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Original post by Jennifer Lance of Eco Child’s Play. Where it’s easy to go green and raise families non-toxic.

$17 billion a year is spent by the advertising and marketing industry to shape our children’s desires and identities.

Now that the economic recession gripping the world is causing free market ideals to be questioned, it’s time to examine its effects on our children.  Henry A. Giroux writes:

While the “empire of consumption” has been around for a long time, American society in the last thirty years has undergone a sea change in the daily lives of children – one marked by a major transition from a culture of innocence and social protection, however imperfect, to a culture of commodification. This is culture that does more than undermine the ideals of a secure and happy childhood; it also exhibits the bad faith of a society in which, for children, “there can be only one kind of value, market value; one kind of success, profit; one kind of existence, commodities; and one kind of social relationship, markets.”(2) Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market.

Is it true that our culture only values our children based on the products they sell them?  As a parent, such a thought is sickening to me but not far from the truth when our country’s success/failure is measured by Gross National Product (GNP).
The greed of corporations leaves our children victims of western culture. Take for example Disney’s efforts to use casino capitalism to strategize products for boys between the ages of six and fourteen, because this age group spends $50 billion worldwide. Once again, Henry A. Giroux writes:

As part of such efforts, Disney has enlisted the help of educators, anthropologists and a former researcher with “a background in the casino industry” to not only study all aspects of the culture and intimate lives of young boys, but to do so in a way that allows Disney to produce “emotional hooks” that lure young boys into the wonderful world of corporate Disney in order to turn them into enthusiastic consumers.

Read more of this great article at Eco Child’s Play…