Children and Consumer Culture in American Society

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313015023
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Children and Consumer Culture in American Society by : Lisa Jacobson

Download or read book Children and Consumer Culture in American Society written by Lisa Jacobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-12-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children play a crucial role in today's economy. According to some estimates, children spend or influence the spending of up to $500 billion annually. Journalists, sociologists, and media reformers often present mass marketing toward children as a recent fall from grace, but the roots of children's consumerism — and the anxieties over it — date back more than a century. Throughout the twentieth century, a wide variety of groups — including advertisers, retailers, parents, social reformers, child experts, public schools, and children themselves — helped to socialize children as consumers and struggled to define the proper boundaries of the market. The essays and documents in this volume illuminate the historical circumstances and cultural conflicts that helped to produce, shape, and legitimize children's consumerism. Focusing primarily on the period from the Gilded Age through the twentieth century, this book examines how and why children and adolescents acquired new economic roles as consumers, and how these new roles both reflected and produced dynamic changes in family life and the culture of capitalism. This volume also reveals how children and adolescents have used consumer goods to define personal identities and peer relationships — sometimes in opposition to marketers' expectations and parental intentions.

Raising Consumers

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231113897
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Raising Consumers by : Lisa Jacobson

Download or read book Raising Consumers written by Lisa Jacobson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the present electronic torrent of MTV and teen flicks, Nintendo and Air Jordan advertisements, consumer culture is an unmistakably important--and controversial--dimension of modern childhood. Historians and social commentators have typically assumed that the child consumer became significant during the postwar television age. But the child consumer was already an important phenomenon in the early twentieth century. The family, traditionally the primary institution of child socialization, began to face an array of new competitors who sought to put their own imprint on children's acculturation to consumer capitalism. Advertisers, children's magazine publishers, public schools, child experts, and children's peer groups alternately collaborated with, and competed against, the family in their quest to define children's identities. At stake in these conflicts and collaborations was no less than the direction of American consumer society--would children's consumer training rein in hedonistic excesses or contribute to the spread of hollow, commercial values? Not simply a new player in the economy, the child consumer became a lightning rod for broader concerns about the sanctity of the family and the authority of the market in modern capitalist culture. Lisa Jacobson reveals how changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity shaped the ways Americans understood the virtues and vices of boy and girl consumers--and why boys in particular emerged as the heroes of the new consumer age. She also analyzes how children's own behavior, peer culture, and emotional investment in goods influenced the dynamics of the new consumer culture. Raising Consumers is a provocative examination of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produced and ultimately legitimized a distinctive children's consumer culture in the early twentieth century.

How Consumer Culture Controls Our Kids

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440834830
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (48 download)

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Book Synopsis How Consumer Culture Controls Our Kids by : Jennifer Hill

Download or read book How Consumer Culture Controls Our Kids written by Jennifer Hill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gripping book considers the history, techniques, and goals of child-targeted consumer campaigns and examines children's changing perceptions of what commodities they "need" to be valued and value themselves. In this critique of America's consumption-based society, author Jennifer Hill chronicles the impact of consumer culture on children—from the evolution of childhood play to a child's self-perception as a consumer to the consequences of this generation's repeated media exposure to violence. Hill proposes that corporations, eager to tap into a multibillion-dollar market, use the power of advertising and the media to mold children's thoughts and behaviors. The book features vignettes with teenagers explaining, in their own words, how advertising determines their needs, wants, and self-esteem. An in-depth analysis of this research reveals the influence of media on a young person's desire to conform, shows how broadcasted depictions of beauty distort the identities of children and teens, and uncovers corporate agendas for manipulating behavior in the younger generation. The work concludes with the position that corporations are shaping children to be efficient consumers but, in return, are harming their developing young minds and physical well-being.

