Wanted: Confidence

Parents have a new weapon in the battle to hush demands for $500 handbags and $250 jeans this Christmas: compliments.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that a child's need for material objects is tied to his or her self-esteem. The weaker their self-esteem, the greater their desire for the material trappings of adolescent popularity, according to the study published in the current issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

That's the good news, as reported in The Globe and Mail.

"This is the good news, Andrea?" Well, yes. Because it means there might be something you can do to curb the litany of 'I want I want I want': try to build your kids' self-esteem a little.

(By the way, while the study only looked at 8-9, 12-13 and 18-19 year olds, I would expect the same to hold true for any age group: if you are relatively comfortable with yourself as a person than you aren't going to want a lot of stuff to advertise to everyone else how cool you are. You don't need to. I'm not sure what age this would kick in but I am sure it's before eight. And I don't think it stops at 20.)

Here's the bad news:

"I'd always wanted to know why all of a sudden a child can hit 12 or 13 and become an absolute pester machine," said Dr. John, who has two former pre-teens of her own, now aged 17 and 21. "Well, it's because they have this low self-worth and they've figured out that they can use brands and possessions to signal certain things about themselves."

When Dr. John saw the correlation, she wanted to devise a surefire method of curbing that pre-teenage materialism. As a second part of their study, researchers discovered that propping up a child's self-esteem is as simple as giving them a well-earned compliment.

In the second study, she looked at 12-to-13-year-olds in summer camps and found that children who were given paper plates bearing compliments such as "smart" and "fun" immediately reined in their materialistic tendencies.

"It really surprised us to see how much a small compliment can make a difference," Dr. John said.

Which directly contradicts Carol Dweck's three decades of research, showing that giving your kids (or anyone) unearned compliments would reduce, not enhance, their self-esteem--which I tend to believe. Self-esteem is earned, it does not come pre-printed on a dessert plate. Although there may be some temporary effect in materialism, surely such a short-cut is not the best solution.

Dr. Ungar suggests including kids in holiday cooking and decorating as a way of propping up a child's self-esteem. "We have to offer them a way of asserting an identity," he said, "rather than buying one."

And see--that is spot on. Asserting an identity, rather than buying one (would probably work for preschoolers through geriatrics). And you assert an identity, of course, through what you do, not what you have. Sometimes you need to have stuff in order to be able to do stuff (hard to paint without brushes--or paint--or a surface), but a focus on the doing rather than the having would probably weed out a lot of extraneous and useless stuff.

It reminds me, too, of a study I read about several years back that found that people who spent their money on experiences (courses, vacations, etc.) rather than things were, on average, happier. Maybe they were happier because they were more satisfied with themselves and their lives, and therefore didn't need a lot of things to fill them up.

In the meantime, it gives me an excuse for an almost-certainly unjustified pat on the back, after all I could coax Frances to ask Santa for Christmas was a little yellow duckie.

Not sure what it means that I can't walk into a bookstore without walking out with something.

Posted by Andrea at December 3, 2007 9:26 AM under Mothers and Anti-Mothers

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)