The advantages of raising kids without commercial TV seem obvious, and yet I know plenty of parents who express dismay as their children demand sugar-frosted sugar for breakfast, then expensive name-brand clothing, then the right to dress up as hookers not for Halloween but for school - Letters

Technos: Quarterly for Education and Technology, Fall, 2002 by Barbara Kingsolver

The advantages of raising kids without commercial TV seem obvious, and yet I know plenty of parents who express dismay as their children demand sugar-frosted sugar for breakfast, then expensive name-brand clothing, then the right to dress up as hookers not for Halloween but for school. Hello? Anyone who feels powerless against the screaming voice of materialistic youth culture should remember that power comes out of those two little holes in the wall.

The plug is detachable. Human young are not born with the knowledge that wearing somebody's name with huge letters on a T-shirt is a thrilling privilege for which they should pay eighty dollars. It takes years of careful instruction to arrive at that piece of logic.

--Barbara Kingsolver,
from "The One-Eyed Monster
and Why I Don't Let Him In" in
Small Wonder
(New York: Harper-Collins,
April 2002)