Purchasing Power

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816635115
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (351 download)

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Book Synopsis Purchasing Power by : Elizabeth M. Liew Siew Chin

Download or read book Purchasing Power written by Elizabeth M. Liew Siew Chin and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be young, poor, and black in our consumer culture? Are black children "brand-crazed consumer addicts" willing to kill each other over a pair of the latest Nike Air Jordans or Barbie backpack? In this first in-depth account of the consumer lives of poor and working-class black children, Elizabeth Chin enters the world of children living in hardship in order to understand the ways they learn to manage living poor in a wealthy society. To move beyond the stereotypical images of black children obsessed with status symbols, Chin spent two years interviewing poor children in New Haven, Connecticut, about where and how they spend their money. An alternate image of the children emerges, one that puts practicality ahead of status in their purchasing decisions. On a twenty-dollar shopping spree with Chin, one boy has to choose between a walkie-talkie set and an X-Men figure. In one of the most painful moments of her research, Chin watches as Davy struggles with his decision. He finally takes the walkie-talkie set, a toy that might be shared with his younger brother. Through personal anecdotes and compelling stories ranging from topics such as Christmas and birthday gifts, shopping malls, Toys-R-Us, neighborhood convenience shops, school lunches, ethnically correct toys, and school supplies, Chin critically examines consumption as a medium through which social inequalities -- most notably of race, class, and gender -- are formed, experienced, imposed, and resisted. Along the way she acknowledges the profound constraints under which the poor and working class must struggle in their daily lives.

Purchasing Power

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Author :
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816635108
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (351 download)

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Book Synopsis Purchasing Power by : Elizabeth M. Liew Siew Chin

Download or read book Purchasing Power written by Elizabeth M. Liew Siew Chin and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be young, poor, and black in our consumer culture? Are black children "brand-crazed consumer addicts" willing to kill each other over a pair of the latest Nike Air Jordans or Barbie backpack? In this first in-depth account of the consumer lives of poor and working-class black children, Elizabeth Chin enters the world of children living in hardship in order to understand the ways they learn to manage living poor in a wealthy society. To move beyond the stereotypical images of black children obsessed with status symbols, Chin spent two years interviewing poor children in New Haven, Connecticut, about where and how they spend their money. An alternate image of the children emerges, one that puts practicality ahead of status in their purchasing decisions. On a twenty-dollar shopping spree with Chin, one boy has to choose between a walkie-talkie set and an X-Men figure. In one of the most painful moments of her research, Chin watches as Davy struggles with his decision. He finally takes the walkie-talkie set, a toy that might be shared with his younger brother. Through personal anecdotes and compelling stories ranging from topics such as Christmas and birthday gifts, shopping malls, Toys-R-Us, neighborhood convenience shops, school lunches, ethnically correct toys, and school supplies, Chin critically examines consumption as a medium through which social inequalities -- most notably of race, class, and gender -- are formed, experienced, imposed, and resisted. Along the way she acknowledges the profound constraints under which the poor and working class must struggle in their daily lives.

Playing with History

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 197882209X
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing with History by : Molly Rosner

Download or read book Playing with History written by Molly Rosner and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the advent of the American toy industry, children’s cultural products have attempted to teach and sell ideas of American identity. By examining cultural products geared towards teaching children American history, Playing With History highlights the changes and constancies in depictions of the American story and ideals of citizenship over the last one hundred years. This book examines political and ideological messages sold to children throughout the twentieth century, tracing the messages conveyed by racist toy banks, early governmental interventions meant to protect the toy industry, influences and pressures surrounding Cold War stories of the western frontier, the fractures visible in the American story at a mid-century history themed amusement park. The study culminates in a look at the successes and limitations of the American Girl Company empire.

Children, Consumerism, and the Common Good

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780739129470
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (294 download)

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Book Synopsis Children, Consumerism, and the Common Good by : Mary M. Doyle Roche

Download or read book Children, Consumerism, and the Common Good written by Mary M. Doyle Roche and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children, Consumerism, and the Common Good explores the impact of consumer culture on the lives of children in the United States and globally, focusing on two phenomena: advertising to children and child labor. Christian communities have a critical role to play in securing the well-being of children and challenging the cultural trends that undermine that well-being. Exploring themes in the tradition of Catholic social teaching, Mary M. Doyle Roche argues that children have a claim on the fruits of our common life and should participate in that life according to their age and ability. Roche utilizes the principle of the common good to analyze children's participation in the market and suggests opportunities for resistance and transformation in the context of the consumerism that pervades everyday life. Book jacket.

