Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds

by Thomas, Susan Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780547237954
• ISBN10: 0547237952
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-12
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Our kids are becoming consumers at an alarmingly young age. Many children are already asking for products by brand name at age two. Toy and media corporations have long manipulated the insecurities of parents to move their products, butBuy, Buy Babyunveils the chilling fact that these companies are now using and often funding the latest research in child development to enable them to sell directly to babies and toddlers. Susan Gregory Thomas presents shocking evidence that some of these products actually impair development and could harm our kids socially and cognitively, for life.The good news is that parents can overcome this dangerous economic and cultural shift. Blending prodigious reportage with an empathic voice, Thomas shows how we can help our children live at their natural pace, not the frenetic clip that serves only the toddler-industrial complex.Buy, Buy Babyhelps us fight the power that marketers wield by exposing the false fears they spread.

Author Biography

SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS is an investigative journalist and broadcaster. Formerly a senior editor at US News & World Report and co-host of public TV’s Digital Duo, she has written for several publications, including Time, the Washington Post, and Glamour. She lives in Brooklyn with her two daughters, who are seven and five years old.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Learn Something New Every Day	p. 23
"There's a New Mom in Town"	p. 52
"It's Like Preschool on TV"	p. 71
A Vast and Uncontrolled Experiment	p. 94
Elmo's World	p. 109
The Princess Lifestyle	p. 136
Anything to Get Them to Read	p. 160
Developing Character in Preschool	p. 181
Conclusion: A Defense of "Nothing"	p. 207
Notes	p. 233
Bibliography	p. 253
Acknowledgments	p. 263
Index	p. 265
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