Baby, We Want You

Parents everywhere tend to look wistfully at their offspring and note that they never had it so good. Today’s generation of Indonesian kids, from toddlers to teens, especially in urban areas, are a different breed, presented with a vast array of lifestyle choices and made the focus of advertising campaigns. It’s not only their story, but also that of their parents. Bruce Emond reports.

Illustration by Ipunk AF

In the late 1990s, onetime child star Ira Maya Sopha, then married with children, appeared on a local TV show hosted by her showbiz successor, Joshua. As she came onto the set, the pint-size tyke, probably fed the line by a scriptwriter, quipped, “How come Cinderella got fat?” in reference to Ira’s most famous role.

It left her, she told me in an interview a few years ago, annoyed at the precociousness of the little boy. Despite his waspish way with a one-liner, Joshua was still firmly in the cuteness mold of traditional child stars, warbling tunes about little fish in big storms and making the rounds in his trademark cap.

For today’s generation of urban tweens, the behavior of the little star of yesteryear would be simply old hat (and that Rip Van Winkle headpiece certainly wouldn’t cut the mustard if it came to brands). Raised on a steady diet of high-tech gadgetry and cyber information, social-networking savvy, courted in TV advertising and marketing campaigns as forces to be reckoned with, they know the importance of getting their material rewards, and keeping up with their peers, in the material world.

The entertainment sphere reflects the dawning of an era in which kids are growing up very fast and are thus attuned to an adult world. Sure, cute still sells – witness the apple-cheeked, cherubic charm of TV sitcom phenomenon Baim – but increasingly there is a precociousness and old-beyond-their-years attitude that taps into the consumerist, me-me-me focus of the “anak borju” (upwardly mobile kids). They speak up, talk back and display the sassy sarcasm that has become universal among youngsters who will show you that you are not as smart as these fifth-graders.

Almost gone from the airwaves are the children’s music shows of years past; today’s little ones don’t tra-la-li anymore, but compete against each other to remember the lyrics from pop and rock hits (and display amazing familiarity with the songs). On TV talent shows for kids, the budding Agnes Monicas of the future don’t sing children’s songs, but adult hits, about heartache and fine romances, being jilted or soldiering on despite being battered down by life. Ira is a judge on the most popular, Idola Cilik (Little Idol), which demands its contestants to show an almost adult-like composure and polish. Almost without fail, they do, even to extending consolatory hugs and shoulders to cry on for the losers who have suffered the rejection of being sent home by viewers.

Then there is Amel, a bustling 8-year-old with a winning way with words. She hosts her own restaurant review show, giving viewers a bite-by-bite account of the meal, and parries jibes with TV’s regular funny man, Tukul Arwana, during late-night talk show appearances.

Today, it isn’t rare for children to assume the responsibilities of adults by dressing and acting the part. No longer will 12-year-olds be confined to the neighborhood playgrounds (they’re already trolling the malls and brand-name stores and boutiques, looking for the latest and trendiest items); nor will 8-year-olds be satisfied with owning a walkie-talkie set (once a popular must-have among the little ones). No, the 8-year-olds of today would rather have their own BlackBerrys and, therefore, social networking accounts through which they exchange updates and hot-off-the-press gossip.

A Changing World

Child psychologist and author David Elkind brands the generation of children most susceptible to changes in parenting, teaching and media-related systems as “the hurried child”. His award-winning book of the same name, now in its third edition, takes into consideration how young children have become subject to the vagaries of adult society – thanks in no small part to the power of mass-media advertising and, of course, the Internet.

Indeed, progress is supposed to be a good thing, but it can backfire.

“As educators we’re responsible for directing the way our students process the different things that go on around them,” says Yusuf, the principal of a private school in North Jakarta. “We used to be able to control the information they received, but now, with the Internet and cable TV, it’d be a miracle to know what goes on in their minds.”

And is that bad?

“It depends on how you look at the issue,” Yusuf says. “I think it’s great that young people have access to information previously unavailable to them, but in my opinion, it’d be wise to have them wait just a little bit longer until they possess the wisdom to judge right from wrong.”

Elkind believes children should spend the first 18 years of their lives embracing their youth, rather than fast-forwarding to adulthood. He warns the traditional concept of childhood as a time to learn and find oneself is in danger of becoming extinct.

“It’s all very misguided,” he writes. “[Children] are starting too early and getting burned out.”

The Parent Trap

While it’s fair to blame unfettered consumerism for some of the concern over modern children’s mental well-being, some continue to argue that much of the problem actually rests with parents and teachers.

“There’s no use trying to stop the giant wheel of global marketing, or patching the holes that leak information to your children,” children’s rights commissioner Santi Sarino writes in an email. “What we can do is raise the quality of parenting and teaching to better protect the children.”

So it’s not only the kids who are changing and have changed. Indonesian society is coming of age in a globalized, shrinking world, and, on another level, their parents are in an often uneasy transition in confronting a vastly different world from the one they grew up in.