The Material Child

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745637442
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis The Material Child by : David Buckingham

Download or read book The Material Child written by David Buckingham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children today are growing up in an increasingly commercialised world. But should we see them as victims of manipulative marketing, or as competent participants in consumer culture? The Material Child provides a comprehensive critical overview of debates about children’s changing engagement with the commercial market. It moves from broad overviews of the theory and history of children’s consumption to insightful case studies of key areas such as obesity, sexualisation, children’s broadcasting and education. In the process, it challenges much of the received wisdom about the effects of advertising and marketing, arguing for a more balanced account that locates children’s consumption within a broader analysis of social relationships, for example within the family and the peer group. While refuting the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is adopted by many campaigners, it also rejects the easy celebration of consumption as an expression of children’s power and autonomy. Written by one of the leading international scholars in the field, The Material Child will be of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers, as well as parents, teachers and others who work directly with children.

Consumer Society in American History

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Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801484865
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Consumer Society in American History by : Lawrence B. Glickman

Download or read book Consumer Society in American History written by Lawrence B. Glickman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the most comprehensive and incisive exploration of American consumer history to date, spanning the four centuries from the colonial era to the present.

The Moral Project of Childhood

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Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479810266
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis The Moral Project of Childhood by : Daniel Thomas Cook

Download or read book The Moral Project of Childhood written by Daniel Thomas Cook and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the Protestant origins of motherhood and the child consumer Throughout history, the responsibility for children’s moral well-being has fallen into the laps of mothers. In The Moral Project of Childhood, the noted childhood studies scholar Daniel Thomas Cook illustrates how mothers in the nineteenth-century United States meticulously managed their children’s needs and wants, pleasures and pains, through the material world so as to produce the “child” as a moral project. Drawing on a century of religiously-oriented child care advice in women’s periodicals, he examines how children ultimately came to be understood by mothers—and later, by commercial actors—as consumers. From concerns about taste, to forms of discipline and punishment, to play and toys, Cook delves into the social politics of motherhood, historical anxieties about childhood, and early children’s consumer culture. An engaging read, The Moral Project of Childhood provides a rich cultural history of childhood.

Buy, Buy Baby

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780547237954
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (379 download)

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Book Synopsis Buy, Buy Baby by : Susan Gregory Thomas

Download or read book Buy, Buy Baby written by Susan Gregory Thomas and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Playing with History

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing with History by : Molly Rosner

Download or read book Playing with History written by Molly Rosner and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis deals with the changing notions of American identity as conveyed and fashioned through children's consumer products throughout the 20th century. Each case study looks at a different period of time though a sampling of material culture, literature, and entertainment spaces. The thesis begins with the advent of the American toy industry in the early twentieth century and looks at the early implications of linking children's toys with patriotism and whiteness. Chapter two examines the Great Depression and the ways different groups used children's dolls and toys to elaborate a vision of the country they longed for during an unstable time. Chapter three looks at the consensus history of America as told through two children's history books series (Random House's Landmark Books and Bobbs-Merrill's Childhood of Famous Americans) published during the Cold War. Chapter four looks at Freedomland U.S.A., an American history themed amusement park that sprang up and then was quickly torn down in the Bronx in the 1960s. The thesis concludes with a chapter that looks at the production of a multicultural, global, but ultimately homogenous American girl through the many facets of the American Girl Brand from the 1980s to the present. Through these objects, books, toys, dolls, and amusement parks, this thesis traces the myths and lessons sold to children in their leisure items, making it clear that childhood is political. This set of cases, each concerned with American history, it becomes clear over the course of the last century, consumerism has become a primary way children learn to access American democracy and engage in political action.

