A Little Baby Einstein Never Hurt Anybody

KJ, I could not agree more with your post on the Baby Einstein refunds. There are so many edicts that come from parenting experts that new parents cannot possibly heed all of them. Which has prompted me to create a pop quiz for new parents:

Given that 1) You are not to let your baby cry, 2) you are not to let your child watch television, and 3) you must exclusively breast-feed your child for six months, what should you do when it’s time to cook dinner (you know, to get those extra calories you need to feed the baby)?

1) Hold Junior in one arm as you steam veggies, sauté salmon, and roast potatoes (that’s two hot liquids and one hot oven, if you’re counting) with the other.

2) Let Junior cry.

3) Expose Junior to some Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.

The answer is so patently obvious that it’s annoying. (Please don’t respond that one parent can cook dinner while the other tends to baby. That ignores the realities of single-parent households, spouses working overtime and/or irregular shifts, or families with older siblings where one parent is cooking while the other is carpooling to soccer practice or piano lessons.) Almost as annoying to me as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. The anti-commercialism group posted a press release on its site, headlined “CCFC Victory! Disney Offers Refunds on Baby Einstein Videos.”

Now, I don’t want to be too hard on the CCFC. They’ve pushed to keep Bratz dolls out of the Scholastic book clubs and book fairs, and they’re opposed to Channel One and other in-school television. (I’d much rather my kids have more instruction time during the school day.) They’ve got ideas for holiday gifts that don’t involve knocking over the nearest Toys R Us.

But their overarching message—that exposure to marketing and commercialism is ruinous to children—is patronizing to parents. They don’t like Elmo selling anything (never mind that that helps keep Sesame Street on the air commercial-free); they don’t like any TV shows with product tie-ins; they want to control what time studios are allowed to air commercials for PG-13 movies.

There’s a very easy way to keep your children from being exposed to too much commercialization. Limit their television. And tell them, “No, you may not have a toy every time we go to Target.” CCFC points to the drastic increase in the amount of money spent on marketing to children in the last 25 years—from $100 million in 1983 to $17 billion today. We can argue chicken vs. egg all day, but companies probably wouldn’t spend that kind of money marketing products if it didn’t work. Parents need to take some responsibility and not just blame companies for trying to make money. And I can’t see where moderate exposure to marketing and commercials has to be hazardous to our children’s health. In our family, some of the best time we spend together is running around at the kid’s museum or the zoo or taking day trips to new places. And some of the best time is spent sprawled in front of the TV for family movie night. I can think of worse things than my son asking to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween after watching Toy Story with mom and dad one too many times.

Tags: Baby Einstein, kids television, parenting, Television

Rachael Larimore Slate copy chief and mother of three. Addicted to coffee, Facebook, and the Sprout channel.

Comments

Baby Einstein

By: AmyLassiter | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 16:57

There was a great study out of Cornell linking early watching of tv to autism. It is interesting that so many parents are happy to ignore Pediatrician recommendations to not allow their infants to watch television but happily imperil society by refusing to have them vaccinated.
What gives?

perfect

By: phpeter | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 09:22

This is a great example of how women constantly beat each other up over the silliest of things...what to do with kids while making dinner? As a father who cooks dinner every night with a baby and a toddler (before my wife gets home from work), I can empathize folks here. Some nights are easier than others, but you just make it work. Sometimes a tv comes in handy, other times it is a box of crayons, paper and a bouncy seat. But really, why pick on one another like this. You would never see guys work one another over like this.

Ditto on the Women's Ghetto of Stupid

By: CeeBeeSart | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 01:53

I have to agree with the previous poster that the tepid opinion pieces like this one do lend Double X an air of being a Women's Ghetto of Stupid.

I always half expect to find an article about the great, crushing personal journey of discovery provoked by finding a pebble in one's shoe.

women's ghetto of stupid

By: Chla | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 14:57

No, I think that hits the nail fairly firmly on the head. As I said in my post below, I've only paid this site scant attention, but when I do come here I'm always overwhelmed by the banality and insipidness of it. Can't there be well written, thoughtful web sites for women that actually show some intelligence? That aren't all just upper class angst?

How about the occasional article that takes some pride in parenting, instead of just driveling on self-righteously about how the author's three children can't manage to fend for themselves for twenty minutes while Mom is doing something. I assume we're not talking about 3 month old triplets. The "I'm a bad mom!" thing is soooooooooo overdone, can we call a moratorium on it?

As for the unresearched and missing-the-point rants, they should be kept on personal blogs.

Hey now, whoa

By: Vanessa | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 13:45

DoubleX the women's ghetto of stupid? Really?

Step back there tiger. The charm of blogging is irrational rants. This was a post that rambled a bit and took a position some people seem not to like. "Women's ghetto of stupid" seems a bit much, don't you think dearie?

Uh...

By: schamber | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 10:05

"what should you do when it’s time to cook dinner?"

How about a playpen? Or a bouncy seat? Why are you under the impression that children need to be entertained every single second of the day?

And for those of you under the impression that Baby Einstein is somehow better than Blue's Clues, wrong. Most studies show that small children interpret the frenetic moving and flashing of television the same way, no matter what the ostensible subject of the program. And that's the significant thing here: the admission that Baby Einstein is no better than the Cartoon Network at educating children. So all of you who spent $25 a pop on these DVDs were doing nothing better for your kids than turning on Nickolodeon. Dangerous in small quantities? Probably not to anything but your wallet and your self-respect. But high-larious for the rest of us.

I don't know why they keep letting these illogical little rants get published over here at DoubleX. By association, it's becoming the Women's Ghetto of Stupid.

