Living In A Material World

School lets out for the day at Poway High, and out pours a wealth of eager, savvy consumers.

Teens swarm out, many dressed like runway models in outfits worth more than many people earn in a day. Cell phones power on. Tricked-out Mustangs and Ford trucks roar from three student parking lots.

In this school, and others, many students are copping a new attitude: You are what you own. Growing up in the lap of prosperity, adolescents today are perhaps the most materialistic generation ever. They live in -- and have created -- a culture of spending where definitions of cool change at light speed and whims are too frequently indulged.

Money might not buy happiness at Poway High, but it certainly buys social clout.

"You have to dress like everyone else or you don't fit in," said Courtney Wood, a sophomore who persuaded her mom to buy her a $140 pair of funky Tredair shoes.

And there are other necessities, including your own phone line and cell phone, seventh-grader Danica Scales said as she hung out with classmates from Madison Middle School in Oceanside.

The pressure begins at a young age. Saturday morning television commercials show cute, confident kids caught up with the latest must-have toy.

Children learn to beg their parents for Happy Meals and certain cereals because they know about the prizes inside. Many parents can't keep up with the chorus of "I want, I want."

MTV soon enters the picture, incessantly drumming its message of coolness. Wear the right clothes. Act a certain way. Feel a certain way.

Peer pressure magnifies self-doubt. In middle school and high school, the quest for acceptance can be more stressful than any exam -- and fitting in can carry a huge price tag.

Students scrutinize every piece of a wardrobe, even the backpack: A see-through model is deemed uncool at one school if it comes from Wal-Mart.

Wearing something too often invites scorn. And going to the prom, the social event of the year, can cost thousands for a couple.

It's easy to see how kids end up trapped in their own prisons, where "I want" becomes "I must have."

Katie Bentley, a sophomore, knows girls at Poway High who flaunt their bank accounts and drop $150 on a shopping spree. She said some of them can be really mean.

"They think they're so much more superior than you, and they're not very good people," she said.

Penny Cohen is bracing for some tough years. Her 13-year-old daughter, Shereen, just transferred to La Jolla's Muirlands Middle School.

Shereen has been content to shop at Target and Ross. But a new school -- in one of the wealthiest places in the country -- could change all that.

"The name-brand thing is going to come into play," Cohen said. "That's the part I dread."

Amelia Capron, a freshman at San Dieguito Academy High School in Encinitas, tries hard to keep up with one friend who has a lot of money. To show off new outfits, she first wears them to her friend's house. But sometimes, it's not enough to keep up.

"We'll go shopping and I'll see something on the sale rack, and she'll be like, 'That's not cute,' " she said.

Not all adolescents are driven to have it all. Sasha Fera-Schanes said she doesn't mind being one of the few people in her circle of friends without a cell phone. And she's fine with sharing the family minivan with her father and brother, even though many friends have their own cars.

Sasha, a senior at Grossmont High School is El Cajon, gets a $50-a-month allowance, which she usually spends in a few days. But she said the amount is fair.

"I don't get anything above what I should, and I'm not deprived of anything," she said.

Materialism is certainly not new. If anything has changed, it's the importance many kids place on it. Go back to the first time you saw someone with cool clothes or a red-hot car and churned with desire, envy or inferiority.

Recent history can be defined through brand names, and one way or another, you were bitten. If it wasn't Levi's, it might have been Jordache, Adidas, Izod, Ocean Pacific, Polo, Guess? or Nike.

Materialistic kids grow into materialistic parents. Today's youths find role models in their parents, many of whom have a sense of entitlement that extends past homeownership, clothing and cars to extravagant vacations and the latest technologies.

This is one area where adolescents can act like adults, often with the permission and even the encouragement of adults.

Parents don't just keep up with the Joneses anymore; they've got an eye on the Joneses' kids.

"I can't say that I've never overindulged," said Colleen Meyers, loaded with bags at Mission Valley Center while shopping with Tricia, her 13-year-old daughter. "I think it's more of a peer pressure on the parents than the kids."

Adults save too little and spend too much, amassing about $9,000 of consumer debt per household, according to the Federal Reserve Board. And their kids watch and learn.

"It's kind of self-righteous for parents to say, 'I don't understand why kids are so materialistic,' " said Julie Kletzman, a personal financial adviser in Pacific Beach. "Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Boys can be just as materialistic as girls, but their must-haves are often not clothes but possessions such as electronic equipment and cars.

Janet Mather's 15-year-old son insisted she buy him a Nintendo 64 game system. Now he wants a Sony PlayStation 2.

Mather, of Lakeside, said it's hard to keep up and it was even harder when she was a single mom. She recently remarried.

One La Jolla mom was stunned by her son's behavior when he found out he wasn't getting a car when he turned 16.

"He was horrified, and I was more horrified that he assumed he would," said the mom, who didn't want to give her name for fear of embarrassing her son. "Then I had to stand back and think, 'Why would he assume that?' "

She recently spent $135 on two theater tickets for her son and admitted that parents aren't teaching values very well.

