This article examines the cultural processes a group of middle-class parents engage in to manage tensions between their classed sense of proper consumer-parenting and their children’s consumer interests and desires. Based on analysis of qualitative data from interviews with parents with young children living in a middle-class neighborhood in Austin, Texas, I highlight the cultural practices through which parents acquiesce to their children’s desires without compromising their own classed consumer norms. Specifically, in this article I highlight the cultural processes through which middle-class parents (1) draw distinctions between spending on objects and spending on experiences, and (2) engage in intra-group “circuits of commerce” through which class actors confer positive shared meanings and moral understandings to otherwise excessive or “bad” consumer spending. Examining the ways in which parents were able to provide many of the “cheap” consumer goods their children desire without compromising their classed consumer norms provides insights into class boundaries in contemporary U.S. society as well as the role of consumerism and consumer culture in the reproduction of class inequalities.

本文考察了一群中产阶级父母为管理他们对适当的消费者育儿的阶级意识与他们的孩子的消费兴趣和愿望之间的紧张关系而进行的文化过程。基于对生活在德克萨斯州奥斯汀中产阶级社区的父母的访谈定性数据分析，我强调了父母在不损害他们自己的阶级消费规范的情况下默许孩子的愿望的文化习俗。具体来说，在这篇文章中，我强调了中产阶级父母（1）区分物品支出和体验支出的文化过程，(2) 参与集团内部的“商业回路”，通过这些“商业回路”，阶级行为者为过度或“糟糕”的消费者支出赋予积极的共同意义和道德理解。考察父母如何在不损害他们的分类消费规范的情况下提供孩子想要的许多“廉价”消费品的方式，可以深入了解当代美国社会的阶级界限，以及消费主义和消费文化在儿童再生产中的作用。阶级不平等。