Parents who haven't been seduced by the advertising machine—the relentless push to consume, to appear, to succeed—have plenty of answers to those questions. They come from many different sources: moral conviction, political belief, religious faith, psychology, economics.
The trouble is that these reasons, born from maturity and rooted in real experience and thought, are nearly impossible to hand down to children. And even if you manage to convey them, they can't compete with the constant, spectacular scientific manipulation that our media and consumer system deploys every single day.
Put plainly: no argument about the injustice of a system that multiplies luxury and excess for the few while denying the many will stand up against those shoes, those pants, that phone, that snack with the free toy.
So let's shift the question: how do we get children to accept doing without things that nearly everyone else seems to have?
One solution—one I've tried and seen work—is to offer children different experiences and things in place of what the marketplace demands. Experiences that are unusual, that deliver real emotion: adventure, nature, discovery, human connection.
Take children on a night hike through a forest path or along a mountain ridge—two or three families together. Stop to make tea on a small gas stove and drink it with bread and cheese under the stars. Let them sleep in a mountain shelter or a tent. Guide them up a narrow rocky passage, roped in, so they feel the weight of real risk. Take them out on a night boat with a light to see what's below the surface. And open doors for them to groups where they learn mutual responsibility, independence, and adventure: scout troops, environmental organizations, alpine clubs, sailing schools, volunteer work that demands real human bonds.
In short, the answer isn't to counter market-driven things with arguments, but with other things and experiences—strong, unconventional ones. The answer is being able to tell your child: you don't have this, you don't do that with those kids, but you have this, you do that with these others. The reasoning can come later.
Of course, it's easier to buy the phone or drive to McDonald's than to load a carful of teenagers into the car at seven in the evening and head to the beach to roast sausages on sticks over a fire. But if a parent wants to do the job right—if they don't want to hand over all power to "society" to turn their kids into consumer clones—they have to be willing to do the harder work.
And here's what those parents don't know: they're missing out themselves if they don't.
Sergio, 2005