I just finished a very interesting book called “Buy, Buy, Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds” by Susan Gregory Thomas.
As most of you know, we tend to over-think stuff. 
And as a result, we do some stuff that can be seen as weird to most folks (like no consumer debt, no cell phones, driving vehicles we don’t necessarily love because to us “the best vehicle is the one that’s paid for”, no video games, not overextending ourselves so that we feel “so busy” all the time etc.). Let alone the “weird stuff” we do in parenting! Stuff like exclusive breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-slinging, no television in the house, no “brand items” (like Baby Gap t-shirts), minimal character-driven baby stuff (like a baby room that looks like Thomas the Tank Engine barfed in it), no daycare if we can manage it (prefer baby-sitters in a home environment instead), likely no preschool until age 4, no Baby Einstein, lots of outdoor time yada yada yada.
It makes us look like restrictive crazies! 
And really we’re not. Most Some people even consider us rather normal. 
After all, I still shop at Walmart now and again. So my convictions only go so far…
A lot of our decisions arose out of those long, lazy conversations we were privileged to have before we had kids. We were together for 7 years, married for 5, before we had kids. So we had a lot of time during the pregnancy in particular as we were in a time of transition in our lives to really talk and pray and think about what kind of home and family we wanted.
It was rather instinctual. We looked back on what we loved most about our childhoods and how our parents raised us and then just tried to do that. Our parents didn’t overspend. We didn’t watch TV. “Stuff” was never the big thing; family was. We went outside a lot instead of going to the mall. We ate at home instead of “out”. So we decided that we didn’t want to buy into this whole “you need stuff to be happy” mindset that we saw around us. Some of it was practical (like we just couldn’t afford it!) and others were idealistic. Most of it was gut-stuff. We just didn’t like how some of that stuff made us feel so we didn’t do it. For instance, I hated when I saw a kid’s entire world was everything “Dora”. Plus it started to bug me when we shopped for baby stuff that almost everything had a character on it. Can’t you just get a stroller these days without Curious George butting in? (And what baby needs a luxury stroller with GPS nav? I ask you.)
So I saw this book at the library and picked it up. It’s a few years old now, I think. Honestly, it’s one of the few research-heavy, nonfiction books I’ve actually ever finished. I’m a literature girl to the core but I like some non-fiction like stuff on church matters, scripture, theology, biographies (especially trashy royal ones about Diana) and so on. But this kind of parenting stuff I’ve never really been too into (again, kind of not liking the ‘business’ of baby-lore). I pretty much read Dr. Sears stuff and that was it. But I devoured this book and read probably 2/3 of it out loud to Brian! Lucky dog. 
I think most of us know how marketers target kids (to our eternal frustration as parents). Things like putting the Froot Loops on the bottom shelf, eye-level for 2 year olds and so on. Plus I’ve always considered myself more saavy than the average consumer about marketing because, well, I am a marketer.
That’s what I do for a living. I’ve done marketing for almost 8 years now in a professional capacity. I studied it. i read about it. I read the trade mags and know the lingo. 
And yet I was surprised. Surprised by my own naitivete regarding the targeting, work and science behind creating a “cradle-to-grave consumer“. Basically, as soon as babies can register an image, in the industry, they become a consumer. I felt like the blinders were torn from my eyes as I saw the massive machine behind the most innocuous things that surround our kids, the strategy behind the things we consider “normal”. Forget Eisenhower military-industrial-complex; make way for the baby-industrial-complex! 
Things like the death of Doing Nothing, spare time and focused play for children, the trajectory that resulted in how we got here, the characteristics of a generational void that we are trying to fill through our children, the myth of educational/learning toys and so on. One item that particularly interested me was the phenomenon of Kids Getting Older Younger (age compression, a concept not unfamiliar to any watcher of a daytime soap). Babies used to be kids under 2, toddlers were 2-4, preschoolers were 4-5 and so on. Now preschoolers are considered 24 months and up, 1 year olds are toddlers and so on. Parents take 6 year olds to see Star Wars.
When she was describing the motivators of Gen-X parents, I occasionally got a little nervous. She was reading my mail. 
I could see us and all of our friends in these stories. Who knew we could be so easily found out? Turns out that the only thing we really have in common as a group is TV and shopping – but that’s enough.
The frenetic pace of being a child today seems exhausting to me. No wonder they’re all in a mild-coma by age 8, content to play video games and unable to cope with being bored. The research here is staggering and interesting. I think the thing that I appreciated it is that it is very objective. The author is an investigative journalist and doesn’t include her own perspectives or recommendations really until the last chapter.
It made me think about our society and culture, the things we just swallow without even thinking, the millions of ways that we open up the door to our kids without thought or concern for marketers to stream in.
The other interesting thing was not just that these things are kind of a big lie – they don’t make your kids smarter or better adjusted or read earlier or better behaved – but they are actually harming kids. 
Let alone, as a Christian, I have issues with the message that shopping fixes everything and toys/books/electronics are a fitting substitute for family. Totally not our values.
I remember my mother telling me that kids learn just by living life as part of the family. She taught me so much with Anne:
- like if she’s playing happily by herself, chatting away or “reading” to let her be.
- And not to “entertain” her all the time.
- And try to pick toys that are “90% kid, 10% toy” so she has to use her imagination.
- And, trust me, toys that make noise are more trouble than they’re worth.
- Just tuck her into your life – take her shopping, to the tire shop, have her help clean and cook, learning to be part of a family instead of somehow a part from it.
- And spend lots of time outside just letting her run.
- And don’t let her watch TV.
- And why bother with that Baby Einstein crap?
- And playtime is important.
- And really, she’s still just a baby so don’t try to make her older than she is. Let her play with baby toys not 3 year old toys.
Turns out my parents are very smart people.
That’s exactly what the experts now say. Who knew they were so ahead of our time?
I have a list of books that I like to recommend to people with kids. I think I may add this one to it. It was that interesting and startling.
