Affluenza

I'm flabbergasted and feel slightly nauseous.

I'm part of an online club of people who are interested in living frugally.

Most of us are not interested in living under hessian sacks. Rather, we are interested in living cleverly and focussing our spending so we don't end up in that modern trap: treating credit cards as income, working overtime to maintain a life we have no time to enjoy, etc.

Perusing the threads, I read one from a woman who was asking how much people spent on their kids at Christmas.

A mother of three, she was spending $300 per child, and was feeling bad because her friends were spending $400.

I don't mean whoever wrote it any offence, but, I don't know anyone who would spend that much money at Christmas! I guess it's relative and cultural, but I don't know anyone who could afford to spend that much money, even if they wanted to!

For me, I would rather spend time with my son than work overtime to pay off credit cards so he can have all this JUNK.

Another woman was spending $150 on stocking stuffers, and $150 on other presents!! How big is the stocking going to be?

Another woman said that older kids are more expensive, and people with younger children didn't 'get it.'

I don't know, maybe things are different, I don't want my kid to keep up with the junior joneses. I'm not buying an ipod for my kid just because someone elses kid has one.

What are we teaching our kids? I'm thinking about an article I once read, about generation "Z," (the current teens). These kids spent their childhoods in substandard child care centres, were given piles of toys, and so on.

Is it just me, or does the current youth culture seem awfully self-centred, materialistic and vain? I feel quite queasy.

And the dollies little girls play with, they look like prostitutes! Do they even sell baby dolls anymore? I remember playing mummies. I had a barbie, but even she was a mummy.

Maybe kids don't play mummies anymore. I guess their main influence and caregiver is no longer mum. That makes me feel horribly sad. I believe kids play is their way of learning how the world works.

It cuts me to think that little girls might have stopped playing the nurturing role, and are now playing a gross, materialistic, sex object role. Who are these kids taking as their role models? Paris Hilton? Britney Spears? Where are the positive role models for little girls? Or little boys, for that matter?

I was watching a group of primary school girls, dressed in knee high boots and short skirts. Why are they dressing like that? Where did the corduroy overalls go?

It's a culture I don't feel comfortable in at all. Apparently kids are getting diabetes and heart disease now? Kids! They're literally dying of affluence, god help them then they get older.

I really feel like I'm in culture shock a lot of the time - in my own culture! I'm a mother myself. I have a four-year-old boy. At the moment, I'm his main influence, but soon he will enter the 'big, bad world' with a myriad of other influences that I have to control. As a parent, I feel it is my job to guide him, and it is a daunting task.