The
Sexualiziation of Early Childhood
We
are exposed to sexy images so much that I miss a lot of them. Late night and
sometimes early evening television will show images that will make me feel like
I am invading on someone’s private time.
There are times when I am watching television with my daughter and she
will say “now that makes me uncomfortable.”
Some children see images and want to copy what they see, some children
live in a world where they are seeing family members be trivialized and
objectified and they don’t know any different.
This week on some news program that my son was watching they were
talking to a Mom who was “too sexy” for her children, she had undergone several
operations to enlarge her bust and they, the children were unhappy about not
only the operation but the attention that their mother was receiving. The Mother told the story of how she could
not make ends met before the operations and after she could support her
children. Her children who are very
young could talk about her breast and how hard it was for her to sleep and the embarrassment
they suffered from being seen with her.
Will these children have problems with relationships later on because of
this? I don’t know. They know that their Mom is an object to
people, that she is stared at and seen as an oddity. I think that their personal choices and their
personal identity will be shaped by their life lessons.
The
images that we see and that our children see should be addressed by parents in
my opinion. What one family may think of as too sexy the next may not. One culture may define as sexy may not be the
same for another culture. In the school
system we are told how long our skirts should be how high our tops should be ,
and what is appropriate to wear. If we
were to live in a topical country would our dress code be different?
For
me I think that as parents it is our responsibility to talk to our children and
guide our children in the manner that we feel is right, as professional I think
it is our responsibility to understand our families and know how they feel
about the dress that their children are wearing and what they think their
children are ready to talk about in terms of sex. Children may grow up faster than we are ready
for them when they are exposed to sexual messages. They may want to try things before their mind
and bodies are ready. We need to teach
them to respect theirselves, to know how to talk about what they are experiencing,
to respect each other.
Levin
and Kilbourne talked about the new sexualizie childhood and how if we limit our children to certain
gender roles we run the risk of not allowing them to grow as a whole child, we
may impact the skills that they need. If we teach our boys only things that we think
are male things they may not learn how to nurture, if we teach our girls only
things that we think are feminine they will miss out on things. When I was
growing up my Mother would say, you have to know what each other are doing and
how to do it, but there were still things that the girls did and things that
the boys did. Yard work was for the boys, and when they had yard work they didn’t
have to take turns with the dishes.
The
one thing that the reading have taught me about myself is that, I still feel
that there are things that are more appealing to boys and there are things that
are more appealing to girls, not to say that only girls will like some things
or only boys will like something’s. I can not see myself telling a little boy
that’s it okay for him not to call himself a boy or a little girl not to identify
herself as a girl, it is biology. If we
don’t label things as “girl” or “boy” than maybe for most cases we won’t have
children feel as if they are doing something taboo.
References:
Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias
education for young children and ourselves. Washington, D.C.: National
Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
"Learning about Fairness: Race and Gender"
Katch, H., & Katch, J. (2010). Voices inside
schools: When boys won't be boys: Discussing gender with young children. Harvard
Educational Review, 80(3), 379-390.
Wardle, F. (2011). Responding to racial and ethnic
diversity in early childhood programs. Exchange (01648527), 198,
68-71
