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 | | Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds by Susan Gregory Thomas ISBN-10: 9780618463510 ISBN-10: 0-618-46351-8 ISBN-13: 9780618463510 ISBN-13: 978-0-618-46351-0 Hardcover 2007-05-08 Houghton Mifflin Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description An investigative journalist examines how marketers exploit infants and toddlers and the broad, often shocking impact of that exploitation on our society It's no secret that toy and media corporations manipulate the insecurities of parents to move their products, but Buy, Buy Baby unveils the chilling fact that these corporations are using -- and often funding -- the latest research in child development to sell directly to babies and toddlers. Susan Gregory Thomas offers even more unnerving epiphanies: the lack of evidence that "educational" shows and toys provide any educational benefit at all for young children and the growing evidence that some of these products actually impair early development and could harm our kids socially and cognitively for life. Underlying these revelations is a dangerous economic and cultural shift: our kids are becoming consumers at alarmingly young ages and suffering all the ills that rampant materialism used to visit only on adults -- from anxiety to hypercompetitiveness to depression. Thomas blends prodigious reportage with an empathetic voice. Her two daughters were toddlers while she wrote this book, and she never loses sight of the temporal and emotional challenges that parents face. She shows how we can help our kids live at their natural pace, not the frenetic clip that serves only the toddler-industrial complex. Buy, Buy Baby helps us fight the power marketers wield by exposing the false fears they spread. | ||
Reviews | ||
"Buyer Beware" Takes New Meaning What a facinating, well written, and relevant book! I was drawn to it for 2 reasons besides the shocking title. First being, I am a mother of 2 young children ages 7 and 5. Second being, I am also a Kindergarten teacher. This book allowed me to wear both my mom and educator hats as it explored how marketers target parents as well as educators in order to drive profits and rasie brand awareness. Susan Gregory Thomas does an excellent job of taking her experience as an investigative journalist and using it to uncover some interesting facts about marketing research over the past 20 years. One of the things that hit me the hardest was finding out educators in this country are not the only ones who study and use Educational Psychology. So do marketers of major toy companies. They use the research in order to give themselves validity to parents for their so called "smart toys" AND use it to carefully develop toys and merchandise children cannot resist. After reading this book, I felt very impowered. It reaffirmed many of my personal thoughts about child development both at home and at school. I suggest to anyone who is a caregiver of young children to read this book. I will be suggesting it to anyone who will listen! Elizabeth Cates Mom, Educator, Graduate Student Raleigh, NC | ||
BUY BUY I found this wonderful resource as part of research for my own guide for parents on interactive media in young childhood. A mother and excellent reporter sought answers to her concerns about the place of media on her little child. She offers us a readable and balanced summary of current knowledge. Together with Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five, by another concerned mother, we get an excellent picture of how babies actually interact with media, commercial claims aside. Highly recommended. | ||
Smart and balanced, despite title My title pretty much sums up my thoughts, though I'll add that this book focuses on baby TV rather than consumer culture broadly. | ||
The Importance of Nothing One of the key points the other reviewers may have missed is Thomas' finding that most of the marketing people and product designers she interviewed seemed genuinely interested in making a good product for children -- they too seemed to misunderstand the research, subconciously recalling the bits favorable to their beliefs and discounting the opposing studies. Many just did not have time to think about the culmulative effects of what they were doing. The book seems as much a call to stop and think about the big picture as an indictment of an industry. For parents who recall the early days of "Program Length Commercials" (PLCs) like He-Man, and Transformers, and G.I. Joe, one might think that Strawberry Shortcake and the new Care Bears are nothing new, but Thomas points out that the trend is towards marketing to ever younger kids -- a phenomena called "kids getting older younger" (KGOY). She also raises serious issues about commercial culture sneaking into preschools via free products and materials, lending a sense of the school's endorsement of the commercial message. A disturbing read that reaffirms one's desire to spend as much time as one can with one's kids in "free play" with generic toys. | ||
Something to think about - hard If I had a lot of money, I would give this book to all my friends who have young children or are about to have children. If you have ever suspected that something is deeply wrong with our consumer/TV culture - especially where our children are concerned, this helps you put a definite finger on it. We and our children are being manipulated and harmed by money grubbing companies who hide behind "learning" as a way to rake in the cash. They both incite and take advantage of parents' concerns that they are simply not doing enough for their children and that they can somehow boost their children's IQs/talents by putting them in front of gadgets and videos. Some of the questions and research findings presented in the book have recently been supported by a U of W study showing that videos such as Baby Einstein are not helpful for infants and may even delay language development. The marketing profiles of the different kinds of moms out there, depending on their age and income/education level, are spooky. Marketers and the companies they work for know all about you and what makes you tick and spend. Some people call this free-enterprise, but some of the marketing and R&D you will read about in this book are completely unethical and some are really asking for a class action lawsuit. Squash consumer culture. Turn that TV off and talk to your baby, go take a walk, go to the park,... | ||