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| Buy Buy Baby
Susan Gregory Thomas
May 2007; ISBN: 0618463518
SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS is an investigative journalist and broadcaster. Formerly a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and co-host of public television’s Digital Duo, she has also written for Time, the Washington Post, Glamour, and elsewhere. She has two children, five and three years old.
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.Underlying these revelations is a dangerous economic and cultural shift: our kids are becoming consumers at alarmingly young ages and suffering all the ills that rampant materialism used to visit only on adults—from anxiety to hyper-competitiveness to depression. Thomas blends prodigious reportage with an empathetic voice. Her two daughters were toddlers while she wrote this book, and she never loses sight of the temporal and emotional challenges that parents face. She shows how we can help our kids live at their natural pace, not the frenetic clip that serves only the toddler-industrial complex. Buy, Buy Baby helps us fight the power marketers wield by exposing the false fears they spread.
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