The Sexualization of Early Childhood

Sexualization is becoming aware of sexuality, especially in relation to men and women, this is being encouraged today by the adverts on television. It is so common today to see a lot of disgusting and offensive adverts that are not morally right by all standards, but you see a lot of families and children gravitating towards such adverts because it is being promoted and accepted by the pop culture. All this can be seen in today’s fashion, music and the iconography of pop culture.

In the good old days most families make a good arrangement for their children to be taken care of, but nowadays a lot of mums are working to make ends meet. Most of the time when they come back from work they are really tired and pay less attention to their kids and this now encourages technology to do the baby sitting for them. Most of the sites our children visit is alarming by all moral standards.

One of the ways I have experienced sexualization of early childhood is through a popular dance group, this particular dance group encourages children to wear very skimpy and revealing outfits that leaves nothing to the imagination of whoever is watching, and also the heavy make-up applied on the faces of these young children just make them look like sexual objects.

The implication of this sexualization has made a lot of young girls to be more focused on looks, appearance and sex appeal.  I don’t know if it is a generational thing, most children of the millennial generation are so drawn to looking so slim so as to please their friends or should I say they have specific image of how they want to look like and all this is because of the adverts they see on television.

Generational differences contribute a lot to how we place importance on different issues, millennials might not see the world in the same way as the baby boomers and generation X. A lot of children are so glued to the internet, they find friendship there and feel free communicating to total strangers online. Most of them fall into the wrong hands and are used as sex slaves.

What I think early childhood professionals should do to tackle this problem is to enlighten parents on how to create rules that will reduce how their children use the internet. Parents should not be forced to buy certain advertised goods just because their kids want those goods. Boys and girls should develop a range of interest, their interest should not be based on their gender.

Reference:

Levine, D., E & Kilbourne, J. (2009). So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids.