More parents bringing up 'Mini Me' children

Dec 31, 2009, 13:32 GMT

Berlin - Five-year-old Marie would like to have some new hair extensions. Her fingernails glisten with pink polish and there is a shimmering gloss on her lips. 'It tastes like strawberry. Great,' she says as she sits on a high chair that looks like a motorbike, waiting for her beauty treatment.

Five-year-old Michelle is also a regular customer at this well visited salon in a large Berlin department store. 'I think it's very important she looks well because she's a part of me,' said her mother in a television interview. Many German parents are copying US celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Katie Holmes or Madonna and spending money on cosmetics, hair and trendy clothing for their little ones.

The selection of cosmetics aimed at children is constantly growing and ranges from luminous pink shampoo to skin care products. There is also no shortage of demand despite warnings from dermatologists that using too much aroma, preservatives and colourants can cause allergic reactions.

German parents are also spending more on clothing their children. A few are even going the extra mile and investing in garments produced by high fashion labels such as Armani and Chloe. Until now it used to be French and Italian parents who had a reputation in Europe for dolling their children up.

Industry statistics show it is parents who are well-off and have only one child who are prepared to pay sums of 65 dollars for a playsuit made from ecologically friendly cotton. One leading German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, recently published an article under the headline 'The 800 Euro Babies' that said fashion targeted at infants is a growing segment despite the knock-on affects of the global economic crisis and falling birth rates in Germany.

The article's author pointed to one fashion company called Petit Bateau where profit grew by 8.5 per cent from autumn 2008 to the beginning of winter 2009. During the same period profit for the entire clothing industry fell by nine per cent.

Having a well groomed and stylish appearance has become a method to separate and raise a child above the mass of other children and girls in particular are most affected by this trend. Celebrities have done much to encourage this. 'Stars who eagerly place their children wearing designer clothes in front of the paparazzi's lenses often have narcissistic personalities that are especially ambitious,' says Borwin Bandelow, professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Goetingen in Germany. Bandelow has also written a book about the cult of stardom.

'Being a celebrity is also about creating a profile separate to everyone else. The 'perfect child' is usually the extension of the parent's own narcissism,' says Bandelow. Adults who place high value on status symbols such as expensive clothes or cosmetics often apply that to their children. In the process they project their own desires onto their kids who in extreme cases can end up as a 'Mini Me' -- a child styled and looked upon as a mini adult.

'That can have negative consequences for the child's personality development,' warns Bandelow. A person who constantly takes note of what they are wearing is less likely to play in mud, climb a tree and may later in life go on to select friends according to appearance. 'Every child likes to dress up occasionally but in most cases they choose to wear very colourful pieces of clothing. The child will not notice whether they are wearing an old pair of dungarees or designer jeans.'

The psychotherapist Professor Ada Borkenhagen from Germany's University of Magdeburg thinks girls are in most danger of being encouraged to copy perceived standards of beauty at a young age. 'Compared to 20 years ago children today are exposed to behavioural patterns at a very early stage. Children are finding it difficult to develop their own personalities because they learn that diverging from the norm can lead to fear. As a result their childhoods diminish.'

Borkenhagen says the problem of the idealisation of beauty will go one step further: the patterns of behaviour that young girls are learning now will be copied by many of their mothers.

Later, when the girls reach puberty, it will be difficult for them to separate from their mothers. 'That's because the eternally young mothers were always there. When today's generation of mothers get old and don't make way for their kids, we'll encounter another big problem.' By problem Borkenhagen means we will have a society of people between the ages of five and 50 who have the same concepts of beauty and wear the same brand of jeans.