Watching Tom & Jerry in Baghdad

So I heard this report/ interview on NPR earlier today that struck me funny. The lead in, and the earlier teasers, kind of implied it would be a more dramatic, insightful story about these kids and the experiences they were missing thanks to the war. The host was talking with a mother in Baghdad about the necessity of keeping her kids inside for safety reasons. She said that she was scared to take them to the park, and then she said something very near to: "they do their homework... then they have their Playstation and like to watch satellite tv... they like to watch Tom & Jerry." Wow, um, that sounds rough. Isn't that essentially the same thing American kids choose to do after school?

Maybe we are exporting American style democracy to Iraq... from the bottom up. Changing the attitudes of adults is hard, but if we're willing to wait a generation maybe we can build a bridge by way of video games, junk food and television. We just have to keep the war going long enough to force these kids to stay inside until they're fully indoctrinated.

Anyway, I'm not trying to discount the point this story is trying (and failing) to make, or to diminish a very real and highly anxious situation for this (and many other) mothers in Baghdad. Clearly kids in Baghdad are kept inside for safety reasons and, unlike here in the U.S., they often don't have the choice of going outside to play if they want to. And the same story did make mention of the fact that these particular kids had seen someone murdered in the street, and that their father had been killed. But the net effect of this story, for me, was a feeling of irony... and I don't think that's what the writer/ producer/ host had in mind.

Coming of Age in Suburbia

Is personal purchasing power- the ability and opportunity to buy things without parental consent (or sometimes even awareness)- becoming a rite of passage for suburban adolescents? Or has that been the case for some time, and I'm only now catching on? I've seen lots of parenting articles decrying (or just trying to explain) the materialistic culture, and what that does to kids (and adults), and also some about the huge (and ever increasing) purchasing power of teens and preteens, but what of the ability to buy things itself?

I'm seeing more and more groups of 10/11/12 year old girls in the mall, shopping on their own, than I did just a few years ago. I saw four girls who couldn't have been more than 12 all buying stuff at Victoria's Secret two weeks ago. And one of them had a credit card. I'm not casting judgement, just curious if this is a new trend, or something I failed to notice before.

I obviously have a personal interest in the question. My daughter turns 12 next week and she has a cooler cell phone than me, an iPod nano, an iPac, a portable DVD player... At Christmas I got her a mall debit card and she and I did our shopping separately. She is one of those tween girls with "purchasing power" that are now seen shopping with friends at the mall. She frequently meets up with friends at a mall a few blocks from our house to wander and window shop and (sometimes) spend their allowance. And, in discussing potential places to move, I was surprised to find that her preference to live near places where she could "meet friends and buy stuff" was even higher than being near her school or a park. And I see the same trends among her friends. Being able to buy things, on their own, gives them a sense of autonomy that I don't see paralleled in any other activity.

I can appreciate the increased sense of autonomy, and they are really just mimicking the behavior of adults, but there's something about feeling "grown up" thanks to an ability to buy stuff that worries me. I don't remember that being an important activity for me as an adolescent, nor for any of my friends. And it seems like an unfortunate outgrowth of a culture obsessed with having more and more and more stuff. But hanging out playing video games wasn't de rigeur for my parents, as it was for my friends, and I'm sure they found that worrying too...