Baby Bargains Dishes Dirt

Consumers called it useful. In 1990, the local guides were replaced by a national version, Bridal Bargains, and praise spread like wildfire.

"A friend told me, 'I will not allow you to get married without this book," remembers Hilary Winiarz, a Chicago resident who now serves as a message-board moderator on the Fieldses' website. "I think people fall for these books — as in fall in love — because they are all about helping you parse through the chaos.... I planned my entire wedding around Bridal Bargains."

In 1991, the Fieldses got a long-distance call. Oprah wanted them on her show — that Monday. The attention tripled their book sales. They moved back to Colorado and built a 3,500-square-foot home in Monument before eventually settling in Boulder. One newspaper called them the "Ralph Naders of the bridal industry," and it seemed like nothing they could do would top such success.

That is, until Denise got pregnant.

They couldn't help it. The appeal of the "all-in-one" travel-system stroller was overwhelming. It could transform from baby carriage to a car seat to an infant carrier to a toddler stroller — with the baby in the middle of it all never having to wake up! With visions of a blissful tears-free existence, the Fieldses, expecting their first child, threw down $150 for it. They would come to regret it.

"I remember cursing it from the moment I took it from the box," says Denise. "Those suckers are bulky and ridiculously heavy. I hate them."

By that point, the Fieldses had already decided to use Denise's 1993 pregnancy as the impetus to expand their empire. And in 1994, they published Baby Bargains. But while they had already tangled with persnickety bridal consultants and egotistical cake bakers, they weren't prepared for the baby-product industry. There is much, much more at stake, Alan says. "The wedding industry is ripe with ripoffs and scams and hucksterism; the baby industry doesn't have that," he adds. A wedding may cost $25,000, but a baby can easily trump that in just the first few years. In fact, according to Baby Bargains, raising a child to age eighteen costs $1.4 million.

Here was another rite of passage that had been utterly commoditized, the couple realized, where unchecked retail therapy was being used to soothe mass social angst.

"Generation X are the primary parents for very young children right now," says Susan Gregory Thomas, author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds. "And this was the home-alone generation. By and large the children of baby boomers, the majority of these kids came from divorced households, or their parents both worked full-time. Forty percent of them were latchkey kids by the time they were eight. They had the highest enrollment in child care. The upshot is that this is a generation that is so fearful that their child will feel abandoned, because they have such fear of abandonment from their own crummy home-alone childhoods. It is this feeling of psychological need bound up with consumerism plus the need to do everything under the sun for the child that makes this generation suckers."

But manufacturers argue they're not out to sucker parents; they say the expanding baby-product market means there are more choices — and more well-designed products — for increasingly sophisticated consumers. "This is an incredibly emotional time of life for people, and you want to provide the best for your child. And best is subjective," says Kari Boiler, North American marketing director for Bugaboo, a stroller company with models featuring aluminum construction, high-tech suspension, one-handed steering and components that allow the models to transform from a baby carriage to an infant stroller — along with price tags from $529 to $899. "Bugaboo isn't just a luxury item and fashion item. Everything that goes into the stroller is for the best of the child. It's very hard to purchase a well-designed product without a premium."

Jamie Beal, spokeswoman for Babies "R" Us, agrees. Since opening its first store in 1996, Babies "R" Us has expanded to 256 locations nationwide while many smaller stores have gone out of business, so parents-to-be across the nation now have equal access to every type of product imaginable. "Babies 'R' Us is the quintessential source for everything new and expectant parents need when preparing for baby's arrival, setting up a nursery, traveling with a newborn and establishing a safe environment for baby," Beal says by e-mail. "Parents today have limitless resources available to them to read, listen to or download as much or as little information as possible. This is making parents more savvy than ever before and much more aware of juvenile industry trends.

"Regardless of the mother's age, education or background," she adds, "they are first-time moms together and they all want to make sure they have the must-have items and make the best decisions for their baby."

But many of those must-haves aren't must-haves at all, argues Bart Rivkin, owner of Guys and Dolls, one of several independent baby stores left in the Denver area. "A baby needs very little. They need their parents, they need to be loved, they need to be fed, and they need to be kept dry. So all this fancy paraphernalia that's out there for children — and there is a lot of it — is unnecessary," he says.