parenthood, childhood, and families in consumer culture

Parenthood, Childhood, and Families in Consumer Culture

REL 354 - 14 July 2003

Focus Question #1

• W & G are presenting what tends to be the case and what is statistically probable. They are not providing absolute or exhaustive definitions of what always happens. Therefore, while many people do not fit the patterns W & G describe, the percentages seem to make sense when considering the entire country.

Focus Question #2

• Present three of the most persuasive pieces of evidence adduced in support of Waite and Gallagher’s inflammatory claim in the title of this chapter.

Marriage Means More Money

• Divorce usually causes a child’s standard of living to drop.

• Having on parent generally means having less money, doubly so when that one parent is a woman.

• Single mothers are more than 4x more likely and single fathers more than 2x as likely to be in the bottom 20% of income distribution than are married parents.

• Almost 1/2 of black children living with one parent are poor, compared to < 1/5 in two-parent families.

Time Enough for Love

• Two-parent families allow twice as many adult hours to give to their kids—more parental supervision, more time for homework, etc.

• More than in single-parent families or stepfamilies, children in two-parent families get help with homework from their father.

• Children in two-parent households generally have more time with their mother than in single-parent households.

Stronger Family BondsLess Social CapitalMore Sickness and Less HealthBetter Mental and Emotional Health Less EducationMore Crime and DelinquencyMore Child AbuseThe Married AdvantageUnto the Fourth Generation?The Divorce Itself

Being married has a positive effect on one’s child(ren)’s

health and survival.

White babies born to unmarried moms are 70% more likely to die in

the first year of life, while black infants born out of wedlock are

40% more likely to die before their first birthday. Even for college-educated white mothers, being unmarried increases the risks a

baby will die by 50%.

58% of white married parents rate their children's health as “excellent,” compared to just 46% of white single mothers.

Black children receive a similar, though not quite as large, health

boost from marriage: 38% of black married mothers say their child's health is "excellent," compared to

<31% of black single mothers.

Being married makes it less likely that one’s child(ren) will

cohabit.

Research has shown that a parental divorce more than doubled the likelihood of a son’s cohabitation before

marriage, and nearly doubled the chance that he would be a

father before marriage.

Being married makes it less likely that one’s child(ren) will be

sexually active before age 15.

Only 11% of teens age 12-14 who are living with both of their parents have ever had sex, compared to 21% of those living with a mother

and stepfather, 23% of those living with a single mother, 27% of those living with a single father, and 28% living with a father and stepmother.

Being married makes a positive difference in one’s

child(ren)’s education.

• 25% of children in mother-only and remarried families repeat a grade in school, compared to 14% of those in married families.

• 23% of kids in mother-only families and 18% of children in stepfamilies have been suspended or expelled, compared to less than 10% in mother-father families.

52% of children in mother-only and 48% in remarried

families are in the bottom half of their class, compared

to 38% of children whose parents are still married.

Living in a single-parent family approximately doubles the risk that a child will become a high-school dropout: 29% of children in one-parent homes dropped

out of high school, compared to 13% in two-parent families.

60% of children in intact families enroll in college, compared to 50% of children in one-parent

or stepparent families. Children with two married parents are about one-third more likely to earn a college degree than children from one-parent or

step-parent homes.

Kristin J. Anderson and Donna Cavallaro, “Parents or Pop Culture? Children's Heroes and Role Models,”

Childhood Education 78.3 (2002): 161-168

According to the cited studies, on what grounds do children select their heroes and role models?

Gender and ethnicity play a role. Personal characteristics include

being “nice, helpful, and understanding,” “being there,”

teaching lessons. Second was skill, e.g., atheletic skill, sense of

humor, battle prowess

Some Notable African/American Comic Book Characters

• Black Panther

• Robbie Robertson

More heroes

• Blade• Captain Marvel

(formerly leader of the Avengers)

More heroes

• War Machine• Powerman/Cage

Bishop, Cloak, Falcon

Storm, leader of the X-Men

Green Lantern, Steel, Cyborg, Black Lightning

More on Black Superheroes

http://www.blacksuperhero.com/exhibits.html

Some Native American characters

• Mirage

• Forge

• Thunderbird

• Warpath

• American Eagle

• Shaman

• Talisman

Some Women Superheroes

• Phoenix (nearly omnipotent)• the Wasp (formerly leader of the Avengers)• Mockingbird (formerly leader of the West Coast

Avengers)• Captain Marvel (former leader of the Avengers)• Callisto (acting leader of the Morlocks)• Mystique (formerly leader of the Brotherhood of

Evil Mutants, later Freedom Force)

Cristina Odone, “Childhood Has Gone Completely out of Fashion,” New

Statesman 20 Nov. 2000: 26

• Describe how childhood is “out of fashion.”

• Odone describes the escalating trend of younger and younger children abandoning what were once age-appropriate interests in favor of more adult, expensive pursuits. It is to the advantage of business that seven-year-old boys are more interested in playing with a Game Cube than with a set of Legos. Children are maturing as consumers ever more quickly.

Juliet Schor, “Keeping Up with the Trumps”

• Why is the article not entitled, “Keeping Up with the Joneses”? Your answer should include an explanation of the concept “reference group.”

