Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture

319 Pages·2009·0.858 MB·English

by  Allison Pugh

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Longing and Belonging
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Longing and Belonging
Parents, Children,
and Consumer Culture
Allison J. Pugh
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press, one of the most distinguished
university presses in the United States, enriches lives around
the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social
sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by
the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contribu-
tions from individuals and institutions. For more informa-
tion, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
©2009by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pugh, Allison J.
Longing and belonging : parents, children, and consumer
culture/Allison J. Pugh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN978–0–520–25843–3(cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN978–0–520–25844–0(pbk. : alk. paper)
1.Consumer behavior—Social aspects—California—Case
studies. 2.Consumption (Economics)—Social aspects—
California—Case studies. 3.Child consumers—
California—Case studies. 4.Parent and child—
California—Case studies. I. Title.
HF5415.33.U6C23 2009
306.309794—dc22 2008037216
Manufactured in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50%
post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements
of ANSI/NISOZ39.48–1992(R1997)(Permanence of Paper).
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For Roger Pugh, who always knew I would write
For Joanne Pugh, who taught me how
For Steve, who made it possible
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CONTENTS
Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xv
Chapter 1. Careand Belonging in the Market
1
Chapter 2. Differences in Common
Studying Inequality
27
Chapter 3. Making Do
Children and the Economy of Dignity
48
Chapter 4. Ambivalence and Allowances
Affluent Parents Respond
83
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Chapter 5. The Alchemy of Desire into Need
Dilemmas of Low-Income Parenting
120
Chapter 6. Saying No
Resisting Children’s Consumer Desires
149
Chapter 7. Consuming Contexts, Buying Hope
Shaping the Pathways of Children
175
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Beyond the Tyranny of Sameness
215
Notes
229
Bibliography
273
Index
293
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PREFACE
Ask them straight out, and most upper-income parents will tell you they
do not buy much for their children, because they have the “right values.”
Meanwhile, low-income parents will try to convince you they buy quite a
bit, because they arenot “in trouble.” Go into their children’sbedrooms,
however, and you will find many of the same objects—the Nintendo or
Sony gaming system, the collectible cards, the Hello Kitty pencils.
We are living through a spending boom that is unprecedented, and
which is exacting a great price. Childhoods have become ever more
commercialized, with hundreds of billions of dollars annually being
spent on or by children in the United States alone. In one recent survey,
families with children were twice as likely as those without children to
report that they did not have enough money to cover their expenses, to
worry about whether or not their income was adequate, and to be anx-
ious about the extent of their consumer debt. Parents with income con-
straints struggle to provide an ever-expanding list of goods that compete
with rent, food, clothing, and other basics of life. Families are also con-
cerned that their children have good priorities, that they understand
what matters most; to be able to buy more for their children, parents
sacrifice things they nonetheless fear might be more important. We
might say that the expanding children’s market brings with it what feels
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like a spiritual calamity for affluent families and a financial one for fam-
ilies of lesser means.1
What does buying mean to children, and to their parents? Why does
buying for children seem to generate so much anxiety and concern? If
consumer culture is the “enemy” of good parenting, why do so many
parents invite the enemy into their homes?
I started the research that led to this book because questions like
these at times defined my daily life, as they do for many parents. With
three young children, I found myself continually struggling to find the
way toward a more meaningful path, strewn with memories rather than
objects. I was surprised that despite the intense cultural scripts sur-
rounding many childhood rituals, families essentially had to invent their
own versions of Christmas, Halloween, the Tooth Fairy, allowances,
birthdays—each time adopting a particular stance toward the consumer
culture that was banging on the door, peering in the windows, and
sometimes climbing down the chimney to get in. But even if parents set-
tled on a particular configuration—“one coin under the pillow, but let it
be a Sacagawea dollar,” say, or “a cheap, slapdash costume, but all-you-
can-eat candy for three days”—that felt somehow right within the fam-
ily, the negotiation was not over. Children, acting in their natural
capacity as community journalists, always knew others who did more,
who had more, who had the newest or the latest or the best, and then
there was consumer culture again, forcing parents to draw a line, to
define themselves and their families, to come up with something that
was who they werein response to the constant onslaught.
Many parents regard the commercialization of childhood with con-
cern even as they participate in it. Survey researchers report that nearly
nine in ten Americans feel that “children today want too many material
things,” and four out of five parents think America’s overly materialistic
society produces “over-commercialized children.” “All the kids have
[gaming systems]. All the parents break like I did,” one affluent father
told me, his half grin taking back just some of the violence in the word
“break,” with its connotations of domination, relentless pressure, duress.