Kids are big business

Kids are big business. I should know. I spend enough on mine.

Mothers who normally cringe at buying that RM200 dress at full price would not hesitate to spend four times that amount on a set of tuning forks that is supposed to enhance their kids’ musical abilities.

By mothers, I mean me. And I did get that dress, at 70% off during sales.

You know those people eagerly lining up the minute the iPad 2 comes in stock? How much do you want to bet that nine out of the 10 iPads bought will end up in their kids’ hands, riddled through with kiddie games?

Sure, their excuse is that it’ll be handy for work – it’s lighter to lug around than a laptop. But have you ever tried doing work on an iPad? Have you tried typing out an article on that touch screen keyboard, because you didn’t have the foresight to buy an external keyboard? Of course, I use it for work, and, of course, there are no kiddie games on mine. Right.
 

There are two facts here.

Parents spend indiscriminately on their kids, no matter how much of a scrooge they are with themselves. And parents are on a single-minded quest to provide their kids with the best possible opportunities in life.

They will buy them exorbitantly priced organic food, for health. They will get them new-fangled educational toys, for intelligence. They will dress them up in branded clothes, just because they look so darn cute. They will pay through their noses for good schools, for education.

Businesses recognise this. Marketing to mothers of babies and toddlers is easy; all companies have to do is use the words educate, nurture, happy and can-turn-your-kid-into-a-genius, and the job is done.

Milk powder companies do this unabashedly; educational toy companies dedicate themselves to the religion of creating child geniuses; toy companies are in the business of stimulating, enhancing and connecting with your child’s sensory perceptions; book publishers put out books that may as well be toys, what with all the pop-outs, textural gimmicks, sounds and more.

Child enrichment centres are everywhere – gymnastics, dance, speech and drama.

When your kids start going to school, you will find 50 different workbooks, for pre-kindergarten. There may be more, but my eyes glazed over at 50. These are workbooks to teach them motor skills, writing, counting, reading, analytical skills.

I have about five of those, bought two years ago when I suddenly woke up feeling inadequate as a mother. My elder daughter is turning six soon, and I still haven’t opened those workbooks.

Maybe her sister can use them when she turns four.

This unthinking buying happens even at the grocery store. I once wanted to make organic popcorn for the kids, along with homemade bread and polenta pie. Now I have sitting in my pantry a bag of organic popping corn, organic high-protein flour and organic polenta. They are near expiry, so I should either