Virtual Library
Berkeley Collection of Working and Occasional Papers
| <Previous Article | Next Article> |
TITLE:
From “Compensation” to “Childhood Wonder”: Why Parents Buy
AUTHOR(S):
Allison J. Pugh
DOCUMENT TYPE: Article
Allison Pugh is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Working Families and a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Working Paper No. 39
- Download the Document (PDF format - 52 K) - May 2002
- Tell a colleague about it.
ABSTRACT:
This paper considers how American parents consume on behalf of their children, and their reasons for doing so, in the hopes of helping to untangle the work/family knot at the center. My research involves interviews and fieldwork with a white, largely middle-class sample of married and single mothers of 8-year-old children and is part of a larger study of what I call “child-rearing consumption” in general. In this paper, I outline a working typology of why parents consume and then delve more deeply into two of the most important aspects: consumption as compensation and as a conduit to childhood wonder.