To Cave, Or Not To Cave

   When their kids develop a princess obsession, many parents succumb and trek to the Disney store to outfit their daughters in the complete Princess line.  When investigative reporter Susan Gregory Thomas' 3-year-old daughter got caught up in preschool princess politics, Thomas "embarked on a curriculum" of Cinderella legends around the world, and got the idea for her book, Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents And Harms Young Minds (Houghton Mifflin, $25).

   Thomas describes the game as one focused on the wearing of the particular powder blue of Cinderella's dress, as rendered in the Disney movie.  Thomas had thought fairy tales too frightening to introduce before age 5, adding that she was "astonished that this kind of materialism was playing a role at such an incredibly tender age."  What she uncovered was a concerted effort by marketers to sell directly to infants and toddlers.

   She lives in Park Slope, which wears its anti-materialism on its organic cotton sleeve, even as brownstones top the $3 million mark and chain stores creep in.  But Thomas confesses,  "I don't hold myself up as a paragon and stand on a lofty aerie.  I love clothes, I like to shop." And she isn't espousing an aestheticism that her daughters Zuzu, now 6, and Frankie, almost 4, might not embrace. But she does question why they are interested in a certain licensed product.

   In the book, Thomas examines the toy and media marketing shift from parents to babies, and a 'cradle to grave' marketing mentality that infects every level of American society — from characters on diapers to advertising on television.  She also delves into the rise of companies like Little Einstein and Leapfrog, and Scholastic's shift from an educational publisher to one "pushing the merch".  Thomas says marketers studied Gen-X parents like herself who claim not to want to push their kids, but then buy any toys labeled educational.

   Buy, Buy Baby looks at television and educational videos and Thomas writes that, "very young children learn from concrete, simple repetition; Baby Einstein offers bright, shiny chaos."  And she believes marketing of licensed characters is so successful through TV and videos because "the only verifiable learning that very young children get from repeated television viewing is recognition of characters or puppets that have become familiar."

   Along the way, Thomas actually taught a popular afterschool class at her older daughter's elementary school.  "Ad Busters" encouraged kids to look closely at the products marketed to them, and to consider whether macaroni and cheese with a character on the box is better than mac 'n cheese without the product tie-in.  Though this sounds weighty for 5-year-olds, Thomas insists that the kids got into it, with a field trip to a local supermarket to closely examine products.  The book forced Thomas to re-examine her own "presumptions and prejudices", particularly in what she calls "the deeply American idea that every single moment has to be productive somehow."  She concludes the book with a defense of 'nothing', a new-for-her parenting practice of "appreciating the wonders of just hanging out."