Does your child really need that iPhone?

Ever heard of “brand bullying”? Chances are that you are living it, without even knowing it. Brand bullying, apparently, is what happens when your child is jeered at for being the only one in class without an iPod, so you end up working all hours to buy expensive gadgets that your kids can brag about. Last month I had an unsettling encounter with an 11-year-old girl, while I was having coffee with her mother. Playing with her mom’s BlackBerry, she told me that she was getting her own little Berry for her next birthday. Clearly my shock must have shown on my face, because her mom said, “everyone in her class already has one, so I need to get her one too. Kya karun?” “What phone does your daughter have?” asked the girl. When I answered that my own 11-year-old didn’t have a phone at all, her jaw dropped in disbelief. “Not even a Nokia?” she asked in horror. I see from a recent issue of the Times of India that my daughter is seriously disadvantaged, maybe even socially handicapped. Aakarsh, a 9-year-old Delhi boy, the son of successful lawyers, brags about the iPhone he was bought on his last birthday. Meanwhile, his 14-year-old brother, Aehsas, was recently given a Samsung Galaxy tab (estimated price: over Rs 30,000) and a Tata Nano as a birthday gift. Aehsas also helps his dad with gadget purchases. “I frequently help my dad. He and I are gizmo freaks,” he said. Not to be left behind,  Aakarsh, too, helps his mom shop. “I helped my mom choose her handbag and also suggested some shops where she could buy them from,” says the insufferably precocious Aakarsh, adding, “I hope my dad buys a Ferrari soon.” An eight-year-old I know has a wardrobe big enough for three adults, crammed with foreign labels, because his mom wants to “give him everything she never had as a child.”  Every child I encounter has a Wii or an Xbox, sometimes two of them, one for each child. Yet ironically, the talk at parenting gatherings is all about how our kids are sooo materialistic, and how we should keep them grounded by taking them to orphanages to see how lucky they are, or make them do well in their studies before we reward them with an iPod. [caption id=“attachment_144371” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Brand bullying, apparently, is what happens when your child is jeered at for being the only one in class without an iPod. davitydave via Flickr”]  [/caption] So why are today’s kids so materialistic, though? Short answer: it’s because we are. There are plenty of people who will choose to blame the new grabby child on the fact that women are — gasp, horror ­— working outside of the home, so have no time to spend with their children, and therefore buy them loot to make up for the crushing parental guilt. But often kids with the flashiest gear have stay at-home moms who spend hours shopping for them. Yes, we all need to spend more time with our kids, but blaming consumerism on a time-poor culture is simplistic. The real causes are more complex, partly to do with the fact that children have no safe outdoor spaces to play like they used to, partly to do with the way Indians of a certain age finally want to enjoy their money and lavish their children with the things they were denied, partly to do with the economic boom. But, regardless of the causes, one thing is for sure: don’t expect your child to choose the “simple living, high thinking” path if you don’t. It’s always odd to hear kids being urged to enjoy the simple pleasures, when the only pleasures parents enjoy are buying a new iPhone or designer shoes every few months. As for those long lectures to your teens about how you have earned the right to buy that Hermes bag or a new phone every year through much hard work, kids don’t understand subtleties. All they see is that shiny expensive gadgets and long trips to the mall make you happy, so it will make them happy. If you brag about being a “gadget freak” within earshot of your kids, or talk about how you only wear certain “brands”, chances are your child is going to grow up thinking it’s cool to buy, buy, buy. Our own parents knew how to say no and stand up to peer pressure. Also, they didn’t do guilt. I remember persecuting my parents for loads of things, only to be met with an unapologetic “Sorry, we can’t afford it.” It would not have occurred to me to ask for a reward for doing well in school; my parents would have laughed me out of the house. And yet modern parents seem to crumble so easily. “I just can’t say no to him,” says a friend whose seven-year-old son already insists on flying only business class, even on a one-hour domestic flight. Can’t or won’t? The parents of the 9-year-old Delhi boy quoted earlier in this story say they dread “buying anything without their children’s consent.” Who’s the parent here? It is possible to say no to your children’s extravagant demands; you just have to resign to being deeply unpopular. A recent UNICEF study, comparing families in the UK, Sweden and Spain, found UK parents buying high status brands to “protect” their children from brand bullying, and showering their children with iPods and Nintendos instead of spending time with them. Continues on the next page Not only does my 11-year-old not have a phone — any phone —  she also does not have an iPod, iPad, PSP or Wii. All her friends have at least one or more of these gadgets. Every few months, she points this out to me, and every few months, I ignore her. Now she has a solution: she tells her friends that her mom is mean, they all agree, and sympathise deeply with her. I can live with being the meanest mom in the class, and I think it’s good for her to stand up to brand bullying and have friends who like her for herself, not because she has a sackful of goodies. It’s also easy for me to convince my daughter that none of these products are necessary, because I don’t have an iPhone, iPad, or iMac myself. This may sound smug; it’s not meant to. As a journalist who works from home, often in my pyjamas, I need none of the gadgets that corporate warriors on the move need. I am not suggesting a return to those miserable Gandhian days when we all watched the same Onida TV for 15 years, never ate out except at darshinis, and wore only Fabindia kurtas. Neither do I want to peddle that tired old cliché: that the best things in life are free. As any parent who has ever organised a birthday party and bought 20 party bags, knows, they certainly are not. But there’s certainly a halfway house between tight-belted socialism and ridiculous laissez faire spending, and the pendulum has swung way too far in the wrong direction. No child needs adult gadgets, or a wardrobe filled with designer gear. No child needs to be included in shopping trips for a car or any other adult purchase. Buy your child a phone if they are away from you, but what’s wrong with a basic handset? It’s all too easy to throw up your hands and say, “society made me do it.” Let’s take some responsibility here. We don’t need to be our children’s friends, all we need to do is give them the tools to earn, not buy, their own happiness. And that tool is not an iPhone. Kavitha Rao is a freelance journalist and parent who detests parenting manuals. Her main parenting mantra: “This too shall pass.”