Born to Buy
Every parent of kids who are not out on their own yet should read “Born to Buy.” Author Juliet Schor, whose previous books include “The Overworked American” and “The Overspent American,” presents a compelling look at the materialistic attitude of U.S. children, the wide-ranging impact that attitude has on kids, the enormous efforts marketers make to woo the youngest of consumers, and some ideas about how parents can best respond.
According to Schor, a materialistic mindset among today’s youth is far from just a financial issue; it also impacts their emotional and physical health as well as their relationship with their parents.
She places part of the responsibility on marketers who spend over $15 billion per year surrounding kids with marketing messages – putting cartoon characters on diapers, product placements in TV shows and movies, advertisements in video games (“advergaming”), and their names on public spaces (the children’s hospital at UCLA was renamed Mattel’s Children’s Hospital).
She also places part of the responsibility on parents, teachers, and others entrusted with the care of children who she says are sleeping on the job, giving marketers direct access to kids via unsupervised television watching and Internet surfing, in-school advertising and more.
Readers learn about a Girl Scout “Fashion Adventure” in which girls go on an overnight at a shopping mall where, among other things, they learn how to maximize their funds to “have it all!”
Schor’s solutions include more government regulation over advertising, such as restrictions on in-school advertising. But most of all, parents need to be more involved in their kids’ lives, Schor writes. They should control the TV, for example, because she says research proves that weekly TV viewing time is significantly correlated with requests for specific advertised products, not to mention overall caloric intake.
Perhaps the most challenging advice is that parents need to walk the talk. Not surprisingly, highly materialistic kids are more likely to have highly materialistic parents, Schor found. Lessons on restraint are unlikely to connect if the parents’ closets are stuffed with the latest fashions and a typical family outing involves a trip to the mall.
Before parents can do an effective job of raising money-smart kids, they need to know what they’re up against. “Born to Buy” provides all of the eye-opening details.
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