable with handling ourselves?

Dr. Pugh 51:52

Yes. I still agree with that. That is completely true. That is completely true.

It’s us that need to go out on a limb here. Not our kids.

Dr. Pugh 52:00

Exactly. And part of it again, there’s a gendered issue here that these are kind of women trying to do what they perceive as good job of parenting, you know, as best as they can. And we need to give them, you know, women are really disciplined for doing parenting wrong on so many different levels. And we need to give them a little more space. You know, there’s also an entire as I’m sure you know, entire kind of revolutionary movement in favor of free range parenting, keeping kids more space, and that’s not just about disciplining parents, it’s also about making our communities more kid aware. And that applies to not just affluent kids, but also low income kids like allowing kids in spaces that are not necessarily designated as kid only, not compartmentalizing kids but actually integrating them into our streets and our daily lives.

Dr. Pugh 53:07

And I actually for all I believe in that free range movement, I actually see the decrease in, you know, the fact that we’re having fewer and fewer children is making that less and less likely.

Dr. Pugh 53:20

It’s not that visible in many places now because they’re compartmentalized in their universities kind of in the places that we’ve demarcated as kids safe.

Right. Yeah. In the gyms and music lessons and all that stuff.

Dr. Pugh 53:34

Yeah. Okay. And so I know we’re almost out of time here, but I just want to touch briefly on allowances because I know that you’re a fan of Ron Lieber’s work and I’ve read his work too. And so we actually do use this approach to allowances which is $2 a week in each of spend, save and give jars. And then of course, I read your book. And it wasn’t until I did that, that I’d fully articulated to myself, which is why I started the system which is because I got tired of the endless nagging to buy stuff. And so you summarize this neatly again, for me saying, “Like rules, allowances were a way to help children consume while also maintaining the ideal of restraint, similarly accomplishing this trick”, so that parents were ideally left out of the moment of compromise, which is exactly what I was trying to do. So are our children learning valuable lessons from allowances? And I guess, why do I keep asking you to judge my parenting? Is it wrong of me to put this artificial constraint in place basically to make my life easier?

Dr. Pugh 54:31

I totally hear you and I wrote that from the heart because I’m also a believer in kind of just stepping back and letting them. You know, my view is no, you’re not wrong. I was just pointing out what we’re doing. You know, in my view, kids are in this consumer world. And it’s not a bad thing to give them more autonomy in it. And the notion that parents as kind of police figures that are going to constantly mediate their experience in this consumer world or in the world in general is, I think, not the way to go. I think better to give them small, safe kind of moments to practice, even though we’re not going to be that happy with what they buy. Kids don’t necessarily have the same taste as us. And they’re going to express that through their allowance. And by giving them an allowance, you’re letting them have a little bit more autonomy. So I’m actually pro allowance, even though I see it as a little bit of a cop out in terms of parents not kind of constantly having that tough conversation with kids about like, you know, what they do or do not buy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and of course, in reading some of your other work, where you talk about windfall child rearing, I realized that it’s my privilege to know that I’m gonna have $6 each week to put into these jars, right? Because not every parent has that luxury.

Dr. Pugh 55:59

No, exactly. That’s something I’ve seen again and again. That’s a totally different article, but it felt like a discovery to me. And that itself is a statement of middle-classness. But I just wanted to convey this to others that poverty is a problem like to be sure not having enough is a problem. But actually one of the things that make it worse is not how little you have, but how little control over when you have it.

Dr. Pugh 56:28

So when you’re living quite close to the poverty line or under it, things feel like a windfall, you get that seasonal job at Walmart or, you know, your nephew suddenly comes into a gift from something or your child gets something from the grandparent or all of a sudden there’s a check from the government or you know, like whatever. Different things are not predictable and it makes this sheer unpredictability is the problem or is like kind of a major problem of poverty. That kind of being middle class gives you some protection from because sure, we might have the same kind of waves, but because we have a kind of more basic level of income, you don’t feel the waves as much. And you can pay for something like piano lessons or whatever like things that require a basic level of consistency. Like I know, I’ll have X amount next week. As you say, allowance is the perfect example.

Yeah, gosh, money’s such a hard topic, isn’t it? Thank you so much for helping us to walk through some really difficult ideas and for critiquing my parenting.

Dr. Pugh 57:34

I hope you didn’t feel critiqued.

Not at all. It was invited but yeah, for helping us think through this and make decisions that really align with our values as parents because I think it’s really easy to just kind of fall into something and as I so clearly have done so many times with allowances just being one example and then afterwards, oh, realizing this is what I’m doing here when I’m doing this and so thanks for helping us to tease that out and make it really explicit.

Dr. Pugh 58:00

Oh, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

So, just as a reminder to listeners, all the references for today’s show along with a link to Dr. Pugh’s book which is called Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture can be found at YourParentingMojo.com/Consumerism.

Auty, S., & Lewis, C. (2004). Exploring children’s choice: The reminder effect of product placement. Psychology & Marketing 21(9), 699-716.

Buijzen, M. (2008). Associations between children’s television advertising exposure and their food consumption patterns: A household diary-survey study. Appetite 50, 231-239.

Buijzen, M., & Valkenburg, P.M. (2003). The unintended effects of television advertising: A parent-child study. Communication Research 30(5), 483-503.

Buijzen, M., & Valkenburg, P.M. (2003). The effects of television advertising on materialism, parent-child conflict, and unhappiness: A review of research. Applied Developmental Psychology 24, 437-456.

Coffey, T., Siegel, D., & Livingston, G. (2006). Marketing to the new super consumer: Mom & kid. Ithaca, NY: Paramount Marketing Publishing.

Cook, C. (2004). The commodification of childhood: The children’s clothing industry and the rise of the child consumer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Cross, G (2010). Valves of adult desire. In D. Buckingham & V. Tingstad (Eds.), Childhood and Consumer Culture (p.17-30). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.

Elliott, S., Powell, R., & Brenton, J. (2015). Being a good mom: Low-income, Black single mothers negotiate intensive mothering. Journal of Family Issues 36(3), 351-370.

