Sexualization in early childhood is becoming more and more evident. I have worked in the early childhood industry for the last nineteen years and I am sometimes flabbergasted at some of the conversations and remarks that I have no choice but to confront,. Over the last few years I have really noticed a growing trend of sexual references in children's movies, commercials, and clothing.
I remember years ago a rated G movie or cartoon was just that ....rated G and children were safe to watch it and it reflected pure innocence. The movies and cartoons that are now being released are geared more towards adults than the general audience it should have been produced for. As I shop for my son I notice as I walk past the little girl's clothing department that the skirts are exceptionally short as well as the shorts. The animal prints such as leopard and zebra and fur seem so provacative for such little people. I have even noticed that little girl's shoes as little as two year olds have a slightly elevated heel on them. I feel our children are being forced to accelerate their childhood and grow up too fast.
The characters in some of these movies and cartoons are the epitame of the perfectly built human. The females have the tiny little waist with pertruding hips and nice round derriere. It also appears that the clothing these characters wear is always tight and form fitting, sometimes exposing a mid-drift. The male characters also have the small waist and big biceps. I've seen promotions for pregnant dolls and dolls that even breast feed. I feel that this is totally innapropriate for young children and as parents it is our duty to educate our children on these life experiences as they get older.
I can recall last summer one of the eleven year olds enrolled in my summer programhad his cell phone out texting another little girl that was not enrolled in our program. I asked him to give me his phone and I went through his text messages. I was not prepared for what I was about to read. There were references to bi-sexualism and lesbians, there were pictures of this little girl in her bra and panties. I called the mother of this little boy and told his mother to please stop by my office to pick up her son's phone and he was not allowed to bring it back to my facility. The mother said she had no idea that her son had these types of messages in his phone. She seemed surprised. I was very disturbed by her naive attitude. I feel like first of all, this child is eleven years old and therefore there should be NO PRIVACY in your home. I think that a response to this concern is that parents really need to be more in touch as to what their children are exposed to.
My nephew wanted a Facebook page and my sister asked my opinion. I told her that she needed to set up his page and only she should have the password, not him. He could go in and control all of his privacy settings where he could control what she sees. As the parent, I told her she needed to be the one in control, not him. He had a fit saying that wasn't fair, needless to say my sister gave in and allowed him to be in control of his own page at his young tender age of 10. I told her now he was about to be exposed to so many things that could have been within her control.
There are many sexual messages that our young children are exposed to, and as early childhood professionals it is imperative that try our best to communicate with and educate our parents as well as form relationships with the community. I'm not by any means saying that it is totally the parent's fault, and there are some parents that do try really hard to shelter their children from the sexual message and images that they are exposed to. We just have to work together to transform those images to positive images and get back to values and morals, and work to ensure that our children will thrive in our crude society.
Children are being forced by our society to grow up to fast. Your experience with the little boy and the cell phone put me in shock. I never stopped to think about how technology could play such a major role as well in the sexualization of children. Cell phones and other devices are suppose to help the children be safe and have ways of communication with adults, but the flip side on that is who else they are communicating with and how.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was very informative! I like how you brought up TV/movies/cartoons and how that effects children being exposed to sexual media, etc. I also like how you brought up cell phones and how those are used often to explicit sex and sexual remarks even with young children. I find that parents are having to sit down with their children at a very early age to talk about "The Birds and the Bees" and etc. I know a lot of people who allow their children to have facebook/myspace pages, some parents don't supervise what their children do on computers/cellphones and that's one big problem. Would you agree?
ReplyDeleteHi Theresa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your informative blog. Your anecdote about the boy and the phone were quite an eye-opener and said a lot about how young children have been sexualized by the media. On the note of your 10-year-old nephew getting a Facebook account, you were right to be insistent that he not get an account as the minimum legal age to sign up for an account is 13! My daughter fell prey to cyber bullying through Facebook at age 15 and barely managed to cope with it. It left her with deep emotional scars that have taken a long time to heal. I hope your nephew will be spared many of the negatives that go with having an account at such a young age.