|  Money problems cause a lot of divorce, domestic violence, and distress in the family. Bluntly speaking, a lot of money problems are caused by our increasing wants -- stimulated by constant advertising -- and our limited means. Ads are planned to be "on your side": they flatter us ("you deserve it... you can afford it") and send the messages we want to hear ("get it now"). In contrast to the thousands of upbeat "positive" messages from ads, the smiling faces and friendly voices offering goodies, parents are often the only "negatives" around, functioning in the role of the heavies, the killjoys, the nay-sayers:"You can't have it... we can't afford it... you'll have to wait....". Family dramas are often made up of the intricate dialogue between the parents as providers, unable to provide enough ("What do you think, that I'm made out of money? Money doesn't grow on trees!") and the rising expectations and increasing dissatisfaction (fueled by ads, directly, or indirectly by peer pressure) of the children: the asking, begging, pleading, refusing, counter-suggesting ("Why don't you wear your..."); and the subsequent defending, explaining, parrying ("it's only..."), and so on.
Furthermore, some recent economic changes have caused new kinds of "fairness" conflict between parents and children over family money matters because of unequal economic pressures. Unadvertised "necessities" are getting much more expensive at the same time that many highly-advertised "luxuries" are getting relatively cheaper.Housing costs, for example, which were relatively affordable a few years ago, have skyrocketed. Homeless people on the streets are only the tip of the less visible, but increasing, new social problems. Millions of multi-family households are living together in cramped quarters, and millions of two-income families need both parents working simply to provide for basic necessities.Parents often get caught between these rigid demands from the outside and the increasing demands from inside the family for some highly-advertised luxuries.
Technology can create (and advertising can help distribute) some products relatively cheaply: clothes, cosmetics, movies, concerts, CDs, toys, games, electronics, and so on.Adult providers are often unable to provide everything, because they have limits, fixed incomes, unless they take extra jobs, or borrow money (credit cards) and go deeper into a debt cycle.
At the same time that the parents are stressed to pay for the basics, many teenagers have more "discretionary spending money" than their parents. In 1991, there was over $80 billion of such discretionary spending by American teenagers. Some commentators say that many kids grow up "prematurely affluent" -- having a lot of such "discretionary spending money" available to them during childhood and adolescence. Later, after finishing school, as young adults, they become "downwardly mobile" because they are unable to support themselves at the same level. Unable to afford housing, they won't "leave the nest" of their parents' home, or, they may leave temporarily (often to occupy college rooms), then return ("boomerangs") as adult dependents who want both an "independent lifestyle" (car, friends) while still depending on the parents for shelter and basics.
Every major city has an well supported by advertisers (bars, clubs, concerts, movies, entertainments, sports, CDs, albums) and distributed free to this target audience of twenty-somethings, who are often still single, living at home, working their first job, but spending their own money as "disposable income" while neither saving money for the future, nor paying a full share of their real housing expenses. Tensions and conflicts often arise in these extended family situations of such dependency. The real problems of finding a job, of affording housing, and of looking for love, are intensified by the increased expectations stimulated by ads.
Parents expect to take care of their young children and want them to have benefits, good things. But, the intensity of advertising may be causing new problems of degree: How much is enough? How long?
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Related Resource: adult living
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