Mayo, E., & Nairn, A. (2009). Consumer kids: How big business is grooming our children for profit. London, U.K.: Constable & Robinson.

Opree, S.J., Buijzen, M., van Reijmersdal, E.A., & Valkenburg, P.M. (2014). Children’s advertising exposure, advertised product desire, and materialism: A longitudinal study. Communication Research 41(5), 717-735.

Nairn, A., Bottomley, P., & Ormrod, J. (2010). “Those who have less want more. But does it make them feel bad?”: Deprivation, materialism and self-esteem in childhood. In D. Buckingham & V. Tingstad (Eds.), Childhood and Consumer Culture (p.194-208). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.

Nairn, A., & Fine. A. (2004). Who’s messing with my mind? The implications of dual-process models for the ethics of advertising to children. International Journal of Advertising 27(3), 447-470.

Pugh, A.J. (2009). Longing and belonging: Parents, children, and consumer culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press

Pugh, A.J. (2004). Windfall child rearing: Low-income care and consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture 42(2), 229-249.

Pugh, A. (2002, May). From “compensation” to “childhood wonder”: Why parents buy. Working Paper No. 39. Berkeley, CA: Center for Working Families.

Pugh, A. (2001). When is a doll more than a doll?: Selling toys as reassurance for maternal and class anxiety. Berkeley, CA: Center for Working Families.

Rozendaal, E., Lapierre, M.A., Van Reijmersdal, E.A., & Buijzen, M. (2011). Reconsidering advertising literacy as a defense against advertising effects. Media Psychology 14, 333-354.

About the author, Jen

Jen Lumanlan (M.S., M.Ed.) hosts the Your Parenting Mojo podcast (www.YourParentingMojo.com), which examines scientific research related to child development through the lens of respectful parenting.

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Conscious consumerism grows and child labour is shoppers’ top concern

Media releases

New international research released today reveals that when shoppers are looking at brands with ethical labelling, their top priority is that no child labour was used in the making of the product.

According to the GlobeScan Fairtrade Consumer Insights Report 2021, 36% of shoppers in Australia and New Zealand consider child labour when making purchasing decisions. The next most motivating factor is reduction in chemicals (29%) followed by concerns about deforestation and improving land management at 27%. Just over a quarter are also motivated by concerns about forced labour. Seventy percent of those who recognised the Fairtrade label said they were willing to pay more for a product to ensure producers are paid a fair price.

This is borne out by GlobeScan’s public opinion research (GlobeScan Radar 2020) which shows that post-pandemic, the public is more concerned than ever about big businesses making the world a better place and are willing to shop accordingly. More than half of respondents in the 2020 survey said they changed their purchasing choices in the past year to make a difference on an economic, social, environmental or political issue. This percentage was even higher than the number who said they donated money to causes which indicates that people increasingly see their everyday shopping as an important way to make a difference.

Fairtrade’s own GlobeScan report confirms that people buying Fairtrade products are clear about what they want to achieve. Three quarters of those who have seen the Fairtrade label in Australia believe that after the COVID pandemic it is even more important to support Fairtrade and feel a sense of solidarity and community when purchasing Fairtrade products.

Fairtrade Australia New Zealand (ANZ) CEO, Molly Harriss Olson, says that Fairtrade is well placed to address consumer concerns and help them make ethical purchases.

“While shoppers have a range of ethical concerns, we know that they care most about protecting children. We also know that they recognise that Fairtrade has the best systems in place to do this, which is one of the reasons why the Fairtrade mark is the most widely recognised ethical label in the world,” she says. “Fairtrade has the most robust and heavily audited processes to ensure that our company’s supply chains are free of child labour. What’s more, our approach to addressing the root cause of child labour – endemic poverty and unfair trading conditions – is significantly more comprehensive than any other ethical label in the world.”

The spotlight on child labour is expected to intensify further after the release of new child labour numbers earlier this month. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF reported that the number of children in child labour rose to 160 million worldwide. This was the first time that child labour numbers had increased in over 20 years.

“All the research tells us that ethical consumerism is growing rapidly, but with this has come a growth in the number of ethical labels and fair-washing,” says Ms Harriss Olson. “While we applaud every attempt to make a difference, it’s also important to note that not all ethical labels are equal in the benefits they actually achieve for children. We all need to consider our options carefully.”

For more information, or to arrange an interview with Molly Harriss Olson, Fairtrade ANZ CEO, contact Virginia Jones, Ph (61) 0439 430 033 or [email protected]

Notes for the editor

The 2021 Fairtrade-GlobeScan consumer research was conducted in February and March 2021 in 15 countries with a sample of 15,418 respondents. The countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain/Iberia, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.

The 2020 GlobeScan research is from the GlobeScan Radar, a survey of 27,000 people in the general public in June 202

May 18, 2022

Consumerism and Its Impact on Child Labour

CW: This article discusses topics of abuse

“The change starts within each one of us, and ends only when all children are free to be children.” – Craig Kielburger

Impact of consumerism

Consumerism is the idea of constantly increasing the consumption of goods and services to buyers. Companies further push their goods through advertising and social media to entice people into buying their products. Consumerism has a number of alarming issues, ranging from environmental, ethical and social; however, it seems as if there is no halt to its growth. With the growth of consumerism, it pushes a growth for more products, more materials, and so more workers to harvest said materials.

It's estimated that over 160 million children still engage in child labour, with the number only rising without the help of mass purchasing throughout the Covid-19 lockdown. In addition to 73 million of said children working in hazardous conditions and 3 million being forced into labour, it's safe to say that child labour is a serious problem. Child labour deprives children of their childhoods, preventing them from having an education whilst also forcing them to endure mentally and physically straining work. The majority of child exploitation takes place in more impoverished countries preying on the poorer families, over 41 countries not protecting children and youth from hazardous work. The majority of children in child labour work in the agricultural sector, this includes farming, hunting and fishing at 70%, and then secondly manufacturing and wholesale and retail being the 2nd biggest sector that children are working for.

