Backbone > Life in the Balance
Sustainability Begins at Home
By Susan Piperato

A New Year’s Resolution for Parents
There is a line from a story in Australia fiction writer Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers that pops into my head from time to time. It’s spoken by a child to her aunt and goes like this: “Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could just make things all day long?” I first came across that line just before having my own children, and because of it I dreamed of endless cold and rainy afternoons spent indoors with them, happily doing craft projects at the kitchen table, creating a communal reverie. Last month, in the middle of the mad dash toward the holidays, that line came into mind again as I was sitting with several friends and our collective children one afternoon making decorations—an annual tradition for the past five years. But this year it was different. This was the first Christmas for most of us in which we had to approach the holidays during a steadily, scarily down-turning economy—and a war looming. In previous years when we’d gather, we’d inevitably complain about the horrors of shopping at the mall, and the meaninglessness of it all, but we’d still go there to stand on long lines and rack up our credit card balances. But this time around, the mall didn’t come up. Instead, we talked about life being too short not to slow down and appreciate its every twist and turn, and how this year we were making not only decorations but presents. Some people were doing so because the world seems too uncertain and they feel the need to hunker down and embrace frugality; others because their present financial situations leave them no other choice. As I sat working the hot glue gun and watching the kids add so many crayon colors to the candle-making wax that it eventually looked like mud, I realized that, for a child, the idea of making things all day long is less about the desire to experience the joy of creating new things from other things than it is about the need for spiritual and communal sustenance. I also realized that what my friends and I have been doing for years is sustainable parenting. Our talk turned to whether we were teaching our kids to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk on sustainability—and how easy it is these days to fall short of the mark, even when we’ve made it ourselves.

Like many other Americans, I’m worried about the economy, and strapped for cash. This is the first time in years that a majority of Americans—64 percent, according to a poll of 750 people conducted last November by Widmeyer Research and Polling—have celebrated the holidays feeling extremely concerned about the economy and their own family’s employment situation (53 percent of those surveyed). Yet it’s also the first time in recent memory that, also according to the Widmeyer Poll, less than three in 10 (28 percent) of those surveyed felt that it’s necessary to spend a lot of money to have a meaningful holiday. In fact, 58 percent were planning to spend less on gifts last month, 54 percent said that spending less would enable them to derive more meaning from the holidays, and a whopping four out of five (77 percent) of those polled reported that they would be working actively to simplify their holiday season. In light of this heartening news, and this month being January (our culture’s traditional period of introspection and resolution-making), perhaps it’s time to review and revise our own families’ consumerist attitudes, practices, and patterns.

What is sustainable parenting?
According to The Center for the New American Dream, sustainable parenting means bringing up children to be balanced psychologically and spiritually, to care about humanity and the earth, to value principles and character over material gain, to speak the truth and seek justice, to have a healthy attitude toward spending and purchasing, to have a well-developed imagination, to be well-rounded, to always try to do their best but not to compete for competition’s sake, and to be as free as possible of consumerist and media exploitation. In a nutshell, you want your kid to become a steward of humanity as well as the environment.

How to raise sustainable kids
Create traditions and keep them. Traditions teach values—they are your own principles, hopes, and dreams ritualized—whether they involve a prayer before dinner, picnicking at a certain spot every summer, potato-printing Christmas cards, or setting out birdseed in winter. It’s always the things we always did as kids that matter most and are remembered best.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Although environmentalism is being taught increasingly within school systems, whatever is included in the curriculum will fly out the window if Mom and Dad throw bottles and cans into the garbage or turn around and buy brand new items every time an appliance or piece of furniture becomes a bit worn.

Create your own community. Most kids enter their first community outside the home when they start school, but it’s important to put together your own group of people you love, care about, and can rely on. Many groups of families bond together through shared activities and places—team sports, neighborhoods, religious congregations, or political or social groups. Belonging to a community of friends or colleagues shows kids that people can stick together and count on each other—and it makes people more responsible for each other and their place in the world. Since we live in a world where people move frequently, usually for career reasons, learning to create your own community is more important than ever.

Watch what your kids watch. Enough said—make it routine to check out your child’s viewing of tv shows as well as music videos and commercials; review movies before granting permission for viewing, and stay on top of what your kids do online.

Avoid excessive tv watching and computer games. A 1999 study of children’s use of media conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids aged two to 18 spend an average of 5.29 hours a day using media. Of the 3,000 children included in the study, 49 percent of parents had no rules about tv, which takes up three hours a day. The study concluded that media usage has become the equivalent of a full-time job for kids.

Don’t be afraid to say no, and stick to it when you do. Sometimes, no matter how many times I say the N word, my kids will continue asking me over and over for something. Why? Well, because of our consumer culture. According to a poll released by the Center for the New American Dream, the average American child aged 12 to 17 asks his or her parents an average of nine times (but up to 50!) for products they’ve seen advertised until a parent finally caves. This “nag factor,” as the Center’s president Betsy Taylor puts it, is reflected in the amount of consumer spending influenced by children in 1997—a whopping $188 billion—as compared to $5 billion of adult purchases being influenced by children in the 1960s.

Fight kids’ exposure to advertising. Channel One currently provides more than 12,000 schools in the us—populated by more than eight million children—with satellite dishes, tv monitors, and videocassette recorders in exchange for the right to broadcast a children’s version of the news into classrooms. However, the news being proffered is funded by advertisers and fed to kids as a captive market. Meanwhile, marketing companies are focusing increasingly on adolescents and teens as lucrative groups. Talk to your kids about the ads they see, and don’t hesitate to be critical of the ads’ claims, or of insulting statements or styles.

Resources for sustainable parenting
The Center for the New American Dream (www.newdream.org), founded in 1995 by the Merck Family Fund, is a nonprofit organization committed to promoting healthy consumer practices that protect the environment, enhance quality of life, and promote social justice. The organization, based in Takoma Park, Maryland, is best known for its Kids and Commercialism Campaign. Available to parents is a downloadable booklet containing statistics about the harmful effects of excessive commercialism on kids and families, as well as positive tips and activities to counterbalance those effects. Good Times Made Simple: The Lost Art of Fun is another book (available from the Center’s bookstore) that’s meant to provide a healthy antidote to video games and TV. The Center’s youth outreach initiative—a collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund—aims to heighten awareness and inspire activism among youth to counter the harmful impacts that present consumption patterns are having on the planet’s resources. The Web site also features essays by kids on “What Kids Really Want That Money Can’t Buy,” which will be published next month by Warner Books.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports (www. consumerreports.com), features a chilling report on commercial pressures of kids at school called “Captive Kids.”

Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kff.org) conducts studies on the effects of tv viewing and other media on children, including the 1999 study “Kids and Media @ the New Millennium.” Call (800) 656-4533 or log onto the Web site for a copy.

The National Institute on Media and the Family (MediaWise.com; 606 24 Avenue South, Suite 606, Minneapolis, MN 55454; (888) 672-5437) conducts research and provides advocacy and education campaigns to help families and teachers “maximize the benefits and minimize the harm of mass media on children.” The slogan here is: “Watch what your kids watch.” The best feature on this Web site is KidScore, which allows users to rate video games, films, and tv shows, and to check out other parents’ and kids’ ratings before their own kids are exposed to media. I’ve used this feature and have found it far more accurate and detailed in its assessment than the film industry ratings.

About.com’s “Frugal Living” department features a variety of resources, statistics, and information on children and advertising, including articles by Ralph Nader and steps to take to protect your kids from peer and advertising pressure to buy.