Was it worth it?

It's a constant struggle for any parent to balance the desire to buy your child anything that makes him smile with the desire to continue to have money for food. That said, it can be a tad more difficult to strike that balance when you're a single parent who has no one to "good cop/bad cop" the little bugger.

I come from one of those whole-grain households and vowed I would never feed my child "junk" food. I can hear the derisive laughter from all mothers who had similarly lofty ideals shattered by the hard cold reality of a 3-year-old who refuses all sustenance but bologna.

I opened the gates of Hell
That said, I had been worn down by the relentless requests, uttered replete with tears, folded hands, and chants of "prettypleaseprettyplease!" I allowed my son to have CocoPuffs as dessert (never as a meal! Oh no.) And I opened the gates of Hell.

The idea of store brands has always appealed to the repressed tightwad in me, a facet of my personality I hadn't needed to explore in my solo, semi-bohemian life before parenthood. As I began paying for day care and tiny Levis and rising with the sun to prepare nutritious lunches, I began examining with great interest the ingredients of the name-brand and store-brand foods vying for my attention.

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I found myself especially appreciating that my local grocery megaplex, Publix, had packaging that wasn't, dare I admit it, embarrassingly ugly on the pantry shelf. It was a cinch to substitute their "nutty nuggets" for Grape Nuts; the boxes are practically identical, and no one snooping through my cabinets was likely to notice. And my son prefers the store-brand snacks. Publix potato chips have the product pictured right on the bag so even the pre-literati know there's lip-smacking goodness lurking inside.

I sat one day and calculated how much I saved in a single trip to the store by buying store-brand butter, milk, cereal, snacks, frozen vegetables and bread (no one, but no one, will ever convince me to try the generic equivalent of my beloved Dr. Pepper). Now this may not seem like much to you, but when I realized I'd saved close to $10 on one trip and realized the implications on an annual basis, I was excited. In the course of a year, I could save two car payments!

A fly in the generic ointment
But there was a fly in the generic ointment. While I didn't think the food tastes any different, my son was adamant that the cereal in the bag on the bottom shelf of the grocery store was in no way a palatable substitute for CocoPuffs.

All of which leads up to the moment that found me, at the stroke of midnight, staring at a huge display of that less-expensive bagged cereal. Was saving a few bucks worth my son's possible refusal to eat those creepy brown spheres that didn't come out of the box he saw 60,000 times on Nickelodeon? I mean, I used to write advertising copy, and I still find myself at the department store cosmetic counter buying a face cream that promises to "energize" my skin. Huh?

How did I resolve this crisis? I bought one box of the "fancy" stuff and have ever since refilled it from the generic bags. Devious? You bet. This is my sanity we're talking about.

It is so easy to succumb to marketing in this media-saturated society. This is my opportunity to strike back at the corporate giants who think I'll buy anything if it's packaged prettily.

And so, in my humble opinion, it is worth it.

-- Updated: March 23, 2004