One of the many ingredients being sourced by children includes Mica, being primarily mined in India and China. Mica is a shimmery substance often used in beauty products to add shimmer as well as being used in electronic devices as insulators. Nearly almost every Mica mining has been done illegally; workers, often children, are forced to work in hazardous conditions whilst being harshly underpaid. Children suffer from regular skin irritations as well as respiratory issues such as asthma, silicosis and bronchitis. Every kilo that these children mine, they are given 5 rupees, equivalent to about 5p. The Mica is then sold at market for £750 per kilo, and this is one of the many examples of unfair child labour that are currently happening.

There are many other different fields in which children are being exploited for work, including the Cotton industry, Gold, Coffee, Bricks and Tobacco. The Coffee industry is the 2nd most valuable in the world, only being surpassed by crude oil, at an estimated worth of 93 billion dollars. Coffee farmers often only attain 7-10% of the supermarket price of their coffee, which leads to their children being drafted for work to help support the family. Children as young as 6 will be made to work long 10 hour shift days with very hazardous working conditions; this includes working with harsh pesticides, heavy loads, poisoning and injuries. Some of the highest exports of coffee beans are shown to be guilty of subjecting children to the harshest forms of child labour, only so that we can enjoy our coffee in the morning.

The Tobacco industry also exploits children, even within the US, the work exposes young children to toxic pesticides, which in the long term can lead to cancer, damaged nervous systems, in addition to the impact on reproductive health; which as a child can be more toxic to the body as an adult. Tobacco farms also cause tobacco poisoning, which can lead to nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and many other side effects. The majority of children working on US tobacco farms report symptoms consistent with acute tobacco poisoning. In 2012 two-thirds of children under the age of 18 died from occupational injuries linked to agricultural works on US farms, and 1800 non-fatal injuries occurred across the US.

Ending child labour

So how does one person help towards ending child labour? Firstly ensure that the products you are buying are verified by Fairtrade , this making sure that all workers are treated and paid fairly. This might increase the cost of the product but is needed to ensure less children are being extorted. Buying items second hand or reusing products helps the influx of new items being produced and also helps to get as much use as possible out of items before they are binned.

One could also sign petitions helping the child labour crisis, in addition to donating to different charities which help the cause; here are a small few to get you started . Other ways to support the cause includes getting in touch with different companies and asking about their supply chains; ensuring that each one is being sourced both ethically and environmentally as well as reaching out to different governments to see what their policies are on child labour in addition to other labour laws surrounding the conditions of work.

CONSUMERISM

Essay About Consumerism: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

Consumerism is the child of capitalism; Here is a list of essay about consumerism examples and prompts you can read to further your understanding.

The word consumerism can seem daunting to some, but it’s pretty simple. It is defined as “a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods.” In the consumerist theory, people’s spending on goods and services drives economic growth- their spending preferences and habits determine the direction a company will go next.

Many businesses practice consumerism. It is a common belief that you must adopt a consumerist approach to succeed in your trade. Consumerism refers to people’s prioritization of spending on goods and services. They have the drive to purchase more items continuously.

If you are writing an essay about consumerism, you can get started by reading these essay examples.

1. What You Need To Know About Consumerism by Mark Scott

2. long essay on consumerism by prasanna, 3. consumerism: want and new pair shoes by tony richardson, 4. my thoughts on being a blogger & consumerism by anna newton, 5. consumerism and its discontents by tori deagelis, 1. does consumerism affect your decisions , 2. opposing consumerism, 3. how does consumerism negatively affect mental health, 4. how does consumerism positively affect mental health, 5. do you agree with consumerism.

“Although consumerism drives economic growth and boosts innovation, it comes with a fair share of problems ranging from environmental and moral degradation to higher debt levels and mental health problems..”

Scott gives readers an overview of consumerism in economic and social terms. He then briefly discusses consumerism’s history, benefits, and disadvantages driving economic growth and innovation. It also raises debt, harms the environment, and shifts society’s values toward worldly possessions rather than other people. Scott believes it is perhaps most healthy to find a balance between love for others and material things.

“Consumerism helps the consumers to seek redressal for their grievances against the unfair policies of the companies. It teaches the consumers about their rights and duties and helps them get better quality of products and services.”

In this essay, author Prasanna writes about the history of consumerism and its applications in India. First, it helps protect consumers from companies’ “unethical marketing practices.” For example, she cites policies put in place by the government to inspect food items, ensuring they are of good quality and prepared per sanitation standards. When used appropriately, consumerism serves the benefit of all.

“Anything people see they buy without thinking twice and knowing that they already have brand new pair shoes they have not worn because there to focused on buying and buying till they see they no longer have space in their closet to put new shoes in.”

Richardson takes a personal approach to consumerism, recalling several of his friends’ hobbies of collecting expensive shoes. Advertisements and the pressure to conform play a big role in their consumerism, enticing them to buy more and more items. Richardson believes that consumerism blinds people to the fact that their standards and desires just keep increasing and that they buy shoes for unjustified reasons. Instead, society should be more responsible and remind itself that it needs to take importance above all.

“Take online creators out of the way for a minute, because the pressure to buy is everywhere and has been since the dawn of the dime. The floorplan of stores are set out in a way that makes you stomp around the whole thing and ultimately purchase more, ads on the TV, radio, billboards, in magazines discounts and promotions – it’s endless..”

In her blog The Anna Edit , Newton explains the relationship between blogging and consumerism. Bloggers and influencers may need to purchase more things, not only for self-enjoyment but to produce new content. However, she feels this lifestyle is unsustainable and needs to be moderated. Her attitude is to balance success with her stability and well-being by limiting the number of things she buys and putting less value on material possessions.

“In a 2002 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research (Vol. 29, No. 3), the team first gauged people’s levels of stress, materialistic values and prosocial values in the domains of family, religion and community–in keeping with the theory of psychologist Shalom Schwartz, PhD, that some values unavoidably conflict with one another. ”

DeAngelis first states that it is widely believed that more desire for material wealth likely leads to more discontent: it prioritizes material things over quality time, self-reflection, and relationships. Increasing one’s wealth can help solve this problem, but it is only a short-term fix. However, a 2002 study revealed that the life satisfaction of more materialistic and less materialistic people is not different.

