The sexualization of childhood is currently a great concern. Ten is the new fifteen and eight is the new thirteen. The girls dress up and act older than ever. They go from toys to children in the blink of an eye. Girls are not only concerned about how they look and dress at a young age, but are also concerned about their body image, making them susceptible to dieting and weight management in ways that boys shouldn’t.
Children are certainly entering puberty earlier in a physical sense. An alarming 16% of girls in the UK start puberty at eight years of age. They also seem to be growing faster than ever in a social and behavioral sense. The concern is that girls seem ready for anything at twelve when, in fact, they are still kids emotionally and socially.
Girls have always liked to dress up in their mother’s clothes, but they used to put them back in their mother’s closet after playing dress-up. Now a lot of girls wear adult clothes all the time.
The sexualization of childhood is further proof that the lines between adulthood and childhood are becoming increasingly blurred. Many children these days dress like adults and have adult accessories like cell phones and MP3 players. Nearly 50 percent of children’s parties have some part outsourced to a professional, so it seems like even their parties are just like grown-up ones.
Children seem to pick up on the concerns of adults as well as their advantages. Recent research shows that fear of cancer, terrorism, and being a victim of crime are now top concerns for many ten-year-olds.
The sexualization of childhood has occurred for various reasons. Television shows and music videos are two areas where sexual images bordering on soft-core pornography are openly available for children to view. Combined with the propensity for girls to exert enormous social pressure on each other to conform, the seductive images of adolescence in the media can be hard to resist.
Children pester their parents to buy the clothes and accessories they want. Marketers have identified the following groups of parents as being particularly susceptible: “indulgent,” “kid-friendly,” and “guilty parents.” Children know that if they push their parents hard enough, they will wither away. Combined with the fact that many parents are unsure of their place in the parent-child relationship, then parents are easy prey for girls’ persuasive ways.
To do:
1. It seems necessary for parents to give their daughters firm guidance on the proper clothing for children. Sure, have an ‘older set of clothes’ but keep that set for certain occasions. If you can’t be assertive with an eight-year-old, it’s going to be really hard to work when your daughter turns 14 and gets really persuasive.
2. Adults can help girls to be girls and enjoy their childish activities instead of adolescent type activities. Girls are often conflicted. They have an internal battle between the child and the emerging adolescent. Let the child earn at home. It helps if their parents, particularly their mothers, spend time with them interacting in fun, playful, and childish ways.
3. Adults must be aware of the programs and music videos that young children watch and be willing to censor their viewing. Having televisions in public places, rather than bedrooms, helps in this monitoring process.
What is the concern that children grow up quickly? Just this. The conventional wisdom has been that a long latency period in which children are lost in the mists of childhood is the best preparation for adolescence and beyond. My experience working with children and young people over a long period of time has only reinforced that opinion.