"Gifts don't matter"

"Gifts don't matter" So you say - The trend of withholding gifts from children, under the guise of instilling simplicity and gratitude, is gaining traction—amplified by social media and the proliferation of so-called parenting experts. These online figures, incentivized by visibility and monetization, frequently offer prescriptive advice under the assumption that they possess superior knowledge.

Recently, a young mother caught my attention through a social media post in which she proudly stated that she does not buy gifts for her child on birthdays or at Christmas. Her rationale was to teach her son to appreciate the simplicity of life and to derive joy from non-material experiences. This decision was framed in response to the over-commercialization of Christmas, which she argued had lost its original spirit.

To an extent, this critique of consumerism is valid. Christmas has undeniably become a highly commercialized event, largely due to the effective strategies employed by marketing departments aiming to maximize profit. These campaigns rely not on coercion but on persuasion—no one is forced to buy anything. Instead, consumers are subtly manipulated into excessive spending through emotionally charged advertisements and social pressures.

Yet the issue at hand is not marketing, but children. It is essential to refocus the discussion on how such parental decisions affect a child's development. On a separate occasion, I posed a rhetorical question to parents who adopt this anti-gift policy: did your own parents deprive you of the joy of receiving gifts during childhood?

Let us reflect. How many of us had parents who refused to offer presents on special occasions, despite having the financial means to do so? For those whose parents were financially constrained, what emotional toll did it take on them to be unable to provide what they wished for their children? And as children, how did we feel when we saw others receive gifts from Santa while we received none? Such disparities can foster feelings of exclusion, inadequacy, and even shame.

What emotional legacy does this practice leave? When children see their peers receiving gifts while they are told to find joy in abstraction, what message is internalized? The inconsistency between the world they observe and the values they are taught may lead to internal conflict. And when these children grow into adults—at age 20, 30, or 40—what will they recall? Likely, they will remember that their parents withheld celebrations others took for granted. These memories may not be accompanied by admiration for having been taught simplicity but by a sense of loss and deprivation.

Moreover, such a parenting style risks cultivating repressed negative emotions. As each year passes without the shared joy of birthdays or holidays, the child is subtly alienated from his peer group. This emotional gap could manifest in adulthood as difficulty forming trust-based social bonds or latent resentment toward perceived deprivation.

In this context, withholding gifts becomes an act not of conscious parenting but of performance—tailored for social validation in the form of likes, shares, and followers. It belongs to a broader trend where parental choices are less about the child's well-being and more about public image management.

This mode of parenting, despite its fashionable façade, lacks psychological grounding. It overlooks the symbolic function of gifts in childhood development. Gifts serve as affirmations of care, recognition, and emotional investment. To systematically remove them in the name of ideological purity is to risk emotional impoverishment.

In time, society will come to understand the consequences of such decisions. In 50 or 60 years, the psychological outcomes of today's parenting trends will become fully visible. And I am alarmed by the thought of the harsh, restrictive, and unforgiving social measures that may emerge in response—devised to correct the emotional deficits being cultivated today under the banner of minimalist virtue.