Prompts on Essay about Consumerism

This is not something people think about daily, but it impacts many of us. In this essay, write about how you are influenced by the pressure to buy items you don’t need. Discuss advertising and whether you feel influenced to purchase more from a convincing advertisement. Use statistics and interview data to support your opinions for an engaging argumentative essay.

Consumerism has been criticized by economists , academics , and environmental advocates alike. First, research the disadvantages of consumerism and write your essay about why there has been a recent surge of its critics. Then, conduct a critical analysis of the data in your research, and create a compelling analytical essay.

Consumerism is believed to impact mental health negatively. Research these effects and write about how consumerism affects a person’s mental health. Be sure to support your ideas with ample evidence, including interviews, research data such as statistics, and scientific research papers.

Essay about Consumerism: How does consumerism positively affect mental health?

Consumerism often gets a bad reputation. For an interesting argumentative essay, take the opposite stance and argue how consumerism can positively impact mental health. Take a look at the arguments from both sides and research the potential positive effects of consumerism. Perhaps you can look into endorphins from purchases, happiness in owning items, or even the rush of owning a unique item.

In this essay, take your stance. Choose a side of the argument – does consumerism help or hinder human life? Use research to support both sides of the argument and pitch your stance. You can argue your case through key research and create an exciting argumentative essay.

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining what is persuasive writing ?

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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What Happens When Abusive Parents Keep Their Children

An illustration of a woman planting a flower as other flowers wilt behind it.

By Naomi Schaefer Riley

Ms. Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “No Way to Treat a Child.”

In February 2023, Phoenix Castro was born in San Jose, Calif., suffering from neonatal opioid withdrawal after being exposed to fentanyl and methamphetamine in her mother’s womb.

Her mother was sent to jail and then ended up at a drug treatment facility. But her father, who had multiple drug arrests, was allowed to take the newborn to his San Jose apartment, even though a social worker had warned that the baby would be at “very high” risk if she was sent home. The county’s child protection agency had already removed the couple’s two older children because of neglect.

Three months later, Phoenix was dead from an overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

The ensuing uproar, chronicled in detail by The Mercury News, focused on new efforts by the county to keep at-risk families together. In the past, children often would be removed from unsafe homes and placed in foster care, and newborns like Phoenix in all likelihood would not have been sent home.

Those policy changes led to a “ significant ” drop in removals of children from troubled homes in the San Jose area, according to the state’s social services agency. They reflected a larger shift in child welfare thinking nationwide that has upended the foster care system. Reducing the number of children placed in foster care has been hailed as an achievement. But leaving children in families with histories of abuse and neglect to avoid the trauma of removing them has had tragic results.

We need to ask whether avoiding foster care, seemingly at all costs — especially for children in families mired in violence, addiction or mental illness — is too often compromising their safety and welfare.

The use of foster care has been in decline even as more children are dying from abuse and neglect in their homes. In recent years, the number of children in foster care fell by nearly 16 percent while the fatality rate from abuse and neglect rose by almost 18 percent. Many factors were and are at work, among them caseworker inexperience, a lack of resources and the high bars for removing children from their homes that have been erected by child welfare agencies, policymakers and judges.

What is clear from a sampling of states that release fatality reports in a timely fashion is that we are seeing deaths of children in cases in which they had been allowed to remain in homes with records of violence, drug use and neglect.

In Minnesota, a children’s advocacy group’s study of 88 child fatalities in the state from 2014 to 2022 found that “many of these deaths were preventable” and were the result of a “child welfare philosophy which gave such high priority to the interests of parents and other adults in households, as well as to the goals of family preservation and reunification, that child safety and well-being were regularly compromised.”

The prioritization of family preservation has been advanced by states and the federal government and by the nation’s largest foundation focused on reducing the need for foster care, Casey Family Programs.

Three ideas seem to have guided the effort: the child welfare system is plagued by systemic racial bias, adults should not be punished for drug addiction, and a majority of children in the system are simply in need of financial support and social services.

This effort was bolstered in 2018 with the passage by Congress of the Family First Prevention Services Act , which enables states to use federal funds “to provide enhanced support to children and families and prevent foster care placements through the provision of mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment services” and other programs.

The push certainly has been well-intentioned. There was a sense that child welfare authorities had overreacted to concerns about a crack baby epidemic in the 1980s. Mothers were arrested and babies and children taken away. The number of children in foster care more than doubled between 1985 and 2000. There was also deep concern — concern that persists — that Black children in particular were bearing the brunt of being removed from their homes and sent to foster care, which can cause its own upheaval for children.

In some states, the reductions in the number of children in foster care were drastic. But there are limits to how much those numbers can be reduced without putting children in grave danger.

In Santa Clara County, Calif., where Phoenix Castro died, an inquiry the previous year by the California Department of Social Services into the county’s child protection agency found “multiple” instances of “children placed into protective custody by law enforcement,” only to have the county agency “immediately” place “the children back in the care of the unsafe parent.” (In what appears to be an about-face by the county, The Mercury News reported that in the last two months of 2023, the number of children removed from their homes was triple the two-month average for the previous months of that year.)

In an email to Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services staff in 2021, explaining the new emphasis on keeping families together, the director at the time described the move as part of the county’s strong commitment “to racial justice and to healing the historical wounds underlying disproportionate representation of children of color in the child welfare system.”

As much as racial disparities in foster care are deeply troubling — Black children are twice as likely as white children to spend time in foster care — Black children also suffer fatalities from abuse and neglect at three times the rate of white children. Which means that policies intended to reduce disproportionality by reducing foster care may actually be resulting in more deaths of Black children.

Foster care is not a panacea. The trauma children suffer from suddenly being removed from their home and their siblings, to be placed in a strange home with a caregiver they don’t know, is well documented. But the alternative, allowing a child to remain in a dangerous home, should never be an alternative.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “No Way to Treat a Child.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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How Can I Be Free When My Child Is Incarcerated?

Tiffany and Damiani in prison on Jan. 19, 2023, the day after Tiffany's birthday.