Guilt can drive parents' spending. Two-thirds of children live in households with a single parent or two parents who work outside the home, said Greg Livingston, vice president of WonderGroup, an agency that conducts in-depth research for companies.

Parents end up giving children more, experts said, to compensate for being away from home.

Children in these families are also more independent and more involved in family decisions, including where to go on vacation and what to eat for dinner.

"There's a lot of independent thinking that starts very young, and marketers have been attuned to that as well," Livingston said.

Even carmakers study how to make their products appeal to children -- not because they can drive, but because they have a big say in what their parents buy, he said.

Marvin Goldberg, a business professor at Pennsylvania State University, traced the thread of materialism through families by interviewing 1,500 parents and children about money.

The children who agreed with statements like "The more money you have, the happier you are" had parents who identified with statements like "I'd rather spend time shopping than doing almost anything else."

Parents show children affection by buying gifts, like a stereo or a car, said Courtney, the sophomore at Poway High.

"I think kids are now saying that's the way you love someone: You buy them things," she said.

By age 10, the average child makes about five trips a week to a store or shopping mall, usually with parents, Goldberg said.

"A materialistic mom or dad is going to go into these malls more often, and kids are trekking with them at the age of 3 or 4," he said.

Teen-agers spend an average of $84 per week -- $27 from their parents and $57 from a job or other source, according to the market research firm Teenage Research Unlimited. They shelled out $155 billion last year.

They use credit cards, sometimes racking up thousands of dollars in debt before they can legally buy a beer.

Handling serious money at an early age can teach some teen-agers important life skills, but for others the consequences are disastrous.

Jeffrey Mercado of San Marcos got his first credit card at 18, and soon after got a second one with a higher limit. Then he got five more.

"I just kept on spending money I never had and having a fun time," said Mercado, 20.

Then he lost his job at Radio Shack but didn't tell his parents. He pretended to leave for work in the morning, and spent the day looking for work, shopping and dining out with friends.

He used cash advances from credit cards to pay other card bills. He owed $3,500 last year, and would still be going strong if his parents hadn't opened his mail and found out.

His mom chopped up his credit cards, and Mercado began the frustrating task of climbing out of debt. His parents had repeatedly told him to be careful with credit cards, but he didn't listen.

Nellie Mae, a student loan agency, reported this year that 78 percent of college students have credit cards and an average card debt of $2,750.

Do kids grow out of this? Experts say 70 percent of working Americans have no money left after paying basic expenses and bills each month.

It costs parents more than ever to raise a child from birth to age 18 -- about $165,630, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

And not everyone can afford to clothe their children in the latest fashions or buy them new cars. Some parents have to stretch to make ends meet.

Barbara Patmon, a single mom in City Heights, has never earned enough to give her three children everything they want. She's made the best of it, hoping Christmas presents of underwear and socks would teach values, not serve as grim reminders.

But saying "We can't afford it" over and over to disappointed faces has sometimes driven her privately to tears.

"It just makes you feel bad that you can't give your kids what they think they need," she said. "You know in the back of your mind that it doesn't matter, but how are you going to tell your kid it doesn't matter?"

Her daughter Nastassja, 17, got a job at the San Diego Zoo this summer and was able to buy the name-brand clothes she had always wanted.

She imagines her grand entrance at her 10-year reunion at San Diego's Hoover High, when she tells her old classmates about her long list of accomplishments.

Capping that list is the clincher: "And my clothes didn't bring me here. I did."

Staff writers Susan Gembrowski, Anne Krueger, Chris Moran, Sherry Parmet, Karla Peterson, Michael Stetz and Nicole Vargas contributed to this report.

These kids' materialism is an easy target, and well it should be. But what does worry me is how little they are learning in the flapdoodle high schools they attend. They will eventually be competing with Chinese and Indian kids who learn early on that life is a serious business.

They have been taught that honesty and morals are nothing to strive for. Ask anyone in the NEA if they are accomplishing their goals and they'll say, "Without a doubt, we are doing better than we expected!"

As America goes on the fastrack DOWNHILL.

According to the posters on this thread, the problem is that we are not teaching our children capitalism. I guess every parent should make sure his children are supplied with most the most up-to-date version of Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Capitalism for Kids

Well, it's horrifying. It really is.

And it's too simple to just "blame the parents." I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get very suspicious of that whole line of argumentation. Witness the Supreme Court's recent ruling on Internet porn: "it's up to the parents."

To me, that's sort of like telling the family living next to a toxic waste dump that getting good oxygen into their children's lungs is "up to the parents."

And oddly enough, when I think about these things I find myself more sympathetic to the Muslim world. Some conservatives don't believe in "society" as an agent of power affecting behavior, but I do. Ideologies, for lack of a better word, like Modernism, Corporatism, Islamism, Materialism have a way of insinuating themselves into the semiotic fabric of our daily lives. They become givens. At that point, it is so much harder for the individual parent, child, or man in the Islamic street to escape their power.

People tend naturally to accept the world they were born into.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Living in a material world

Coming of Age