• There are two ways that one may understand Schor’s title. First, the old adage about keeping up with the Joneses referred to the need to stay at the same level as one’s neighbor, presumed to be one’s socioeconomic equal. However, Schor’s research demonstrates that one’s reference group—those against whom we judge our own material lifestyles—includes a range of people, not all of whom are likely to be equal with us in income level. Within one’s reference group, the drive is not be on par materially with those closest in financial status, the “Joneses.” Rather, the data shows that people struggle to be at the top of their reference group, the “Trumps.” Since everyone is in this competition to be ahead of their peers, the standards keep rising.

• The second way one might understand Schor’s title involves the role of TV. Those portrayed on television are typically not average Americans in terms of income: they are upper-middle class or even rich. However—whether we readily admit to it or not—we tend to view the average person on TV as being average in the real United States as well. Consequently, we include TV characters in our reference group, thereby elevating our consumption standards—realized or merely desired—beyond even most of the “real people” of our non-television reference group.

In light of Schor, The Overspent American, and the Greto article,

describe how American parenthood is ineluctably constituted—or at

least contextualized—by consumerism.

Schor and Greto

• A good answer would include something about how “doing what’s best” for one’s children tends to mean rampant consumption. Standards of gifts and everyday accoutrements for children are growing in cost and quantity. TV and advertizing are at least as influential as most parents on young children.

Children’s Birthday Parties

• Begun by wealthy Protestants in the nineteenth century [late 1830s]. Earliest form: large, formal, parent directed

• Sources: English ball and party and German kinderfeste, the latter involving secret wish-making before blowing out the candles

Children’s Birthday Parties 2

• Regarding children’s birthday parties hosted outside the home, “In the end, consumer culture no longer reinforced domesticity, but supplanted it.” (Pleck 143)

• 1980s, Chuck-E-Cheese, Discovery Zone

• 1950s, museums, bowling alley, skating rink, indoor swimming pool, McDonald’s


• 1960s-1980s, mothers working outside the home, fewer children, rising incomes permitted more expensive parties

• new sites: gymnastics centers, indoor playgrounds

• during Depression, rare for anything more than a special cake after the family dinner

• standard b-day cakes, ca. 1850 (whisks, eggbeater, powder mill to grind sugar, cookstoves); before about five hours!


• Before Victorian Era, Catholics didn’t have b-days, as they were associated with Greek and Roman orgies

• in the 19th c., the poor and working classes didn’t have children’s b-day parties; they didn’t have the material requirements, e.g., dining room tables


• Enlightment idea: childhood as distinct time for play; age as important (previously size was more important than chronology); Industrial Revolution also emphasized time

• the middle and upper classes saw these parties as opportunities to inculcate etiquette—the hallmark of the well-to-do


• 1870s, elementary schools age segregated—reflecting and reinforcing importance of age

• Parent-determined invitation-only parties helped to define children’s peer groups


• More for girls than boys, who couldn’t play their regular games like Rap Jacket—boys hit each other with whips or poles until someone gave up

• Reinforced view that etiquette was unmasculine: parties, etiquette, and the home were for girls


• 1870-1920: peer-culture b-day parties: smaller, less formal; as consumers, children involved in selecting goods and games

• 1875, “Happy Birthday to You”

• Moonbounce rental for birthday party, $85

In a 2000 report on trends in college students’ credit card debt and bankruptcy, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren found

• bankruptcy filings by those 25 and younger rose 51% during the 1990s—from 60,180 in 1991, the number leapt to 118,000 by 1999

• however, the 25-and-under set accounts for only 7% of the nation's bankruptcy filings

In a 2000 report on trends in college students’ credit card debt and bankruptcy, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren found

• in its latest annual study of student borrowers, college-loan giant Nellie Mae found that the percentage of college students with four or more cards hit 32% in 2000

• since 1998, the average student's debt from plastic jumped 46%, to $2,748, while nearly 1 in 10 owed more than $7,000

The facts and figures from The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt (Yale UP, 2000) have implications for

the assumptions of many Americans—esp. the well educated—about private consumption and happiness:

• Bankruptcy filers are more likely than the population at large to have been to college and to be white-collar workers

The facts and figures from The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt (Yale UP, 2000) have implications for the assumptions of many Americans—esp. the

well educated—about private consumption and happiness:

• From the 1980s through the mid-1990s American household debt climbed from 65% to 81% of total income on average

• $8,000 per household in credit-card debt

More Work, More Consumption

• In her provocative book The Overworked American, Juliet Schor, a Harvard economics professor, asks

• why Americans have less leisure time today than at any time since the end of WWII

• why in the last twenty years employed Americans have seen their working hours increase by the equivalent of one month

Freedom Fries, anyone?

• why American manufacturing employees work 320 hours longer annually than their counterparts in Germany and France

• Hewlett Packard in France and BMW in Germany have reduced the workweek to 31 hours with no pay cuts.

Teenagers and the Rest of Us

• why there has been a steady increase in the number of minor teenagers with jobs and a steady increase in the number of hours they work

• why Americans opt to work overtime and to sacrifice vacation time in exchange for more money

parenthood, childhood, and families in consumer culture

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