I t began during the COVID-19 pandemic. LA was shut down, and I got a phone call from my mother telling me that my son, Damiani, had done something he shouldn't have. It was Mother’s Day, and my son called me from a burner phone saying he was going to be on the run for a while. Towards the end of 2020, he got caught for a home invasion. Everything was virtual, so I couldn’t go into the courtroom, and he eventually got transferred to a maximum prison, sentenced to 9 years and 9 months.,

That's where my journey began.

I believe in God, I go to church. But as I tried searching for communities that could speak to my specific experience as a mother with an incarcerated child, I couldn’t find anything. I went on YouTube and saw a few shortclips. I typed “moms with incarcerated kids” in my podcast app only to find episodes generally about prisons. Nothing was about the walk of a mother.

I am the kind of person who has a glass of wine with Jesus on the balcony. Next thing I know, I'm hearing, ‘Why don't you start the podcast?’ So, a couple of months later, I did

So I ordered a mic, created a little studio in my apartment, and set up shop. A few months later, I launched my podcast and started just talking about the day in the life of a mother like me—how my family doesn’t understand, how people judge you as mothers, like “Oh, you failed as a mother, you should do better.” I had a lot of anger issues that I took out on my family and friends because I was so mad at my son for what he was doing. I thought it was my fault, and I learned that it wasn't. I shared that it was hard. That never in a million years did I think I was going to be here. I shared that I thought my son was going to get a scholarship to go to college for football, but things shifted. I shared that I still have to get up and go to work, and, with a team of 10 employees, leave my problems at the door. I cry in the car, put my makeup back on, and walk in like nothing's wrong. I try my best to keep it all together.

After I started the podcast, I went to Facebook to see if there were any groups for mothers with incarcerated kids. There were a couple out there, and I joined, but the one thing I didn't like about the other groups is they lacked a positive, good flow of energy. Some of these mothers had children that were doing 20 years to life. One mother told a story about how her son died in prison. I started to get anxious, so I thought, let me create my own Facebook community and set the tone differently than everybody else’s. I created it in July of 2022. I called it “The Impact of Incarceration on Mothers, ”

Read More: The Destructive Lie Behind “Mass Incarceration”

In this group, you can cry, laugh, vent, and, most of all, there’s a sentiment that we're going to get through this. We’re stronger together. We’re at 1,600 women, with 300 new members as of April. And we’re not just in California, we’re all over the U.S. I'm very transparent about my journey, and I have mothers messaging me saying “I’m so happy I found you because nobody understands how I feel.” Trust is why the group is what it is—and why it keeps growing every day. (On a recent morning, for instance, I got another 20 notifications of women joining). This is a safe place for mothers, and we're not pointing fingers.

Mothers share their stories in posts and comments, and sometimes over Zoom calls. We have a mother that has three children in prison, 22 to 30, and she travels to three different states to see them. She lives in Atlanta, and she makes the trip with her husband to California where one of her sons is incarcerated in Long Beach. There's a mother who has to figure out how she’s going to come up with $20,000 for a lawyer, who asks about churches and nonprofit organizations who could help her. There's another woman with a disability who needs to find someone to give her a ride to visit her son. Oftentimes we ask questions: Do I use my money for my child inside or do I cover the cost of school backpacks for my two at home? My son is about to come up on his sentence; what does the parole situation look like? Can you guys help me find a lawyer? And all the mothers jump in.

I shared my own story, too. I put in the group that it was my son’s first time in solitary confinement, and I hadn’t heard from him in two months. One woman told me I could call up the prison and ask for a wellness check, where a counselor would speak to my son and report back. I didn’t know that, but the community that I’m building did, so I was able to hear the basics about how my son was doing. One mother shared that there was a lockdown at her son’s prison in Texas, and so many moms started responding saying ‘wait a minute my son is there too!’ Then another mom shared why there was a lockdown, because she was super in tune with what was going on. So we’re able to share news with each other in real time.

Read More: Confronting Youth Incarceration

When I started the group, the more I kept reading the comments like, “I don't want to get out of bed today,” or “the doctor told me to start walking but I can’t,” I began to think of how I could shift this atmosphere while supporting these moms. So, I proposed a 21 day workout challenge and my notifications started going off with moms saying, “Yes, let's do something.” Next thing I knew women were posting selfies on hikes and moving their bodies. We’re a funny group. We do videos, we cry together, we post pictures of our dogs for National Dog Day, we’ll ask each other about recent dates, or who just got their hair done. We don’t always have to talk about our children being incarcerated.

I'm embracing this time because I feel like it's growing me as a mother. I was young when I had my son, and didn't know what I was doing. I would still do the basic things like pick my son up from school, but I would drop him off at his grandmother's house and go to parties. We were raising each other. I would share things about my life and he’d give me advice. Sometimes I didn't know if I was his mom or his sister.

Damiani is unique. He’s always been different in a crowd, even his teachers would tell me that. He has a smile on him that just lights up the room, and he’s like a spitting image of me. He can gather people together, especially when there's dysfunction going on, and he has a great sense of humor. So in the midst of all of this, my son and I have a dynamic relationship. I told him about the Facebook group and he said he was so proud of me. He laughed and said, "It took me going to prison for you to find your purpose.”

My son’s middle name is Nassir. Since he’s been locked up, every time he calls or I write to him I call him King Nassir, because I can't imagine what it's like being locked up for 23 hours, what it’s like being in that prison. I always tell the mothers when you speak to your child, you have to speak life into them. I just told my son in a letter the other day that I'm proud of him. I know that sounds crazy to say that you're proud of your child being in prison. It's not the prison part. I'm proud of the fact that his mentality is changing.

He’s always had no hair. Now, he has these long dreads. When he gets out, I just want to feel this hair of his. Like, what’s up with these dreads? That’s the first thing I want to do—put my hands through it. He's in Chicago, and the goal is to get him parole in the state of California. So we have to see what that looks like. He’s up for parole in 2025, and one of the moms in the group let me know I need to get in touch with the parole officer four months ahead of time to get him transferred to California. When he comes home, I want to employ him, because they say 50% of people in prison end up going back. So, he’ll join me as co-host on our podcast and we want to do a YouTube channel together. We want to share how he was raised with me, what type of mother I was, and how he got here. We want to be transparent with our story. We’re thinking of having a therapist on the show for both of us, because he’s not the same person and I’m not the same person. And I want to show this to other mothers and children.

