Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology Volume 24 No. 1, May 1996 Page85 FINDING OURSELVES IN EACH OTHER: BARNEY AND THE OTHER-DIRECTED CHILD Dianne Sykes, Texas A & M University ABSTRACT The currently popular children's television program, Barney and Friends, is utilized as a vehicle for illustrating what Riesman saw as a shift toward other-direction in American society. Barney programs and merchandise demonstrate thatthe emphasis on peer group socialization is occurring in the preschool marttet. Changes in parenting practices, education, and politics, demonstrate that Barney and Friends illustrates a larger sociaf shift toward other-direction. It is argued that this shift leads to a packaging of friendships and emotions, and ultimately a loss of individuality and self awareness. INTRODUCTION directedness can also be examined in terms of Theideathatmenarecreatedfreeandequal changes in parenting practices, education, is both true and misleading; men are created politics, and the packaging of friends and different: They lose their social freedom and emotions. Barney and Friends is used here as theirindiviclualautonomyinseekingtobecome a vehicle for discussing concerns raised by like each other. (Riesman 1962) Riesman. David Riesman's book, The Lonely Crowd (1962), documents a shift in American society to what he terms, other-direction. Chil- dren in an other-directe9 society find their rela- tionships with others and with the self increas- ingly mediated by the mass media. According to Riesman, other-directed children receive signals from many people, as the family be- comes only one element of the social environ- ment. Conformity is ensured through attention paid to the expectations of peers, picked up through a "radar system" developed in child- hood. Riesman argued, in challenge to theo- rists such as Erikson and Kohlberg, that chil- dren do have social tendencies that are not necessarily based on high cognitive skills. These social tendencies, therefore, allow pat- terns of other-directedness to develop. Gole- man (1995) also asserts that children are em- pathetic and emotionally aware of others in infancy. Despite the fact that a major portion of The Lonely Crowd focused on changing pat- terns of childhood socialization, Riesman's work has been virtually ignored in studies of children's literature and studies of childhood socialization in general. This paper examines a currently popular television program, Barney and Friends, as it relates to specific characteristics of Riesman' s other-directedness. Barney has been chosen because he illustrates so well the shift from inner-directed to other-directed story-telling as discussed by Riesman. Specifically, the program illustrates the segmentation of a child- hood market, which reinforces the concept of children as groups of peers, rather than mem- bers of a family. The shift toward other- BARNEY: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY Barney has been described as, an overweight, intellectually challenged stuffed animal who expresses himself by jumping up and down, clapping his hands, and chortling 'Oh Boy, Oh Boy!' (Overbeck 1994) Barney, the purple and green dinosaur with a smile that never quits, a voice that has been likened to Bullwinkle on Quaaludes (Weiss 1993) and a "philosophy of indiscriminate friendships ... • (Swartz 1993) meets on weekly basis with an estimated 12 million two through five year olds. Barney was "born" in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. His creator, Sheryl Leach, de- scribes the event: "I had a two year old and needed the chance to take a shower and cook dinner or just talk on the phone" (Griffith- Roberts, Ford 1993). The then current chil- dren's television programming and videos were not successful in holding her child's attention, so Leach, with a background in education and marketing, together with Kathy Parker, a friend with a similar background, and Paul DeShazer, an educational video producer, worked to cre- ate something thatwould.ltwas indeed helpful that Leach's father-in-law owned the educa- tional publishing company where DeShazer worked and backed the effort with one million dollars (Swartz 1993). The method was a simple one. Leach turned her kitchen into a test center and had neighborhood children watch different videos. Notes were made of activities that held the children's interest and a formula was created.