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Kids in the Mall: Growing Up Controlled

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College Writing — Summary Kids in the Mall: Growing Up Controlled Malls becoming the new baby-sitters William Kowinski has written the article “Kids in the mall: Growing up controlled”, to highlight the ignorance of parents that exposes children to artificial environment of shopping malls. Kowinski argues that this exposure converts children into “pre-programmed consumers” and leads them to a premature adulthood, which affects their emotional development. To prove his argument, the writer relies upon several studies which reveal the importance of the role parents play in nurturing their children with “warmth” and “old-fashioned mothering”. …show more content…

This leads them to become brand conscious and focus more on the newest clothes and latest trends. To prove his argument, the author refers to David Elkind’s (a psychologist) study “The hurried child”. According to Elkind this “hurried child” is under a constant pressure to buy branded products, and is forced to act like an adult and hold a level of sophistication that is beyond its years. “Adolescents about to make a big leap into growing up crave more structure than acknowledged.” Kowinski claims that it is usually the parents who encourage children to spend time in the malls as they consider malls to be much safer, and a rather “controlled environment”. To support his argument, the writer relies upon a study under taken by Karen Lansky’s. This study insists on the fact that kids observe and learn; if they are nurtured at home, they would learn about responsibility, but if they have malls as a “structural mother”, all they would learn is how to act like adults and “how to consume.” Hence parents should pay more attention to grooming their children themselves instead of letting the malls “be the baby-sitters”. Apart from their role as shoppers, kids also tend to find jobs which might teach them how to be responsible but narrow the scope of their success. Kowinski believes that the

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