I didn’t hear my son’s voice for eight months while he was in solitary, but not once did I drop the mic on my podcast or stop talking to mothers. The mothers in the group are powerful, each with their own set of experiences and emotions. When it comes to society pointing fingers, the first thing they say is, “Oh, they probably grew up in poverty, or there probably wasn't a father in the household.” That’s not the case. Some of these mothers are in two parent households. We have a mother who is a politician, with a daughter who is a prom queen, a son who is an athlete, and another son is in prison. It doesn’t look one way. And you don't have to hide behind it. One lady in the group told her neighbors her son was in the military because she was so embarrassed. But I’m not ashamed.

We're in this boat together. No matter how rough the waters are, we’re still gonna get to the other side of victory. We're learning from each other, and we're literally leaning on each other. We can't do this alone. We're mothers.

The other day, I learned Damiani was finally out of the hole. He sent me a message from his tablet saying the warden let him out early. (He was supposed to be out May 20). I wasn’t going to pay for a flight to Chicago to see my son behind glass, because that felt like too much. But now that he’s out? I’m booking my flight. —As told to Abigail Glasgow

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Half of Latinas Say Hispanic Women’s Situation Has Improved in the Past Decade and Expect More Gains

Government data shows gains in education, employment and earnings for Hispanic women, but gaps with other groups remain

Table of contents.

Assessing the progress of Hispanic women in the last 10 years
Views of Hispanic women’s situation in the next 10 years
Views on the gender pay gap
Latinas’ educational attainment
Latinas’ labor force participation
Latinas’ earnings
Latinas as breadwinners in their relationships
Bachelor’s degrees among Latinas
Labor force participation rates among Latinas
Occupations among working Latinas
Earnings among Latinas
Latinas as breadwinners in 2022
Appendix: Supplemental charts and tables
Acknowledgments
The American Trends Panel survey methodology
Methodology for the analysis of the Current Population Survey

This report explores Latinas’ economic and demographic progress in the last two decades – and their perceptions of that progress – using several data sources.

The first is a Pew Research Center survey of 5,078 Hispanic adults, including 2,600 Hispanic women. Respondents were asked whether U.S. Latinas saw progress in their situation in the last decade, whether they expected any in the future decade, and how big a problem the U.S. gender pay gap is. The survey was conducted from Nov. 6 to 19, 2023, and includes 1,524 respondents from the American Trends Panel (ATP) and an additional 3,554 from Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel .

Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Recruiting panelists by mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population, or in this case the whole U.S. Hispanic population. (For more information, watch our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling.) For more information on this survey, refer to the American Trends Panel survey methodology and the topline questionnaire .

The second data source is the U.S. Census Bureau’s and Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023 Current Population Survey (CPS) Monthly and Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) data series, provided through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota.

The CPS Monthly microdata series was used only to calculate median hourly earnings for those ages 25 to 64 years old and who were not self-employed. Medians were calculated for the whole year by considering all wages reported in that year, regardless of month. Median wages were then adjusted to June 2023 dollars using the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for June of each year. For more information on the demographic analysis, refer to the methodology for the analysis of the Current Population Survey .

The terms Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in this report.

The terms Latinas and Hispanic women are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adult women who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, regardless of their racial identity.

Foreign born refers to persons born outside of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia. For the purposes of this report, foreign born also refers to those born in Puerto Rico. Although individuals born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens by birth, they are grouped with the foreign born because they are born into a Spanish-dominant culture and because on many points their attitudes, views and beliefs are much closer to those of Hispanics born outside the U.S. than to Hispanics born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C., even those who identify themselves as being of Puerto Rican origin.

The terms foreign born and immigrant are used interchangeably in this report. Immigrants are also considered first-generation Americans.

U.S. born refers to persons born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C.

Second generation refers to people born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C. with at least one immigrant parent.

Third or higher generation refers to people born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C., with both parents born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C.

Throughout this report, Democrats are respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or those who are independent or identify with some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans are those who identify politically with the Republican Party and those who are independent or identify with some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

White, Black and Asian each include those who report being only one race and are not Hispanic.

Civilians are those who were not in the armed forces at the time of completing the Current Population Survey.

Those participating in the labor force either were at work; held a job but were temporarily absent from work due to factors like vacation or illness; were seeking work; or were temporarily laid off from a job in the week before taking the Current Population Survey. In this report, the labor force participation rate is shown only for civilians ages 25 to 64.

The phrases living with children or living with their own child describe individuals living with at least one of their own stepchildren, adopted children or biological children, regardless of the children’s ages. The phrases not living with children or not living with their own child describe individuals who have no children or whose children do not live with them.

Occupation and occupational groups describe the occupational category of someone’s current job, or – if unemployed – most recent job. In this report we measure occupation among civilians participating in the labor force. Occupational groups are adapted from the U.S. Census Bureau’s occupation classification list from 2018 onward .

Hourly earnings , hourly wages and hourly pay all refer to the amount an employee reported making per hour at the time of taking the Current Population Survey where they were employed by someone else. Median hourly wages were calculated only for those ages 25 to 64 who were not self-employed. Calculated median hourly wages shared in this report are adjusted for inflation to 2023. (A median means that half of a given population – for example, Hispanic women – earned more than the stated wage, and half earned less.)

Breadwinners refer to those living with a spouse or partner, both ages 25 to 64, who make over 60% of their and their partner’s combined, positive income from all sources. Those in egalitarian relationships make 40% to 60% of the combined income. For those who make less than 40% of the combined income, their spouse or partner is the breadwinner . This analysis was conducted among both opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

Half of Latinas say the situation of Hispanic women in the United States is better now than it was 10 years ago, and a similar share say the situation will improve in the next 10 years.

Bar charts showing that half of Latinas say the situation of U.S. Hispanic women has improved, yet two-thirds say the gender pay gap is a big problem for Hispanic women today. Half of Latinas also say they expect the situation of Hispanic women in the country to improve in the next ten years.

