Sunday, July 1, 2007

Two books for parents to read---

Be afraid...be very afraid...Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Mindsby Susan Gregory Thomas describes how marketers are targeting young children.
"It’s no secret that toy and media corporations manipulate the insecurities of parents to move their products, but Buy, Buy Baby unveils the chilling fact that these corporations are using— and often funding—the latest research in child development in order to sell things directly to babies and toddlers. Thomas offers other, perhaps even more unnerving epiphanies: the lack of evidence that “educational” shows and toys provide any educational benefit at all for young children; and the growing evidence that some of these products actually impair early development, and could harm our kids socially and cognitively for life."

I've written before about Baby Einstein, a typical one of these products that play into parents' insecurities and hopes for their children, and make them feel that if they buy expensive products they are doing something better for their children...
Think about it. Simply pushing your child's stroller through a shopping mall, or even just down a sidewalk beside a busy street, provides a myriad of sights, sounds, movement and color. And a parent holding a child, looking at him and talking, singing, or reading, is more beneficial to the child than a truckload of videos and gadgets.

My other current favorite book, the one I recommend to everyone, is The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Mealsby Michael Pollan. In it, he discusses factory farmed meats and vegetables and the omnipresence of corn and corn syrup in our diets...and makes a plea for humanely grown meat and locally grown produce. If you read this, you will never think about food in the same way again, and will not feed yourself or your children in the same way. This book was on both the New York Times and the Washington Post's top 10 books for 2006, and is changing the way people think about their food everywhere.
You owe it to yourself and your children to read it.