Childhood for sale?

Public Interest, Wntr, 2005 by Kay Hymowitz

Though neither of them puts it precisely in these terms, Schor and Linn argue that this is the case. They believe that unregulated commercial forces are making the young materialistic and superficial. Schor cites the fact that 75 percent of American tweens say they want to be rich while 61 percent say they want to be famous, numbers higher than just about anywhere else in the world. Noting that advertisers frequently portray parents and teachers as dullards, sticks-in-the-mud, and fools in order to discourage children from deferring to them, they worry that advertisers are damaging children's relationships with adults. Linn argues that commercial culture inhibits creativity, promotes conformity, and makes the young less prepared for responsible citizenship. Schor makes the broadest claim. She believes that the growing commercialization of childhood has led to a serious decrease in overall child well-being, a conclusion she backs up in a survey of 300 children from the Boston area. And finally, they both point to the embodiment of the excesses of the market--soaring rates of childhood obesity.

BUT the situation is far more ambiguous than the writers make it. For one thing, a lot of what ails kids is not unique to the younger generation. There's no question that kids are getting fat, but so are their mothers, fathers, and grandparents. Yes, kids like to shop a lot, but the commercial imperative has been a problematic part of the American identity since the dawn of the republic. As for conformity, where have we heard that one before?

More damaging to the idea of a "hostile take over of childhood," to use Linn's words, is the fact that just about every risk indicator--sex, crime, drinking, and drugs--has improved markedly over the past decade. In fact, rates of teen sexual activity and violence have plummeted during the same years that, according to studies of media content, not to mention common-sense observation, television, movies, and music broke one sex and violence taboo after another. There are some measures to show that kids are more materialistic, but there are others--the striking percentage of kids doing volunteer work, a growing interest in religion--that contradict that idea. As for family relations, survey after survey shows that kids today get along with their parents as well as Beaver Cleaver ever did.

What this suggests is that the market, while undeniably a powerful influence in contemporary childhood, is not quite the cultural steam engine the writers make it out to be. Culture regulates the market as much as, perhaps even more than, the market influences culture. When marketers do their focus groups and their brain-imaging, they are not simply trying to figure out how best to manipulate children and transform childhood into their own image. They are trying to determine how to appeal to children who are growing up under new demographic, political, economic, and social conditions--in other words, in a new culture. Marketers in the 1980s and early 1990s did not invent the empowered child; they took advantage of--and, yes, doubtless hastened--a transformation already at work in the culture. Today, interestingly, marketers are sensing something new in the air as they try to delve into the mysteries of a new generation. They're picking up a growing traditionalism and family orientation among young parents and their children. Britney Spears is out and the clean cut "American Idol" is in. Low-rise jeans, bare midriffs, and thongs are losing their allure. Blue Funky Fries have been pulled from the shelves. What is emerging here is not "corporations constructing childhood," as another academic quoted by Schor has put it; it's the corporation trying to catch up to children, who are themselves responding to a changing culture.