Buy more insurance. Send a Hallmark card. Go shopping, of course. Materialism promises that if we can just achieve a higher income level, get our dream house, wear the right clothes, and enjoy the right kinds of leisure activities, we will be satisfied. But in reality, it often produces families that are unable to get off the treadmill because they are deeply in debt.
Materialism produces parents who have no time for each other or their children.
It gives us nicer things than our parents had when they were our age but little time to enjoy them, and men and women who know how to dress for success but who are full of doubts and questions on the inside. To make matters worse, those of us who are baby boomers have a propensity toward materialism just because of the time in which we were born. What other generations have thought privileges, the baby boomers thought were rights. It isn't the ones who die with the most toys who win. It's those who've loved their families well and know the joy of having that love returned.