“Juliet Schor is a human laser beam. Her careful research and brilliant analysis are presented in lucid prose. Plato defined education as teaching our children to find pleasure in the right things. Most parents do their best, but they are fighting a culture that educates our children to value all the wrong things. Children are suffering mentally, physically, and spiritually. Schor’s book can put us on a path toward once again protecting our children. This may be the most important book
of 2004.” -Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Letters to a Young Therapist
“There must be a special circle of hell designed for those who came up with the notion of marketing to young kids, and if so, Juliet Schor is its Dante-this is a tremendous book, in the tradition of Fast Food Nation.” -Bill McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
“What a fascinating and mobilizing book! No mother or father intends to turn over child-rearing to the consumer culture, but the stress and speed of life wear down their resolve, making television, toys, electronics, and branding a kind of ‘shadow parent’ that literally spoils our children. Juliet Schor gives us ample evidence of the cost-to our children and society-of this drift into corporationaised kids.
Born to Buy will inspire anyone concerned with the next generation.” -Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence
“Born to Buy is an eye-opener. It illuminates marketers’ unrelenting exploitation of our youth; the well-being of children has been made secondary to maximizing corporate profit. This book is certain to shake us out of our complacency; I highly recommend it.” -Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Judge Baker Children’s Center, Boston, Mass.
“This brilliant, informative, and deeply important book tells us what the advertisers don’t the more advertising children see and hear, the more likely they are to be depressed and anxious and to suffer family conflict. The American dream isn’t something we buy, Schor wisely tells us; it’s something we make and can, if broken, repair. A book that will start a revolution…” -Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work and The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work