The Marketing of Children’s Toys

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030628817
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis The Marketing of Children’s Toys by : Rebecca C. Hains

Download or read book The Marketing of Children’s Toys written by Rebecca C. Hains and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers rich critical perspectives on the marketing of a variety of toys, brands, and product categories. Topics include marketing undertaken by specific children’s toy brands such as American Girl, Barbie, Disney, GoldieBlox, Fisher-Price, and LEGO, and marketing trends characterizing broader toy categories such as on-trend grotesque toys; toy firearms; minimalist toys; toyetics; toys meant to offer diverse representation; STEM toys; and unboxing videos. Toy marketing warrants a sustained scholarly critique because of toys’ cultural significance and their roles in children’s lives, as well as the industry’s economic importance. Discourses surrounding toys—including who certain toys are meant for and what various toys and brands can signify about their owners’ identities—have implications for our understandings of adults’ expectations of children and of broader societal norms into which children are being socialized.

Sold Separately

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813521985
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (219 download)

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Book Synopsis Sold Separately by : Ellen Seiter

Download or read book Sold Separately written by Ellen Seiter and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A radical approach to children's TV. . . . Seiter argues cogently that watching Saturday cartoons isn't a passive activity but a tool by which even the very young decode and learn about their culture, and develop creative imagination as well. Bolstered by social, political, developmental, and media research, Seiter ties middle-class aversion to children's TV and mass-market toys to an association with the 'uncontrollable consumerism'--and hence supposed moral failure--of working class members, women, and 'increasingly, children.' . . . Positive guidance for parents uncertain of the role of TV and TV toys in their children's lives."--Kirkus Reviews "Sold Separately is about television and toys, and the various roles that they play in the lives of children and parents. In particular, Seiter examines toy advertising, both in print media and on television; TV commercials; toy-based video for girls, with an in-depth look at "My Little Pony"; action TV for boys, using "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters" as her case study; and the stores where toys are sold, both Toys "R" Us and the more upscale shops . . . contains many provocative observations."--Women's Review of Books "Ellen Seiter has a holiday message for yuppie parents who feel guilty shopping at Toys "R" Us. The mass-produced toys that dominate the chain's shelves need not be the enemy of every right-thinking parent. "Ghostbuster" figurines and "My Little Pony" can share the toy chest with those sensible wooden blocks."--Chronicle of Higher Education "Emphasizing problems of socioeconomic class, gender, and race stereotyping, this study acknowledges the usual parental complaints about toys like Barbie and G.I. Joe, but insists that they do play an important role in children's culture, especially for working class families. A thought-provoking analysis."--Wilson Library Journal "In this thought provoking study, Seiter reasonably urges parents and others to put aside their own tastes and to understand that children's consumer culture promotes solidarity and sociability among youngsters."--Publishers Weekly "An important book for those desiring an overview of the toy industry's impact on consumer culture . . . it] presents a fair and well-balanced view of the industry."--Kathleen M. Carson, associate editor, Playthings "A refreshing, thoughtful, and insightful investigation of an enormously important subject--consumer culture for kids. . . . I can't recommend it highly enough."--Janice Radway, Duke University, author of Reading the Romance

Playing with History

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781978822078
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing with History by : Molly Rosner

Download or read book Playing with History written by Molly Rosner and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining cultural products geared towards teaching children American cultural identity, Playing With History highlights the changes and constancies in depictions of American identity since the advent of modern consumer society. The book examines political and ideological messages sold to children throughout the twentieth century through toys, dolls, books, and amusement parks.

The Commodification of Childhood

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822332688
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (326 download)

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Book Synopsis The Commodification of Childhood by : Daniel Thomas Cook

Download or read book The Commodification of Childhood written by Daniel Thomas Cook and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-20 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVThrough a study of industry publications over much of the century, shows how the U.S. children’s clothing industry produced increasingly refined categories of childhood./div

Longing and Belonging

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520258436
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Longing and Belonging by : Allison J. Pugh

Download or read book Longing and Belonging written by Allison J. Pugh and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-02-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Even 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."--pub. desc.