Born to Buy: the commercialised child and the new consumer culture Juliet B Schor Simon & Schuster, 256pp, £17.99 ISBN 068487055X

This book immediately got on the wrong side of me because of the quotation from another author on its cover: "We worry about so many dangers to our children - drugs, perverts, bullies - but seldom notice the biggest menace of all: the multibillion-dollar marketing effort aimed at turning the kids into oversexed, status-obsessed, attention-deficient little consumers." See, that's not true, and it's patronising. All the parents I know worry about how bombarded "kids" are by brand names, how they are turning into greedy critters who only stop saying "want, want, want" long enough to stuff cheese strings into their gobs.

The talk of "guerrilla marketers" on the inside cover also got on my nerves. It's silly, publicity-seeking talk, but I guess "peer pressure" doesn't have the same snappy sound to it: you can imagine the Daily Mail running a story on "Guerrilla marketers: the new threat to our children", but not one on "Why your kid wants what another kid has".

So me and this book didn't get off to a good start. This wasn't helped by its monotonous academic style, which seems especially mean given who it's aimed at, or should be aimed at - parents. Even with a full night's sleep, you have to read some parts twice (at least). I also found myself comfort-eating pretty much all the way through, partly to help me get through the stodgier sections, but also because I got so depressed. I felt that Nike, Kraft, McDonald's, Bratz, Mattel et al already had my 18-month-old daughter's likes and dislikes on file.

But Born to Buy definitely warms up the further into it you get. By the penultimate chapter, Schor has almost let her hair down. I would like to have had more of her perspective as a mother (she has two children who don't watch telly); the bits when she allows herself to speak as both author and mother are definitely the best. There are lots of charts, which are analysed in excruciating detail. Like a lot of books, this one would have benefited from being a third shorter.

Nevertheless, it makes you think; it doesn't tell you much you don't already know or suspect, but it reinforces all your worst fears. Born to Buy makes you look at adverts and packaging with a more critical eye and it makes you really, really cynical about society. Schor writes about the possibility of brain scans being done on children to see what products most excite them and reveals that, while some advertising executives are sickened by their jobs, few refuse to work on accounts aimed at children.

I didn't feel I got much "how to" advice to help guard my child against this commercialisation. One of the main reasons children want so much "stuff" is that it has become almost perverse to want to spend time with them; in one report cited by Schor, a heartbreaking 69 per cent of children said they would like to spend more time with their parents and, if granted one wish, would change their parents' jobs. Only 13 per cent wished their parents made more money.

So is it the children asking for all these things, or parents buying them to appease their guilt? It's worth remembering that all of this could be stopped with one simple phrase: "No, you can't have that."

Annalisa Barbieri is co-founder of www.iwantmymum.com

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