It’s a particularly Indonesian phenomenon today. The United States, as writer Jim Windolf argues in the December 2009 Vanity Fair, is currently enduring a “tsunami of cute”, where warm and fuzzy images of sweetness have captivated a nation rocked by recession, and in which its citizens of all ages feel continually at technology’s beck and call.

In Indonesia, then, it’s the reverse, catching the consumerist wave and attendant social trends 20 years after they swept through developed nations. After the straitlaced times of the Soeharto regime, and the dark days of the late-1990s economic crisis, the new millennium has upped the consumerist ante for Indonesian urbanites, who work and play hard. Working couples often have to leave their parenting duties to nannies or grandparents, salving their guilt by showering their children with the consumer goods and gifts now flooding the market.

“I think a lot of us parents feel we have to give to them materially because we’re not there most of the time,” says “Rani”, a working mother of two, adding that it leads to another problem.

“There’s competition among the kids about who has what, and about keeping up. So parents feel they have to do that, too.”

“Reza” is one parent who doesn’t like what he sees. With three children ranging in age from a toddler to a 12-year-old, the company manager is alarmed at the growing consumerism among youngsters.

“This whole thing with brands and products, with the kids knowing, or thinking they know, that this one is good and that one is old-fashioned, disturbs me,” he says.

“I think to myself about how to stop my own kids from getting hooked on it.”

Rosemary Bennett, a London-based social affairs correspondent, wrote in a 2008 article in TimesOnline, that “the consumer society and failure to protect children from commercial pressure is partly to blame for deteriorating mental health among young people. Rates of depression … have risen in the past two decades with one in 10 children now suffering from a diagnosable condition.”

The National Commission for Child Protection blames peer pressure among adolescents for more than 50 percent of cases of children falling into depression. And in an age of materialistic pursuits, peer pressure is often associated with money.

“Whether we realize it or not, the way we’ve been consuming is reflected in the great divide among children,” writes Santi. “Urban children, in particular, can no longer appreciate the little things in life because they’re so used to [things like] gadgets, and we encourage them! They’re great with cell phones, laptops, sophisticated toys – sadly, as a result, they lose that … sense of tolerance and simple play inside them.”

Her point echoes Elkind’s thesis in The Hurried Child: “Learning teaches us what is known, play makes it possible for new things to be learned. There are many concepts and skills that can only be learned through play.”

But it’s not limited to the urban affluent either; through technology, the phenomenon is now seeping into small towns and villages. A recent case involved a young village boy who wanted a camera phone. Embarrassed by the constant taunting that his older, cheaper model drew from his peers, he hanged himself in his family’s goat pen, his “suicide note” the carefully counted banknotes and coins that were still Rp 200,000 short of what he needed.

Again, it’s not so much about the kids but also the parents (the young boy’s parents were desperately trying to pool the money to buy him his phone). It’s from the choices of what they allow their children to watch on TV to where they let them spend their time. And for many urban kids today, the mall has become a second home and playground. One of the more recent phenomena, along with the fast-food restaurants and brand-name children’s stores, is the themed children’s entertainment area, where kids learn about living through role play, games and other diversions.

Consuming Passions

It’s not fun and games to the cynics, who contend there is something more insidious at work, something that consumerist America experienced in the 1950s and 1960s and that has now reached these parts. American children, writes American Studies professor Lizabeth Cohen, as they played with their Barbies and Easy-Bake Ovens, were targeted as a segment “to lay the groundwork for a lifetime of consumption, preparing the way for their voyage from child to teen to adult male or female segment”.

In A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), Cohen notes that Amsco, one of the leaders in brand-name tie-in toys, made no secret of its aim to “indoctrinate” children to buy its products.

“In the last 40 years, the American toy industry has propelled itself into the multi-billion dollar giant it is today through its marketing ingenuity, built more than anything else on making children, not their parents, its best customers,” Cohen states.

Amalia Gozali, who manages Miniapolis, the huge children’s zone in Plaza Indonesia’s eX center that offers everything a child, and their parents, may desire, from stores to restaurants, rejects that line of thinking. For her, the centers are merely in line with what parents and children need today.

“We want to create a safe and educative environment to meet the growing needs of a new generation of parents who are informed and take an active participation in their children's lives,” she says. “We want to provide a space where parents can spend quality time with their children, as indicated by our open playground concept and numerous social-based activities. We provide not only retail to meet children’s needs, but also concepts like ‘doodles’ that nurture their creativity.”

She has a point: Parents today are rearing their children with new demands and challenges. There is no going back, even to what we perceive as better, safer, more “innocent” times, because too much has happened that has altered the way things were.

It’s for the parents to find the balance in raising their children to be aware and in tune with a new era. In doing so, they will prevent them from losing themselves in the process and keep them grounded.

“I’m having a hard time watching my children grow,” says Dian, the mother of two boys, aged 13 and 9. “But I don’t think I’m losing them just yet. They may be smarter and slicker than me, but I’m still their mother. I believe the important thing is to always keep the lines of communication open.”

Additional reporting by Maggie Tiojakin.

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