Child health experts told a Sydney conference last week that children as young as six are displaying inappropriate sexual behaviour – and that violent and sexually explicit images in advertising and popular culture were to blame.
Why wasn’t this front page news?
Most disturbingly, over the past decade there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of children being referred to the Australian Childhood Foundation with these serious problems. We’re talking about sexual assaults on other children by children, and sexualised play. (Ed’s note: See the news story on Sophie Mirabella’s call for tougher advertising restrictions here.
It should have been in all the papers.
But in an ironic juxtaposition, the Right 2 Childhood Conference in Sydney was held on the day of the Royal Wedding – when a modern “princess” married her handsome prince in a real-life version of the fairytales that used to be a staple of childhood.
Sadly, the staples of childhood today are often explicit video clips, violent video games, and exposure to adult sexuality at every turn.
“Parents should be more responsible” is the standard disclaimer, but it is no longer as easy as simply turning off the TV.
The billboard that has a scantily clad woman in a sexually suggestive pose advertising the very adult “Sexpo” is difficult to explain to a nine year old who doesn’t have the cognitive ability or life experience to actually make sense of the messages she gets from both the image and the words. Nor is it avoidable if it’s on the school route.
Ditto for the magazine at the newsagent or supermarket displayed at the eye-level of a 4 year old. Same goes for the highly suggestive TV promo that blares between goals when you’re watching a footy game on the weekend with the kids. Or the near-pornographic video clip that plays at the local bowling alley or shopping centre.
Even the most diligent parent cannot completely avoid the increasingly risqué “sex sells” imagery that is part of our media and our public spaces. The reality is, children interpret this imagery in a very different way to adults.
Children are not small adults. They are not our equal friends, they are our responsibility.
And our failure to tackle the issue of premature sexualisation represents a failure in our responsibility.
The American Psychological Association has stated that “ample evidence indicates that sexualisation has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality and beliefs.”
As a society we need to stop and take a close look at the growing medical opinion about the harmful effect that premature sexualisation has on our children.
How mortified would any parent be if a stranger approached their children in the park and started showing them pictures of half-naked men and women in suggestive poses?
The reality is that our children are subjected to these images on a daily basis in a range of public situations and we’ve become desensitised to it ourselves.
Perhaps the very first step in tackling this threat to our children’s wellbeing is to encourage public debate without fear of being labeled a “wowser”.
Let’s see this Mothers Day as a call-to-arms to protect the innocence of childhood and to draw a line in the sand about the sorts of images we should allow our children to view, particularly those on public display which are difficult to avoid.
Let’s recognise that the carefully crafted images of Mums in fluffy dressing gowns are the marketer’s tool for but a few weeks of the year, and that the standard female image used in advertising is most often an impossible, highly sexualised fantasy.
Instead of another pair of fluffy slippers, let’s honour our mothers by calling for an end to the shallow, vacuous objectification of women that is so prevalent in the media, and which leads to the premature sexualisation of our children.
It might very well be the most important thing we can do for future generations.
For more information on the premature sexualisation of our children visit Collective Shout and and Kids Free 2B Kids, or Dr Joe Tucci’s contribution in Wednesday’s Punch.
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