Purchasing Misery for Children

Quelle surprise - children with huge amounts of stuff but who enjoy little real communication with their parents are unhappy, and British children suffer the worse, ranking bottom of the UN's table of well being. Parents spend the least amount of their time their children in this country, are more stressed personally, rarely communicate about things that matter (rather than giving commands) and are more inclined to spend time with their children in purchasing things for their bedrooms. It is depressing and predictable.

The parents are, in a sense to blame, but to take the chain of responsibility back only so far is to do parents a disservice and to ignore the effects of our social environment. In a free market economy the only standard of success and self worth is possession and so, inevitably, parents find that their only role is to be the procurer of products for their children. Just as children are told in adverts that goods will make them happy so parents are instructed that, if good parenting is making their offspring happy, so their job must be to pay for stuff. Meanwhile the pressure to produce ever bigger profits by working ever longer hours and reducing themselves to automotrons in the service of businesses means that the ability of parents to do anything other than work and shop is reduced anyway.

Of course the equation doesn't work - you can't buy your way to a happier future nor can you purchase it for your children. This is nothing new but what is remarkable is how we have failed to act on it. In this way is capitalism so impressively tenacious. Even with the knowledge that economic success is often a poisoned chalice it is still impossible to avoid it - partly because of the structure of work and the demands of earning money, but much more importantly because capitalism instills its values in those who participate in it, which is almost all of us. You might know, intellectually, that your child would rather you spent more time together, but the desire to consume, and need to finance this consumption, is so overwhelming that even free time becomes subsumed into the need to earn more and work harder.