Letters to the Editor
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Two Americas
I think I'm quoting John Edwards here, but it's long been true. Maybe there are even 3 or 4 Americas. But what's clear is that ONE of them is very affluent, and the others are not. And to be in that "upper" One America takes a lot of cash (a fantastic job or inherited money) and a willingness to spend, spend, spend. Much of it is to show off, but just as much is a kind of "running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place".
What I think Ms. Paul has missed is how much of the desire/need to have all these luxury items is because if you DO NOT, then other people actually ridicule you. It doesn't even matter if you want the SUV or the Bugaboo stroller -- it's "what would people say" if you drove a Ford Focus or used the cheapie Walmart stroller. They'd talk about you -- how cheap you are, or "maybe you aren't doing as well as they thought", or even worse, what you are doing to the future chances of your baby.
I think a lot of this crap is bought out this kind of fear: not that you really actually believe Baby Einstein will make your baby smarter, but WHAT IF (17 years in the future) your Wittle Precious One doesn't get into Harvard or Yale...and you will have think "oh God! I didn't buy him/her BABY EINSTEIN!" The guilt! The regret! so much of how we are seduced into spending money is tied into trying desperately to prevent future regret.
That being said, you can only think this way if you are very affluent and have a LOT of options. If your ONLY option is a Ford Focus, you honestly don't think about it very much. In "flyover country", most Americans do not have Bugaboos. I live in the Midwest, in a larger city and a neighborhood that is composed of middle-class, very educated folks (we live next to several universities and 2 teaching hospitals)...but I've never even seen a Bugaboo except in magazines. NOBODY here owns one and with good cause -- they couldn't possibly afford one. And people -- this is the SNOW BELT. Yet every family around manages to get through six months of wretched cold, snow, slush and freezing rain WITHOUT a super-fancy European stroller.
Of course this doesn't mean that some kids don't seem terribly spoiled, and drowning (literally) in a sea of cheap plastic crappy toys and trashy DVDs (and TV on 24/7). Any attempt to suggest anything different, I assure you, is taken as a serious and immediate threat that must be shot down. Buy used clothes or toys? UGH! DISGUSTING! Play outside? DANGEROUS! Too cold (or too hot). Much safer and easier for mom if everbody is indoors and watching the Toob.
Nobody has mentioned what it may be doing to young children to have their parents CONSTANTLY occupied with either cell phones, internet or cable TV literally all the time. (This is annoying to me as an adult as well.) It's gotten so that giving ANYONE (a friend or your own kid) UNDIVIDED ATTENTION, even for a few minutes, is an outrageous imposition on someone's time...time that can be MULTI-TASKED far more efficiently if they can talk to someone else (while you are standing right there), pay their bills online and watch the latest episode of American Idol...all at the same time.
But to go back to the original subject: the purpose of all the high priced baby crap is to produce a Super Premium Baby who will grow into a Super Premium Child who will eventually get into an Ivy League college. Because, as we all know, this is the way you get a fancy job with big bucks, and buy a McMansion and an SUV, and in due time, produce a baby with lots of expensive baby crap of your own. It's all part of a Divine Plan, and nobody dares to deviate from it (assuming you are wealthy and don't live in Flyover Country, god forbid), because to do so -- in the brutally competive world we have now, and the presumably worse one coming along shortly -- would be to damn your Widdle Precious One to mediocrity and Lower Middle Class status.
Can anything be done about it? Probably not. But watching parental consumption in the coming economic depression will be highly interesting.
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keeping up with the jones
I am a grandmother, I have a degree in psychology. I watched my daughter put herself into debt because she had to have the very best for her daughters. The solution to you mothers is just don't fall for the marketing blitz. You are not paying for quality, you are paying for the psychologists who design the market commercials to get you to believe you are a bad parent if you do not buy the very best for the child. I did research in college, one product that uses the psychologists is tooth paste. The say the product has been improved, however, the improvement is in the design of the packageing. Fight back, tell the foreign manufacturing no to their inflated prices. What ever happened to carrying the child on the hip. that is why God made us with fat cells on the hips.
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stroller prison
My kids are in their early 20s so I left the baby years behind me years ago, but I am disturbed when I see kids strapped into pricey stroller/carseat combinations. At the mall I see kids strapped semi-reclined in stroller/carseat combos and know they were strapped in at home and will not get out until they get home. A trip to the mall can be an exciting outing for a baby if they are allowed to experience it. When my kids were young you had to carry the kid to the car, put them in the carseat, take them out at the mall, put them in the stroller, roll them around, and repeat the process to go home. Time consuming and difficult for the parent, but stimulating for the child. The baby didn't doze trough the experience locked in one position, but was sitting up, looking around, and engaged.
Likewise, I see kids old enought to be walking strapped into strollers. When my daughter was a baby and my son a toddler I had one of the baby leashes that look so bad but really was great. My son could walk if he wanted or ride in the stroller if he wanted but he couldn't wander off. Parents raise their kids to be inert and wonder why they are become fat kids. Kids are made to run around, let them.