Summary and Analysis of Reading: Kline, S. (1993). Chapter 2 – “The Making of Children’s Culture” in Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the age of Marketing.
For: Stuart Poyntz
Simon Fraser University - Communications 428
By: Kristen MacDonald 301040166
January 14, 2008
In the second chapter of Steven Kline’s book “Out of the Garden: Toys, TV and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing”, he provides a summary of the history of children’s consumer culture in contemporary western society. In this chapter he demonstrates the influence of industrialization and mass marketing through television on the socialization of children. Kline claims that the changes in legislation regarding children’s labour rights (47), modern theory on childhood development and ultimately the introduction of the tools of childhood; toys, initiated a new notion of a childhood as a protected and separate phase of life rather than mimicking the adult labouring lifestyle. Kline goes on to map the introduction of television as a milestone in the evolution of children’s culture in the 20th century. With the new focus of marketing as the bridge between production and consumption at the turn of the century, advertisers began appealing to parents (mainly mothers’) sense of nurturing protector. Kline argues that the introduction of television provided a new tool of socialization in which parents quickly learned a more liberal style of parenting which incorporated pacifying their children with commodities (63). Kline supports this argument with the work of sociologist Stuart Ewen who recognized the changes in family dynamics influenced by consumerist culture driven by industrialization.
With this mid-century redefinition of the family and social role of children described by Kline and supported by David Reisman’s work, advertisers latched on appealing to consumer needs to fit in with peers or “keep up with the Jones’” (63). Kline argues that television was quickly becoming the centre of childhood activity in the post-war era replacing more organic forms of socialization.
Kline concludes the chapter discussing a contemporary study revealing parental attitudes towards child viewing habits in which concerns about commercial culture as a agent of socialization was relatively unrecognized. Kline draws on the arguments of Marie Winn and Neil Postman’s who claim the babyboomer generation of parents has normalized the amount of television exposure and therefore view the amount of time children spend with television as acceptable.
Through this historical timeline of the evolution of children’s commercial culture Kline unveils the modern form of childhood socialization. Originally this period of development was viewed best guided by parents and the formal systems of education steered by education theorists such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori as well as the state and the church. However the of contemporary children’s culture this sensitive segment of the population is now coddled by marketers through children’s programming. Child development and socialization now left in the hands of a third party whose motivation is concerned with selling youth oriented products and nurturing the development of a consumer. As Kline states, there are some which may argue that television simply reflects the modern state of the family household (72) and perhaps this is partially true however, the modern audience has been previously conditioned by the socialization which has occurred through the television screen itself. Mass marketing practices have played a key role in the development of the babyboom generation which makes it difficult for this generation to recognize the unnatural socialization practice their children have now been exposed to. Klines arguments are very significant if one is concerned with the consumption habits of the western world. When an individual is raised to seek fulfillment through material possessions it becomes difficult to curb these habits in response to the detrimental effects mass consumption has on both the environment and those regions of the world in which these products are produced.
Works Cited
Kline, S (1993). Chapter 2 – “The Making of Children’s Culture” in Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing. London, UK: Verso