Are We Creating Materialistic Children?
Date: Friday, November 12, 2004
By: Michelle Singletary

WASHINGTON -- Our commercialized society is crippling our children. I know that's a pretty scary statement. But am I overstating the situation? I think not. Neither does the author of this month's Color of Money Book Club selection.

Consumerism expert Juliet B. Schor has written what should be a must read for every new parent, seasoned parent, aunt, uncle and grandparent. “Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture'' (Scribner, $25) frightened me and it will you too.

“American children are deeply enmeshed in the culture of getting and spending, and they are getting more so,'' Schor, a professor at Boston College, writes. ``The more they buy into the commercial and materialist messages, the worse they feel about themselves, the more depressed they are, and the more they are beset by anxiety, headaches, stomachaches, and boredom.''

Look at what Schor found based on various studies and her own survey of 300 children ages 10 to 13 in the Boston area:
-- Children are becoming shoppers at an earlier age. Children 6 to 12 are estimated to visit stores two to three times per week.
-- More children go shopping every week than read, go to church, participate in youth groups, play outdoors or spend time in household conversation.
-- Children's top aspiration now is to be rich. Forty-four percent of kids in the fourth through eighth grade now report that they daydream ``a lot'' about being rich.
-- Nearly two-thirds of parents report, ``my child defines his or her self-worth in terms of the things they own and wear more than I did when I was that age.''
-- One study found that nearly two-thirds of mothers thought their children were brand-aware by age three, and one-third said it happened at age two.

Recently my usually sweet and gentle little 6-year-old boy got in my face about something he saw on television and wanted me to get for him. After watching a Saturday morning cartoon program, my son stormed into the kitchen and demanded that I take him to a certain fast food restaurant so that he could get some toy that was in a kid's meal.

He stood there with his hands on his hips asking: “When are you going to take me? How many times have you taken me?'' Then my son had the audacity to answer the question for me: “Zero times, mommy, zero times,'' he said forming two fingers in the shape of a zero. I was hot. Clearly, my son had lost his everlasting mind. Usually I just ignore it when my kids nag me for stuff. But there was something in my son's manner that morning that made me take notice. He was product-possessed and after I stopped fuming, I got scared.

I turned my son around and ordered him to go cut the television off. In fact, I went a step further. After that incident, I have severely limited his and his sisters' television watching. In “Born to Buy,'' Schor outlines the numerous tactics that advertisers are using on our kids, many of which turn them into disrespectful tykes and teens. For example, there is an “antiadult bias'' in the commercials.

“It's important to recognize the nature of the corporate message: kids and products are aligned together in a really great, fun place, while parents, teachers, and other adults inhabit an oppressive, drab and joyless world,'' Schor says. “The lesson to kids is that it's the product, not your parents, who's really on your side.''

There is the practice of ``trans-toying'' or turning everyday items into playthings. “Child development experts worry that this trend leaves little space for imagination, as every item in the environment becomes a toy,'' Schor writes.

How many times have you heard your kid say, “I'm bored.'' What he or she really means is: You need to buy me something that will entertain me because I can't possibly be put upon to be creative. Schor concludes that kids who are overly involved in the values of consumerism become problem children.

“The prevalence of harmful and addictive products, the imperative to keep up, and the growth of materialistic attitudes are harming kids,'' she says.

People -- parents -- we are under siege. And what's at stake isn't just a depletion of our assets to buy what our kids are brainwashed to believe they need. What's at stake is the well-being of our children. Advertisers and marketers are turning our children into materialistic monsters. And sadly, we are aiding and abetting the enemy. We let the enemy into our house when we allow our children to watch endless programs surrounded by a steady stream of messages that communicate they aren't worthy -- a somebody -- without certain products.

We deliver our children to the enemy every time we choose to entertain them by shopping. I hope “Born to Buy'' will motivate you to fight back because our children -- my children -- weren't born to shop.

If you are interested in discussing this issue as the biggest shopping days of the year approach, join me online at www.washingtonpost.com at 1 p.m. Eastern Nov. 24. Schor will be my guest. To become a member of the Color of Money Book Club, all you have to do is read the recommended book and come chat online with the author.

In addition, every month I randomly select readers to receive copies of the selected book that have been donated by the publishers. For a chance to win a book for November's selection, please send an e-mail to colorofmoney(at symbol)washpost.com. You must include your name, address and daytime and evening phone numbers so we can send you a book if you win.

Listen to Michelle Singletary discuss personal finance every Tuesday on NPR's ``Day to Day.'' To hear her reports online go to www.npr.org. Readers can write to her c/o The Washington Post, 1150 15th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. Her e-mail address is singletarym@washpost.com. Comments and questions are welcome, but due to the volume of mail, personal responses may not be possible. Please also note comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer's name, unless a specific request to do otherwise is indicated.