According to Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life, Hillary Rodham Clinton got it wrong: "It takes a corporation," Robin says, not a village, "to raise a child."  And as a parent who attempts as much as possible to follow a sustainable lifestyle, I can attest to the truth of Robin's claims.

Despite my efforts to avoid "mainstreaming" my sons, I can't help but notice the corporate influence on them.  Granted, they refuse to wear clothes bearing brand names and avoid McDonald's as much for its policies as for its poor quality food, but I've given up on trying to stop them from demanding a certain brand of skateboard shoe, or accessorizing their computers.  And despite the fact that my sons have limits placed on their television watching and Internet usage, the older they get, the more they seem to quote lines and sing jingles from advertisements - even if it is mostly to make fun of them.  And even if they don't see a given piece of footage firsthand, they know all about it.  Like popular TV shows, movies, and major news stories, advertisements get "told" by one kid to another.  So in the end, even by default, corporations are setting youth style trends and shaping values - not to mention writing textbooks and funding television programming, as Robin notes.  However, more and more parents are fighting back.

"It's time to reclaim our kids from the corporate culture," says Marie Sherlock, author of Living Simply with Children (Three Rivers Press, 2003).  A freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, Sherlock and her husband gave up the corporate lifestyle - she was a lawyer, he a stock trader - in order to raise their two sons by each working part-time from home (together they publish Metro Parent in Portland) and practice a non-consumer lifestyle, commonly known as voluntary simplicity.  Sherlock decided to write her book, subtitled "A voluntary simplicity guide for moms, dads, and kids who want to reclaim the bliss of childhood and the joy of parenting," after searching fruitlessly for a book on the subject since the time her sons - now ages 14 and 12 - were babies.  The book is chock-full of plans for downsizing your household and creating more time to spend with your kids; simple family activities, rituals, meetings, brainstorming sessions and holiday celebrations; voluntary simplicity resources and communities; and honest anecdotes from parents nationwide.

Although she admits that voluntary simplicity is, in essence, "kind of just common sense - that money doesn't buy happiness," Sherlock also acknowledges that living simply as a family is "a real challenge to most Americans; it's not something most people are brought up to embrace at all."  If there is a secret to successful simplicity, she says, it's learning to pick and choose what aspects of consumerism you let into your kids' lives.  Failure at living simply usually occurs when parents are too purist, she says, and say no to everything.  While Sherlock's family doesn't have cable TV, her sons have computers and instant-message their friends because "for them, it's a community."  Sherlock's family also questions media by writing on newspapers in response to what they've read.

For Sherlock, it was her own upbringing that led her to practice simplicity.  The youngest of five children, she was brought up in the 1960s in a "very, very blue-collar neighborhood" where her parents owned a small grocery store and her father was the local butcher.  Things got handed down and reused by necessity.  "I was never really susceptible to the consumer culture because of my parents," she explains.  "I remember my mother always had this little sign: 'Use it up/Wear it out/Make it do/Do without.'"  Without a lot of money or distractions - "there was TV, but only three stations" - Sherlock's days consisted of time spent at school or with her family or friends.  When it came time to start her own family, Sherlock's childhood memories made her think twice about the direction of her career.

"It's not that I have a thing for the good old days when women stayed home and had no choices," she says.  "But in 10 years as a lawyer, I saw people getting sucked into this lifestyle of whatever [money] they made, they were spending, always moving up - bigger house, bigger car.  It's a rat race, and I could see myself sliding right into it.  So when we got married, my husband and I agreed that if we had kids, we wanted to spend time with them and not be working all the time."

Once she was off and running as a parent, however, Sherlock was continually struck by how different life is for children than it was in her day.  "We didn't have so many things to distract kids - no instant messaging, no computers, no cable TV, no videos," she says.  "I don't remember my parents ever restricting us from watching TV.  Parents used to believe that TV helped expose kids to culture.  Now we protect them from it.  Gradually, over time, TV has mushroomed into something so huge and powerful that it sucks people in, and kids can't resist it like adults can."

But voluntary simplicity doesn't only involve "killing" your television or constantly having to say no to your kids' requests to buy things they see advertised.  It's also about teaching compassion and living in a manner that is environmentally responsible and just, about enabling your kids to follow a bliss that is truly their own, and not an idea set before them by Madison Avenue.  "Most of the values you instill in your kids stick in the long run," says Sherlock, but their instillation is a lot less painful for both parent and child if the parent doesn't feel alone.  As the parent of young children, Sherlock says she always "wanted more guidance," preferably in the form of an alternative book on childrearing, but she could never find one.  Then, in months of soul-searching following 9/11, Sherlock landed a writing assignment with Family Circle magazine on the Tacoma, Maryland-based Center for the New American Dream (CNAD).  Her article, "Are You Living the New American Dream?"  inspired her to put together a book proposal for Living Simply with Children, and through CNAD and the online Simple Living Network (SLN), she was able to survey and interview families across the country.

Raising children in contemporary American culture is far from simple - perhaps especially so for families attempting to practice voluntary simplicity - but Sherlock's book provides hope, as my own experience proves.  On a mad dash through the mall at the end of summer while shopping simultaneously for a house renovation, back-to-school supplies, and both my sons' birthdays, I noticed Living Simply with Children as I approached the checkout of a chain bookstore.  Irony of ironies, this heartfelt book about saving your kids from corporate America became my impulse buy.  When I contacted Sherlock by phone and told her how I'd discovered her book, she laughed.  "We're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination," she said.  Sustainable parenting, she added, "is quite the trip."