Thanks to Nina at Queercents for pointing out an article from Best Life magazine about kids and consumerism, subtitled: “How to thwart the $17 billion marketing effort to steal your kids’ dreams, hijack their imaginations, make them obese, and drive a wedge into their relationship with you.”
Yikes. It’s enough to make one move to a cabin in the woods and subsist on berries while your kids play games with rocks and sticks.
Nina, the mother of a three-month-old, says, “I’m already wondering how we stop all the stuff from taking over,” and observes, “It is shocking how much stuff a baby can acquire in a mere 90 days — of course, it’s the result of well-meaning friends and family members.”
I don’t want to break it to her that it only gets worse. Somehow, birthdays and the winter holidays occur faster than kids outgrow toys. Once they hit school, too, the exposure to outside influences, such as the kid who only ever wears Power Ranger shirts, can be overwhelming. Suddenly the child who has never watched a Power Rangers episode is lunging for the branded cereal boxes at the grocery store.
I tend to agree with Best Life writer, Paul Scott, however. He says, “I don’t want Parker to grow up without any cultural references, so I’ve been picking my battles.” That’s the approach we try to take as well, and so far, it seems to work.
I wonder, however, if we as lesbian moms (and other LGBT parents) feel any extra pressure to give in to our children about TV shows and branded items in order to help our kids “fit in” more with their peers. It can be tough enough as the only kid in school with two moms. Would it be tougher also being the only kid who doesn’t own a Star Wars Lego set or who hasn’t watched Hannah Montana? Do we try to minimize the ways in which our kids are “different,” or do we figure that if they’re going to be seen that way anyway, it doesn’t matter if they don’t have SpongeBob underwear? Or does our family structure have nothing to do with our consumer decisions for our kids?
Your thoughts on the matter? If you have younger kids, do you think any of this drives your own purchase decisions? If you have older kids, how do they balance fitting in with standing out? Do you think any of it is driven by your family structure, or is it other aspects of their personalities?
(On a side note, Scott’s article ends with a dialogue between him and his daughter about Dora the Explorer. If you haven’t yet read Dorothy Snarker’s piece at After Ellen on the new, tween Dora, you really should. Snarker’s makeover of the makeover is priceless.)
