107: The impact of consumerism on children

A few weeks ago we talked with Dr. Brad Klontz about the ‘money scripts’ that we pass on to our children – perhaps unintentionally – if we fail to examine these and make conscious decisions about the messages we want to convey about money to our children.

Today we continue our series on the intersection of parenting and money with a conversation with Dr. Allison Pugh, whose doctoral dissertation (and subsequent book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture) remain seminal works in this field even a decade after their publication.

In this interview, we take the position that advertising to children is happening – so what do we do with that?  How do children make meaning out of the messages sent to them through our consumerist culture?  How do parents attempt to resist the effects of this culture, and how successful are they?

In our next episode in this series we’ll dig more deeply into the effects of advertising itself on children’s brains, so stay tuned for that!

 

Book mentioned in the episode

Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture (Affiliate link).

 

Other episodes on this series

This episode is the second in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series:

038: The Opposite of Spoiled

105: How to pass on mental wealth to your child

112: How to Set up a Play Room

115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children

118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?

 

About the author, Jen

Jen Lumanlan (M.S., M.Ed.) hosts the Your Parenting Mojo podcast (www.YourParentingMojo.com), which examines scientific research related to child development through the lens of respectful parenting.

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