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A leading social critic goes inside the billion-dollar baby business to expose the marketing and the myths, helping parents determine what's worth their money—and what's a waste
Parenting coaches, ergonomic strollers, music classes, sleep consultants, luxury diaper creams, a never-ending rotation of DVDs that will make a baby smarter, socially adept, and bilingual before age three. Time-strapped, anxious parents hoping to provide the best for their baby are the perfect mark for the "parenting" industry.
In Parenting, Inc., Pamela Paul investigates the whirligig of marketing hype, peer pressure, and easy consumerism that spins parents into purchasing overpriced products and raising overprotected, overstimulated, and over-provided-for children. Paul shows how the parenting industry has persuaded parents that they cannot trust their children's health, happiness, and success to themselves. She offers a behind-the-scenes look at the baby business so that any parent can decode the claims—and discover shockingly unuseful products and surprisingly effective services. And she interviews educators, psychologists, and parents to reveal why the best thing for a baby is to break the cycle of self-recrimination and indulgence that feeds into overspending.
Paul's book leads the way for every parent who wants to escape the spiral of fear, guilt, competition, and consumption that characterizes modern American parenthood.
- Sales Rank: #391319 in eBooks
- Published on: 2008-04-01
- Released on: 2008-04-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Paul (Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families), mother of two, probes the business of parenting, exposing the high price of raising kids in our consumer-driven nation. Paul points out that it costs upwards of a million dollars to raise a child in the U.S. these days, especially if one buys into the theory that baby must have everything on the market. Following the money, Paul dissects the booming baby business, including smart toys that don't really make kids smarter, themed baby showers and parenting coaches and consultants. The text is a tireless rundown of parents' seemingly bottomless pocketbooks when it comes to bringing up baby, and according to Paul this is not just an upscale, cosmopolitan phenomenon—throughout the country parents are reaching deep into their pockets to fuel this spiraling craze. Though Paul incorporates the pithy quotes of a number of experts, such as psychologist David Elkind's observation, Computers are part of our environment, but so are microwaves and we don't put them in cribs, readers may find themselves wishing for more commentary and less litany. But Paul isn't preachy, although she does reveal that what babies really need is holding, singing, dancing, conversation and outdoor play. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Like Judith Warner's Perfect Madness, this sine qua non for new parents is highly recommended." -- Library Journal
About the Author
Pamela Paul is a contributor to Time magazine and the author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families and The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. She writes for such publications as The New York Times Book Review, Psychology Today, Self, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The Economist. She and her family live in New York.
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
You don't need an $800 stroller.
By Jan Hernandez
Do they have bugaboo strollers where you live? They've hit New York like an invasion of cockroaches -- $800 cockroaches in artfully named colors like "mocha" and "timbre". Ten years ago you couldn't have spent $800 on a stroller if you had tried, but by 2005 or 2006 they had become the norm in many communities.
This book tackles the question of how this happened. Why do parents think that they need an $800 stroller? Why do they think their kids should watch "Baby Einstein" videos? Does the baby really need $80 face cream? Bugaboo strollers are treated in particular detail, with their initial marketing plan and the response by consumers dissected in fascinating detail.
My favorite chapters talked about the companies that supply this stuff -- from entrepreneurs (especially moms) who had a good idea and are looking to turn it into a profit, to the most cynical and crass corporate marketing machines. Many of the products discussed in the book may harm children, but the companies that sell them spend millions of dollars convincing parents that their children will be somehow at risk without them.
Modern society has weakened the extended families and tight-knit communities that once played an important role in the raising of children. Many parents have no good source for advice about the baby that is about to arrive, or has just arrived. Corporations have gleefully filled the void, and neither the kids nor the parents benefit from this.
To be clear -- this book is even-handed, and where Paul sees value in a good or service, she gives detailed credit to the people responsible. Her discussions of the bad stuff are, for me anyway, more fun to read.
I loved the book. About the only thing I wanted more of was the discussion of "kids as fashion items," where toddlers are dressed in expensive clothes and paraded about by egocentric parents. I still do not understand why people do such things.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Sobering look at raising kids
By S. D. Haltzman
Pamela Paul, who has written lucidly and piercingly about other issues in American culture, here examines the money and mentality of raising children. She begins by discussing baby sign language, and, right away I thought about the choices I made for my children. I never did get around to teaching my kids sign language, I didn't buy the most expensive cribs or cradles. Did I screw up?? Did I damage my children? Paul reassures me that, no, my kids will do just fine, thank you.