Answers...

By: nagatuki | Tue, 10/27/2009 - 09:13

Joe writes: Okay so what's the process for getting the refund??? How much of a hassle would this be and how many people will actually pull out videos from 5 years ago in search of a refund???
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Answer: Disney has said they will take any videos back, no receipt, full refund, until March 2010. If people are too lazy to pull out the videos that's their problem. But, given the economic climate, if they're actually paying attention to this news they might find it worth the effort.
~~~~~~~~~~~
More to the point, I don't understand such hostility from Larimore. Why is she so angry?

To put it another way, her response is so patently patronizing it's annoying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some points: babies actually can be allowed to cry - it's best to not let it go on too long, esp. if they're under 5 months, but it's not a crisis if the baby cries for 5 minutes while you put your potatoes on.

Two, the main point of this refund is to point out that it _does not_ increase baby intelligence. Having been marketed this way, the company is being called out for false advertisement. We as consumers _constantly_ point out false advertising, and yet Larimore has a problem with a product that implicitly tells parents they're not caring about their kids enough unless they've given them the best "education" from birth?
~~~~~~~~~
Finally, Larimore writes: "And I can’t see where moderate exposure to marketing and commercials has to be hazardous to our children’s health." ~~~~~~~~~~~
Who said anything about "moderate exposure to marketing"? Umm, didn't you start this article writing about the Baby Einstein products?

As far as I'm aware the point, again, about recalling Baby Einstein has nothing to do with marketing products or your kid wanting a Buzz Lightyear and everything to do with its claims of boosting intelligence, and that's it (a different kind of marketing all-together).

Sheesh - don't you know how to read? Perhaps you didn't get enough Sesame Street yourself...

Apologists for crappy parenting really bore me.

By: Chla | Mon, 10/26/2009 - 21:44

There are many, many, many studies, and books written about said studies, that disagree with what you're saying. (See: Buy Buy Baby; Consuming Kids; Born to Buy; etc) Did you actually do any research on the subject, or is it just your defensive knee-jerk reaction to ignore such silly things as "facts" and "research" when it makes you feel inadequate as a mother? Because that's pretty old and tired and doesn't actually do anyone any favors.

If it were ONLY TV that marketed to kids, that would be pretty easy to avoid. But all of the products everywhere are impossible to avoid. Media companies pay millions to have their cartoon images on diapers: a brilliant feat that has actually convinced parents to pay money for their children to be exposed to toy advertising. I wish I had thought of that. And Children's Television Workshop's deal with Tyco is actually pretty scandalous: they get next to nothing. You should google around for some articles about it, it's pretty interesting.

Oh, who am I kidding. You don't actually care. If you did, you would have done even the tiniest bit of research before you wrote a column. Funny, I've only read this site a few times because I find it really whiney and patronizing, but the last article I read annoyed me because of what you said there, too. All the other commenters were good and on point, but your little fantasy world had no bearing on reality.

Oh, and on an organized day I cook dinner while the kids are napping and then just stick it in the oven to warm it up. On a disorganized day, the baby plays in his jumper while my toddler plays with her toys. Our TV is at the other end of the house and I don't like leaving the kids unattended for that long while I cook. Use TV as a crutch all you want, we all do it, but for the love of god it just makes you sound totally incompetent that you honestly can't think of a single other way to cook dinner without sticking the kids in front of the TV.

Seriously, babies and toddlers aren't actually all that hard to entertain. They just like movement, and sticking them in front of the window will do the same thing. My current baby is even easier to entertain because anything his big sister does cracks him up: he's happy to just watch her play while I cook. You have three kids, they can't entertain eachother for 15 minutes?

Missing the forest for the trees

By: ana_nym | Mon, 10/26/2009 - 19:50

Yes, yes, we're all very glad that you only let your infant watch tv when you were too, too busy to be playing with them. Been there, done that. I'm sure your kids will turn out wonderfully, yadda yadda yadda.

The point is that there are many, many people out there who do in fact plop their kids in front of Baby Einstein thinking that they're doing something positive for their kids. Count among them the millions of teen moms, who haven't had decades of adulthood to figure out that maybe Disney and co. don't always have their best interests in mind.

On the other side of the age spectrum, try grandparents. I got a box set of the dvds from my mother-in-law and promptly put them on for my daughter to make grandma happy. My husband and I rolled our eyes through the nauseating cuteness until we realized the entire thing is a giant toy commercial, complete with a handy list of toy manufacturers at the end of the video. Yuck. Still, you're right, we used them when we needed them and I doubt my kid is any worse for wear. But I'm generally not worried about my privileged middle class kid. I worry about the kids whose parents are trying to do their best and still end up getting lied to by false educational claims from major corporations. You can bet that I'll be digging those videos out and mailing them back for a refund and donating the money to the Library Foundation.

Often overlooked, but real

By: Vanessa | Mon, 10/26/2009 - 19:42

I was raised without commercial TV until I was 12 years old or so. The result? I didn't know what my friends were talking about when they talked about TV shows (which they did all the time) and I was the weird 11 year old who still watched Square One TV because I wasn't allowed anything other.

Was my life ruined by horrible parents who didn't let me watch TV? Of course not. But the pain and discomfort caused by being the weird kid who couldn't watch TV was real and certainly off-set any positive gains from my not seeing commercials unless I was at a friend's house.

Not to mention the major TV binging I did the second I was old enough to make my own decisions. Parents, be reasonable. Don't let TV be your babysitter, but don't cripple your child with too many parenting ideas that cut them off from their peer group either.