Still, 39% of Latinas say that the situation has stayed the same, and 34% say it will not change in the next 10 years. Two-thirds (66%) say the gender pay gap – the fact that women earn less money, on average, than men – is a big problem for Hispanic women today, according to new analysis of Pew Research Center’s National Survey of Latinos.

At 22.2 million, Latinas account for 17% of all adult women in the U.S. today. Their population grew by 5.6 million from 2010 to 2022, the largest numeric increase of any major female racial or ethnic group. 1

Latinas’ mixed assessments reflect their group’s gains in education and at work over the last two decades, but also stalled progress in closing wage gaps with other groups.

Hispanic women are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree today (23% in 2023) than they were in 2013 (16%). More Hispanic women than ever are also completing graduate degrees .
Hispanic women have increased their labor force participation rate by 4 percentage points, from 65% in 2013 to 69% in 2023.
The median hourly wage of Hispanic women has increased by 17% in the last decade. In 2023, their median hourly wage was $19.23, up from $16.47 in 2013 (in 2023 dollars).

Despite this progress, Hispanic women’s pay gaps with their peers haven’t significantly improved in recent years:

The gender pay gap among Hispanics persists with no significant change. In 2023, Hispanic women earned 85 cents (at the median) for every dollar earned by Hispanic men, compared with 89 cents per dollar in 2013 (and 87 cents per dollar in 2003).
Hispanic women continue to lag non-Hispanic women in earnings , with no significant improvement in the past decade. In 2023, the median Hispanic woman made 77 cents for each dollar earned by the median non-Hispanic woman, compared with 75 cents per dollar in 2013.
The pay gap between Hispanic women and White men has changed only slightly . In 2023, Hispanic women earned 62 cents of every dollar earned by non-Hispanic White men, up from 59 cents per dollar in 2013.

In addition, Hispanic women lag Hispanic men and non-Hispanic women in labor force participation, and they lag non-Hispanic women in educational attainment. Read more in Chapter 2 .

Among Latinas who are employed, about half (49%) say their current job is best described as “just a job to get them by.” Fewer see their job as a career (30%) or a steppingstone to a career (14%).

Pew Research Center’s bilingual 2023 National Survey of Latinos – conducted Nov. 6-19, 2023, among 5,078 Hispanic adults, including 2,600 Hispanic women – explores what it’s like to be a Latina in the U.S. today. This report uses findings from our 2023 survey as well as demographic and economic data from the Current Population Survey.

The following chapters take a closer look at:

How Latinas view the progress and future situation of Hispanic women in the U.S.
What government data tells us about Latinas’ progress in the labor market, earnings and educational attainment
How Latinas’ educational and economic outcomes vary

For additional survey findings on what it means to be a Latina in the U.S. today and the daily pressures they face, read our report “A Majority of Latinas Feel Pressure To Support Their Families or To Succeed at Work.”

Latinas’ population size and growth rate from 2010 to 2022 were calculated using the 2010 and 2022 American Community Surveys, accessed through IPUMS. The rest of the demographic analysis in this post uses data from the Current Population Survey. ↩

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Hispanic enrollment reaches new high at four-year colleges in the u.s., but affordability remains an obstacle, u.s. public school students often go to schools where at least half of their peers are the same race or ethnicity, what’s behind the growing gap between men and women in college completion, for u.s. latinos, covid-19 has taken a personal and financial toll, most popular, report materials.