This book is interesting from a sociologic perspective. But it's also practical. I think that any new parent (or parent of a pregnant child) should read it to get a clearer vision on what children "must" have, and what children truly need.
The bottom line: children need more of what money can't buy. And if you spend less time going out to earn the money, maybe you'll be home more to give your kids what they need: you!
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Parenting Gone Crazy
By Carl
Anyone who has been a parent for more than a few years has probably noticed a change in style among many of today's new parents: a more anxious, urgent, competitive, and consumptive style. For example, in my neighborhood a large number of after-school tutoring centers have sprung up. They seem to do a brisk business. Parenting, Inc., by Pamela Paul, explores the big business that parenting has become and how that business both results from and contributes to the heightened anxieties of today's parents.
In countless ways parents seek the health, safety, comfort, happiness, and positive development of their children. According to Ms. Paul, this understandable impulse has lost all sense of proportion in America. She describes an explosion of baby stores and internet merchants that sell tens of thousands of products to new parents. Not just normal necessities. But extravagances like stroller speedometers, child-size toilet paper, infant perfumes, and baby monitoring systems that employ multiple infrared cameras and wireless technology. She also describes a growing designer aesthetic for baby gear: $55 pacifiers, $195 children's jeans, $900 high chairs, $700 crib mattresses, and a $1500 diaper bag.
For parents who want to give their children an academic head start, there are in-utero educational programs, infant flash cards, infant and toddler reading and foreign language instruction, music appreciation programs, and countless educational DVDs. Instead of the traditional play date or visit to the playground, parents can now enroll their children in junior country clubs, various infant and toddler classes, and countless other structured activities. And the average American child is drowning in toys. According to Ms. Paul, the U.S. has 4% of the world's children, but 40% of its toys.
Parent "outsourcing" businesses are also booming. For expectant mothers there are prenatal personal trainers, masseuses, and nutritionists. For childbirth itself there are childbirth coaches and doulas. For the period immediately following childbirth, there are lactation consultants, baby nurses, coaches, and mother's group leaders. And as the need arises, there are shopping services, meal preparation services, professional home baby proofers, experts that teach older siblings how to adjust to a new baby, psychologists for child and parent, tantrum tamers, nannies, nanny surveillance services, "momcierges," delousers, birthday party planners, kiddie taxi services... And numerous other "experts" who now perform tasks that were once performed by parents themselves.
I have two criticisms of this book. First, it is almost entirely anecdotal. Every chapter is a string of anecdotes, interviews, and opinions. I found this format tiring and I began to get the feeling that generalizations were being made about a whole generation of parents that are probably true for only a wealthy subset of them. Second, the book would have been more interesting if it contained more analysis of the motivations and consequences of the parental behavior it describes.
Ms. Paul touches briefly on various parental motivations, but she does not delve deeply into any of them. She suggests that parenting, like everything else in our culture, is becoming increasingly consumerist, that parents use their children to exhibit conspicuous consumption, that parents want their children to excel because their success reflects well on them as parents, and that first-time older parents often try to fit children around their lifestyle rather than change their lifestyle to accommodate children. However, she also suggests that many parents want to be good parents, but are terribly pressed for time, feel guilty about how little time they spend with their children, are anxious about their children's development, and are racked by self-doubt (possibly a result of ever increasing reliance on specialists and loss of traditional communities through which parenting skills are transmitted). All of these things add up to vulnerability to the parenting industry's advertising pitches.
Ms. Paul also mentions some of the consequences of over-anxious, over-structured, and materialistic child rearing. She suggests that we're creating a generation of kids who don't know what to do when left to their own devices. She says we're teaching instant gratification, but not problem solving, coping with frustration, or self-discipline. She questions whether it makes sense to try to make children happy all the time because it's when they're unhappy that they learn what they need to do to be content. She suggests that children learn primarily through play and interactions with others. And she opines that much of the stuff of today's parenting is touted as having educational or other benefits, but it really just takes the place of interactions between children and their parents.
If these ideas had been further developed, the book would have been more interesting, and probably more helpful to parents. Nevertheless, this is an interesting book that tackles an important topic and offers many good observations and insights.
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