Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer CultureEven as they see their wages go down and their buying power decrease, many parents are still putting their kids' material desires first. These parents struggle with how to handle children's consumer wants, which continue unabated despite the economic downturn. And, indeed, parents and other adults continue to spend billions of dollars on children every year. Why do children seem to desire so much, so often, so soon, and why do parents capitulate so readily? To determine what forces lie behind the onslaught of Nintendo Wiis and Bratz dolls, Allison J. Pugh spent three years observing and interviewing children and their families. In Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture, Pugh teases out the complex factors that contribute to how we buy, from lunchroom conversations about Game Boys to the stark inequalities facing American children. Pugh finds that children's desires stem less from striving for status or falling victim to advertising than from their yearning to join the conversation at school or in the neighborhood. Most parents respond to children's need to belong by buying the particular goods and experiences that act as passports in children's social worlds, because they sympathize with their children's fear of being different from their peers. Even under financial constraints, families prioritize children "feeling normal". Pugh masterfully illuminates the surprising similarities in the fears and hopes of parents and children from vastly different social contexts, showing that while corporate marketing and materialism play a part in the commodification of childhood, at the heart of the matter is the desire to belong. |
Contents
1 | |
Differences in Common Studying Inequality | 27 |
Making Do Children and the Economy of Dignity | 48 |
Ambivalence and Allowances Affluent Parents Respond | 83 |
The Alchemy of Desire into Need Dilemmas of LowIncome Parenting | 120 |
Saying No Resisting Childrens Consumer Desires | 149 |
Consuming Contexts Buying Hope Shaping the Pathways of Children | 175 |
Conclusion Beyond the Tyranny of Sameness | 215 |
Notes | 229 |
273 | |
293 | |
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Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture Allison Pugh No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
adults affluent African-American affluent children affluent parents African-American ambivalence American argued Arlie Hochschild Arrowhead asked Barrie Thorne belonging Berkeley birthday party California Press chapter chil child children's consumer desires children's desires children's dignity children's social classroom commodities consumer culture contexts Deferred Gratification Dengs dren dren's East Oakland economy of dignity emotional ents Erika experience facework feel friends Game Boy gender girls going Hochschild immigrant income inequality interactional differences Journal of Consumer Katerina kids kind Lareau low-income families low-income parents Malcolm meaning middle-class mother needs Oakland Oceanview particular pathway consumption peer culture play poverty practices public school race racialized Randall Collins rituals Sandra scholars scrip shape Sherry Ortner Simon social difference social world Sociology Sojourner Truth spending stuff sumer talk things tion Tooth Fairy toys Trinelle University of California University Press upper-income parents Viviana Zelizer York