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COMMENTS

Children's Well-being: The effects of Child Consumerism
The study also suggests that as the relationship between parents and children become worse off, this leads to a negative effect on children's well-being. When a child is not connecting with their parents, they face a much higher risk of facing depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem, and more psychosomatic complaints.
Full article: Consumerism and well-being in early adolescence
Introduction. Consumerism or materialism Footnote 1, referring to conspicuous consumption or beliefs that goods are a means to happiness generally or personally, has been highlighted as one of today's 'social evils' (Joseph Rowntree Foundation Citation 2009) and as detrimental to health and well-being (Eckersley Citation 2006, Citation 2011).This study examines levels of several different ...
Children as Consumers
Teens in the US spend around $160 billion a year. Children (up to 11) spend around $18 billion a year. Tweens (8-12 year olds) heavily influence more than $30 billion in other spending by parents, and 80 percent of all global brands now deploy a tween strategy. Children (under 12) and teens influence parental purchases totaling over $130-670 ...
Children and Consumer Culture
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. In this study, Cross theorizes and demonstrates the tension between constructions of the "cute" child invoked by marketing and nostalgically sought by parents and the "cool," distant child also produced by commercial means. Historically, he argues, the "cool" has been displacing ...
Endangered childhoods: how consumerism is impacting child and youth
It becomes necessary, therefore, to examine the impact of consumerism in order to assess identity formation and development in youth. Young people are receiving an endless barrage of material messages encouraging purchasing behavior and consumption that impacts the self-image. ... Bar-on ME ( 2000) The effects of television on child health ...
Full article: Children's influence on consumption-related decisions in
1. Introduction. The family is the locus of relationships, meanings, and values (Stacey, Citation 1990), and consumption-related decision-making in the context of family life is a core consumer behavior process (Howard & Sheth, Citation 1969; Scanzoni & Szinovacz, Citation 1980).During the 1960s, consumer researchers began to study children's role in family consumption decisions (Flurry ...
Well-Being and Children in a Consumer Society
2.1 Well-Being, Consumption, and Consumerism. Modern societies have undergone commercialization processes in which the lives of children increasingly are subjugated to markets (Kline 1995; Pecora 1998; Schor 2004; Beder et al. 2009), both directly, as active consumers, and indirectly, when parents seek to fulfill their children's needs.Children in today's postindustrial societies ...
Children as consumers: A review of 50 years of research in marketing
This chapter describes the historical development of the field of children's consumer behavior from the mid-1970s to today. It identifies three historical periods in the development of children's consumer research, and describes the major themes and research characteristic of each period. The first period (1970-1985) covers the beginning of the field, focused on public policy concerns over ...
Children as Consumers
It is impossible to elaborate all relevant issues. I will focus on one that is strongly related with the discussion on children as consumers: the child's autonomy. The image of the autonomous child is often put forward by the corporate world (Seiter 1993; Pilcher 2013). At the same time, it is one of the most important concepts in the plea of ...
Children and Consumer Culture in American Society
The essays and documents in this volume illuminate the historical circumstances and cultural conflicts that helped to produce, shape, and legitimize children's consumerism.Focusing primarily on the period from the Gilded Age through the twentieth century, this book examines how and why children and adolescents acquired new economic roles as ...
Endangered childhoods: How consumerism is impacting child and youth
Endangered childhoods: How consumerism is impacting child and youth identity. April 2011. Media Culture & Society 33 (3):347-362. DOI: 10.1177/0163443710393387. Authors: Jennifer Ann Hill. To read ...
Critiquing Children's Consumer Culture: An Introduction to
It's as simple as child's play. Or is it? The idea of children's play conjures images of purity and innocence (Spigel 1998), a contrast to adult labor and work (Ozanne and Ozanne 2011).Children's play occurs in many forms, including symbolic play, socio-dramatic play, exploratory play, and fantasy play (Hughes 2002), sometimes involving the use of play objects including toys.
[PDF] Endangered childhoods: how consumerism is impacting child and
Modern-day children are immersed in cultures of consumption such that every aspect of their lives is touched by a buy-and-consume modality. In particular, children in North America are increasingly experiencing the effects of consumer culture at unprecedented levels of involvement. It becomes necessary, therefore, to examine the impact of consumerism in order to assess identity formation and ...
How Consumerism Undermines Your Child's Well-Being
Moderation. Research suggests that when parents focus on consumption and talk a lot about the importance of possessions, their child is more likely to be materialistic. Try this: Show restraint in your purchases -- and talk often about the pleasure of relationships and shared experiences. Minimize time spent shopping.
The Influence of Consumerism on 7-11 Years Children Analytical Essay
This paper will critically discuss the effect of consumerism on children aged 7-11 years. In the past generations, parents dictated children's consumer behaviour by purchasing things (toys, sweets, clothes among other children stuff) that they felt their children needed or deserved to have.
PDF Consumerism Engulfing Childhood and Youth
consumerism on a child's physical as well as mental wellbeing. Four measures used as indicators of mental health; those are feeling of anxiety and depression, declining self-esteem and psychosomatic behavior. It is fair to accept from the finding that cultures of consumerism make a mentally healthy child emotionally unstable even end up ...
(DOC) An exploration of capitalism establishing children as consumers
This essay has explored the conceptualisation of children as consumers, demonstrating that consumerism is something that is central and constant element in children's lives. This is understood through the dramatic rise of children in the consumer market, with products being specifically presented for the purpose of children purchasing the ...
Children as Future Consumers
As Kapur (n.d., p.1) stated, "children were invented as consumers" (Kapur, n.d., p. 1), a sad but a real truth and fact, and they are serving their purpose in fuelling the economy. Children between the age of 9 and 14 are more susceptible to being materialistic and hence end up being heavy consumers (Goldberg, 2002, p.1).
107: The impact of consumerism on children
107: The impact of consumerism on children. 8th March 2020 • Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive • Jen Lumanlan. 00:00:00 00:58:52. 1. A few weeks ago we talked with Dr. Brad Klontz about the 'money scripts' that we pass on to our children - perhaps unintentionally - if we fail to ...
Consumerism Essay
Consumerism Essay: The word consumerism means the economic order by which the public demands the acquisition and consumption of goods and services in a social setup. While discussing consumerism, the first thing that strikes one's mind is the word 'consumption'. In economics, consumerism means economic plans and policies that emphasize consumption. Consumerism affects the production […]
Conscious consumerism grows and child labour is shoppers' top concern
The spotlight on child labour is expected to intensify further after the release of new child labour numbers earlier this month. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF reported that the number of children in child labour rose to 160 million worldwide. This was the first time that child labour numbers had increased in over 20 years.
Consumerism and Its Impact on Child Labour
With the growth of consumerism, it pushes a growth for more products, more materials, and so more workers to harvest said materials. It's estimated that over 160 million children still engage in child labour, with the number only rising without the help of mass purchasing throughout the Covid-19 lockdown.
Essay About Consumerism: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts
Consumerism is the child of capitalism; Here is a list of essay about consumerism examples and prompts you can read to further your understanding.. The word consumerism can seem daunting to some, but it's pretty simple. It is defined as "a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods." In the consumerist theory, people's spending on goods and services ...
Opinion
There was a sense that child welfare authorities had overreacted to concerns about a crack baby epidemic in the 1980s. Mothers were arrested and babies and children taken away. The number of ...
31-year-old former teacher now works at Costco—and boosted her ...
In 2022, 31-year-old Maggie Perkins quit her eight-year teaching job and got a job at Costco. She doesn't regret the decision, and she's never been happier. Here's a look at a day in the life ...
How Can I Be Free When My Child Is Incarcerated?
10 minute read. Tiffany and Damiani in prison on Jan. 19, 2023, the day after Tiffany's birthday. Courtesy Tiffany Nicole. Ideas. By Tiffany Nicole and Abigail Glasgow. May 10, 2024 7:00 AM EDT ...
Symposium: How can contextual prevention strategies can prevent child
This online symposium from leading researchers will address how to advance organizational child-safe practices with contextual safeguarding strategies. What are the approaches? ... Complete a brief form to share your conference, webinar, or call for papers. We will review and post events and calls for papers that align with the Children's ...
How Latinas See Their Current and Future Situation and What Data Shows
At 22.2 million, Latinas account for 17% of all adult women in the U.S. today. Their population grew by 5.6 million from 2010 to 2022, the largest numeric increase of any major female racial or ethnic group. 1. Latinas' mixed assessments reflect their group's gains in education and at work over the last two decades, but also stalled ...
How not to name a new car
May 16th 2024. B estowing a name on a car, as on a child, is not to be taken lightly. By naming his newest progeny X Æ A-XII, Elon Musk has condemned the boy to a lifetime of befuddled attempts ...
A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?
Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an "angel of death," and the Prime Minister condemned her. But, in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence were ignored.