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I Buy, Therefore I’m Happy
by Christine Gross-Loh
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In the United States, where we have more shopping centers than high schools, and
where 93 percent of teenage girls listed shopping as their favourite activity in a survey,
many Americans embrace a consumer-oriented lifestyle. We buy things for pleasure,
indulgence, and to keep up with the Joneses. American children get an average of
seventy new toys a year. “The messages that children encounter every day are that the
things they buy will make them happy,” says Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids:
The Hostile Takeover of Childhood and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-
Free Childhood. “Their worth depends on what they own. They will not be happy
unless they have thing things that corporations value. And kids are spending a lot of
time with those values, because commercialism has infiltrated so much of our lives.”
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This level of the commercialization of childhood isn’t good for children. Having so
much stuff, paradoxically, leaves kids feeling empty. In her book Born to Buy: The
Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Boston College sociology
professor Juliet Schor warns that recreational buying is harmful for all children. A
consumer-oriented lifestyle is a significant cause of mental disorders such as
depression, anxiety, or low self-esteem in children. Even kids who are psychologically
healthy are worse off when they’re constantly thinking about what they own, want to
buy, or what they long for. “less involvement in consumer culture leads to healthier
kids,” Schor writes. Parents have only the best intentions when we buy so much stuff
for our children. We don’t realize how harmful it is.
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Doesn’t having money and being able to purchase the things we want make us happy?
Yes and no. There is some evidence to suggest that financial security brings more life
satisfaction. It’s beneficial to know that you will be able to meet your basic needs for
food, clothing, and shelter, now and in the future. But there’s also considerable
evidence that a constant pursuit of material fulfillment that goes beyond basic wealthy
areas—whose parents have the means to buy them the things that they want—are
unhappier than their peers in middle-class neighbourhoods (and so are their parents).
The satisfaction of buying what you want fades quickly, leading you to hanker after
the next shiny new thing.
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Consumerism can also harm children’s connections with one another. Children have
an uncanny sense about what they have and what they need to have to keep up with
their peers. And through what social scientists call “invidious comparison,” children
begin to look down upon those who don’t have the right possessions. When her son
came home confused one day, saying that the children at school were wondering why
the tooth fairy brought a vastly different sum of money to different homes, Hena, a
mother of two in Washington, D.C., was disturbed when she realized how much kids
compare notes on one another’s lives. Our kids do all the whining, begging, and
pleading because they are eager not to be left out of the materialist race. When children
are highly aware that status is conveyed by what they own, they become more
competitive.
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Hena told me that when she was growing up, “There was very little emphasis and
expense on the part of my parents to ‘entertain’ us. We were meant to keep ourselves
entertained.” She and her siblings were expected to read for pleasure or play games by
themselves. Her parents felt no pressure to buy them the latest, greatest thing, such as
a VCR, a PC, or an Atari game console.
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It’s harder for parents now, Hena noted ruefully. She remembers cleaning out her son’s
drawer once and finding so much stuff: rubber bouncy balls and erasers, debris from
birthday party goody bags, things he didn’t care about. “I told my mom, ‘These kids
don’t value things,’ and she told me, ‘It’s because they have too much.’”
(Christine Gross-Loh, Parenting Without Borders, Penguin, 2013, pp.41-43)
A) Vocabulary
Match the words with the definitions provided by writing the selected word on the line
next to the matching definition.
indulgence
infiltrated
paradoxically
pursuit
hanker after
uncanny
1.
hanker after
2.
uncanny
have something enjoyable, especially more than is
situation, usually over a long period of time
5.
paradoxically
in a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory way
6.
infiltrated
gradually permeate or become a part of