Feminist Discernment in the Family
Transforming Romantic Partnerships, Parenting, and Consumption
created and written by:
Emily Knurek & Cecilia Yu
Transforming Consumption: An Introduction
Discerning the Way to True Well-Being
"Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most middle-class Americans were aquiring at a greater rate than any previous generation of the middle class. And their buying was more upscale. By the end of the 1990s, the familiar elements of the American dream (a little suburban house with a white picket fence, two cares, and an annual vacation) have expanded greatly. The size of houses has doubled in less than fifty years, there are more second homes, automobiles have become increasingly option-packed, middle-income Americans are doing more pleasure and vacation travel, and expenditures on recreation have more than doubled since 1980."
- Juliet B. Schor (1)
One really can say that consumption and consumerism drive the American economy. Our capitalistic society, through the methodology of neoclassical economics, equates the maximization of material goods with utility and happiness. In the feminist transformative process of discernment and restitution, the value of "consumption" in bringing fulfilment is contested. There is a want and a need to re-evaluate why competitive consumerism is so central to our lifestyles.
Competitive consumerism is the struggle for more and more material goods to keep up with certain "reference groups". It is consumption that consirms and enhances social status, and is tied into an unwinnable zero-sum game of "keeping up with the Joneses". Feminist discernment acknowledges women should resist blind competitive consumerism, as material wealth does not necessarily bring about well-being. Competitive consumerism affects parenting and families should not wholly submit to competitive careerism in order to increase their incomes; Parents should not discipline and reward children through materialism.
As practised in Buddhist economics, feminist economic transformation aims to stop the constant craving for material wealth and to encourage a greater focus on personal development and true well-being. In addition, feminist economic tranformation encourages us all to look at the social costs of spending, and the long-term effects on our psyches and our society.
Learn more about Competitive Consumerism.
Learn more about Socially Responsible Consumption.
Page Created: May 21st, 2007
Last Modified:October 11th