The purchase of moral positions: an essay on the markets of concerned parenting

Abstract

The markets directed towards the very youngest are rapidly expanding. This article looks into the mechanisms behind the expansion of this type of parental consumption, assigning children a position similar to what Veblen categorized as vicarious consumption. The assumption put forward is that the modern markets for babies and toddlers rooted not only in the need to stimulate, protect and support the child, or the desire to display cultural and economic capital through vicarious consumption, but also in the need to indicate positions in the moral economy of concerned parenting. The expanding markets of considered consumption are partly based on translation values, empathy and care made into tangible products with symbolic values in the moral economy.

Playing with class: Middle‐class intensive mothering and the consumption of children's toys in Vietnam

“…Participants demonstrated a calculative way of selecting toys for their children, which shows how “quality” is also perceived as an investment aimed at developing cultural or educational capital that will constitute an advantage for the child in their future careers (see also Brusdal & Frønes, ). For example, toys which involved counting and literacy skills were considered crucial because they helped improving the child's academic performance.…”

“…Despite showing overall consensus on the idea that a toy should be seen as an investment for the future, contra discourses also emerged, highlighting how an over‐calculative and over‐intrusive attitude toward leisure time was seen as “bad” mothering (see also Brusdal & Frønes, ). Most participants understood good mothering as a matter of balance between being calculative and “soft,” and between being vigilant and “relaxed.” However, achieving such a balance was often a reason for anxiety.…”

“…For participants like Thy, the quality and quantity of toys are regulated by middle‐class constraints, as inappropriate toys (plastic ones) and “too few” “appropriate” toys were seen as a sign of a deprived household unable to meet the middle‐class norms of a good childhood. Equally too many toys were seen as synonym of conspicuous consumption, thus as a marker of over‐indulgent affluent mothering, a moral disapprobation (see also Brusdal & Frønes, ).…”

“…Interdisciplinary research insists that the current interrelation between good mothering and consumption is a result of the Western‐based and middle‐class discourse of intensive mothering (Cook, ; Takahashi, ). According to Hays (, p. 8) intensive mothering “requires the day‐to‐day labor of nurturing the child, listening to the child, attempting to decipher the child's needs and desires, struggling to meet the child's wishes, and placing the child's well‐being ahead of their [mothers'] own convenience.” Following Hays (, p. 8), intensive parenting can be performed through methods that are “child‐centered, expert‐guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive, and financially expensive.” If working‐class mothering has focused more on children's development as a matter of “natural growth” (see e.g., Hallden, ; Lareau, ), intensive mothers see their child's development as their own enterprise (Vincent and Ball, 2007) and as such their mothering is entangled in what Brusdal and Frønes () refer to as a “market of concerned consumption.”…”

“…Toy consumption may involve both adults and children in the process of selecting a product that could be subsequently used by the child on their own or by parents and children together (Keller & Ruus, ; Seiter, ). As such a focus on children's toys can offer an insightful way of understanding parents' engagement with the identity construction project for themselves and for their children (Brusdal & Frønes, ). Previous studies on toy consumption reveal that social class plays a fundamental role when mothers are selecting toys for their children (Pugh, ; Seiter, ; Williams, ).…”