Selling baby
My family and I spent this weekend at my cousin’s wedding (congrats Joe and Holly!) which provided me some valuable time with my older brother. He lives 400 miles away, which makes time together hard to come by, but always enjoyable.
My brother is a stay at home with two kids, aged 2 and 4, and is a major role model for what I consider to be a great father and successful stay at home dad. I’ll be posting more about him in the future, but I wanted to relay a point that he made about all the baby and kid related paraphernalia available today. I mentioned that we have added numerous items to our baby registry and he made an interesting observation:
“Most of the things for sale out there are for the parent, not for the kid… Kids will play with just about anything. They could entertain themselves with a paper cup, they don’t need an expensive toy to have fun.”
- my bro
His point that the whole baby “experience” often portrayed in media is simply marketing targeted at selling more goods to people during an emotionally charged time. Parents, especially new parents, want to provide as much as possible for their children and so are often more susceptible to companies ’selling baby.’
A former co-worker also related to me that his daughter would often play with the boxes that toys came in rather than with the toy itself. Strollerderby has some similar commentary in an aptly named post, Half the Baby Stuff You Get is Useless Crap. Thousands of years ago children survived fine without baby wipe warmers. I think that in today’s busy and often materialistic world, parents are often wrongly made to feel that the price or quantity of what you buy for a child represents how much they love them or their quality as a parent.
Tags: baby_registry, baby_stuff, baby_wipe, kid_kids, materialistic_world, role_model, stay_at_home, stay_at_home_dadRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Advice, Dad Products, Family Vacations, General, Kids Products/Toys, Men, Stay at Home Dads
7 opinions for Selling baby
People in the Sun
Sep 2, 2007 at 10:27 pm
That’s right (I think). I mean, I don’t know anything about wipe warmers or what I’m supposed to do with them (I know I’ll buy what the books tell me to buy), but give me a baby and a leaf and I’ll create the best game in the world.
brent
Sep 3, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I nailed two skinny bits of wood onto a big chunk of wood, and drew a window on the side… I swear that my son plays with this helicopter just as much as he would a ‘bona-fide’ store bought $85 fully functioning battle machine.
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I think that the ratio is about right: 50:50. Every six months, go through and chuck out about half of the kids toys. You’ll still be drowning in useless crap, but at least you’ll feel that you’re on top of it.
Baby Needs
Sep 3, 2007 at 9:18 pm
[…] brother had said that many of the baby products out there are aimed at parents instead of children. Over at Babylune, they seem to agree that the true necessities for raising […]
Mattel and Toy Recalls
Sep 5, 2007 at 9:49 pm
[…] kids should go back to playing with a paper cup. Mattel, toy recallsShare […]
Joe
Sep 6, 2007 at 12:14 am
Great points. We joked one year with Boy 7’s grandparents that we were going to get him Box o’ Rocks at ToysRUs one year for Christmas. Funny thing is, we really did give him a bag of shiny rocks, and it was his favorite that year.
Inside Fatherhood
Sep 28, 2007 at 7:36 am
[…] these things tested BEFORE they get into children’s hands?! Maybe it really is time to start playing with cardboard boxes. lead in toys, lead paint, lead poisoning, toy recalls, toysShare […]
Graco thinks dads are stupid
Oct 24, 2007 at 9:51 am
[…] for the kids. However, the parents are the ones who spend the money, so companies continue to sell the image of babies and parenting rather than focusing completely on product attributes. graco pack n play, graco stroller travel […]
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