In an Age of Children Maturing Too Quickly, Is It Possible to Stop the Clock of Innocence?
We discovered a book that is ideal for parents raising children: So Sexy So Soon. Here, the author Diane Levin, Ph.D. answers some of our questions about these issues. Levin has trained early childhood professionals at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts for over 25 years. She’s written or co-written several books about culture influences on children.
BOYT: What was your inspiration to write So Sexy So Soon?
Diane Levin: For decades, I’ve been exploring the impact of forces in society on children. In the 70s, the first article I ever wrote was on sexism and education during the women’s movement. I taught a graduate course time on sexism and education, why it was a problem and what we can do about it at Leslie University at the time.
I started to look into violence and helping children understand more about violence in the real world and for entertainment. In 1985, I wrote a book called Helping Young Children Understand Peace, War and the Nuclear Threat with Nancy Carlsson-Paige. It was about how children were hearing about violence; we talked a bit on war-play and how children used it to work on issues and violence they had heard about. We also talked about gender issues. At the time there was a lot of interest in these issues.
Teachers who had taught for 15 to 25 years were saying things like, “Well, we need to learn more about how war-play fits in. Before, we didn’t have children who were obsessed about war-play; we used to have children who started to go into war-play, but ended up abandoning it. Now we have kids who are obsessed with it and we don’t know what’s going on. They’ll bite into their crackers and turn them into guns.”
Nancy, and I looked into the situation and we found that the year before, television had been regulated. With deregulation it was possible to create TV shows to market toys. The first show was Masters of the Universe, which was a blockbuster. Star Wars was the model that replicated a whole line of products to reflect everything you saw in the movie. It became a model for movies down the line. Each movie became more sophisticated with their marketing, had more products and became more violent.
One of the things that marketers did when they got the green light to commercialize television was to use psychology to develop their shows and products. They knew that gender was a big issue for children. They were trying to define what it meant to be a boy and what it meant to be a girl. They used violence for boys and they used beauty for girls. Girls’ products never did as well as boys’ products. The products for girls became more sexualized. There was a noticeable line between products for boys versus products for girls. It was then harder to get boys and girls to play together.
At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission lost its power to regulate marketing to children. They could only recommend; the U.S. became the only country that did not have regulated powers. Kids became fair game for marketing and gender divisions. Appearances and violence became the two marketing tools that were used. Girls’ products gradually moved into fashion, and fashion was how they really started to commercialize childhood for girls. Fashion was about being pretty, looking right, and being increasingly sexy, and it escalated. Muscles on action figures became bigger and Barbie became skinnier and dressed skimpier. Children are very focused on how things look and more and more children get stuck on appearances, and cannot get beyond it.
So I’ve always been interested in seeing how these forces set children socially. It was a natural progression for me to write So Sexy So Soon.
BOYT: At what age have you found that children become concerned about their own image and sexuality?
Diane Levin: I believe it is at two-years-old. A mother of a two-year-old girl told me not that long ago that they were eating at night and there were cookies out. The mother said, “Let’s put the cookies away. We shouldn’t eat anymore. We don’t want to get fat.” The mother was a fairly thoughtful mother. After she said it she realized maybe it wasn’t the right way to put it, but she thought, “Oh well, she is so young. She won’t understand.” After the daughter began saying, “I don’t want to eat anymore mommy. I don’t want to get fat.” She generalized eating to equal fat. I actually met the mother and we talked about it. Things gradually became fine.
Another woman started a website called Disney Princess Recovery after her young daughter had become obsessed with Disney Princesses. Right before she started the site she emailed me—I’ve never received an email like this: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your book, So Sexy So Soon. I’ve copied pages 34 to 72 to give to my mother-in-law because she stopped speaking to us after my husband and I asked her to stop giving Disney princesses to our daughter, who was just about to turn three.” She said the mother-in-law and the daughter were playing dress up as princesses. It was becoming an obsession for her daughter. It’s very seductive.
BOYT: What types of behaviors do young girls learn from their mothers that parents may not even be aware of? For example, body image or weight issues?
Diane Levin: Younger mothers have been more influenced by the media. They have already been socially influenced about appearances. They’re the ones who fixed up Disney Princess bedrooms for their baby girls. It’s almost impossible to find non-divided gender clothes, starting at birth and including diapers. It may have been started by marketers and the media that way, but it’s been picked up on by consumers—it’s taken over the marketing culture for children.
BOYT: What should mothers be careful about when verbalizing in front of their daughters?
Diane Levin: I think the single most important thing that parents can do to deal with what’s going on is to connect with their children and work on relationships.
What girls and boys are learning is to objectify themselves to others. They’re learning to treat themselves as objects. It’s something that they will do anyway, and it’s amplified by what is going on around them as they get older. If you’re a girl, it’s “How I look determines my values, what I can look like and what I can buy.” At the same time, boys are learning that they have to be macho and ready to fight. That is an objectification. They are learning to judge girls based on what girls are judging themselves by. Girls are also learning to judge boys that way. When parents are successful in helping boys to feel a little more human, sometimes these boys are the ones who are bullied more. If girls don’t fit in, they’re rejected and harassed if they’re overweight or look different.
Before writing So Sexy, So Soon, I wrote three other books about violence. It was hard to write the books, but everyone agrees that violence is bad and that we need to find ways to tell children that we can’t hurt each other. It’s not okay to fight; we need to find other ways to solve our problems. But sexy in and of itself isn’t bad. While writing about little kids, I realized that it’s sexualization, not sex. When children are younger, what they need to learn is how to have caring and connection in relationships. So when they grow up, they can have caring and connected relationships, which sex supports. That was my most profound breakthrough in writing the book.
What’s happening is that relationships are being drastically undermined by all of these justifications. So sex is becoming objectified. We start hearing about “friends with benefits” and “hooking up” at younger ages. Then we have the addition of bullying getting into relationships where the divorce rate is about 50%. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if the parent says “I choose carefully.” Most products are gender-divided. Children are not engaging in the world and losing their sense of connection. They’re not learning how to accommodate their behavior accordingly. They’re losing a huge proportion of their time acting on someone else’s agenda, when they would otherwise be interacting with the world.
BOYT: At what age do you recommend parents begin discussing the impact of sexuality with children and engage in conversation about sex and the media?
Diane Levin: I think it should begin when kids are very young. First thing is, do not focus on appearances so often with our babies and toddlers. “Oh you look so pretty today.” That’s not what we should do. What we should do is say things like “Oh you bounced the ball through the net. That’s terrific!” When your little child hands you a tissue because you sneezed and they have learned the role of Kleenex, you say “Thank you! You helped mommy or daddy so much! I really appreciate you giving that to me.” Focus on actions, connections, and keeping the computer screens off as long as possible—it’s all worth it. It really is best to start with computers in school and not before then. The longer we can lay the foundation, the more resilient to the media and pop culture they’ll become. They will be less affected.
BOYT: What is the best way for a parent to initiate conversation with their young child about what is appropriate and what isn’t?
Diane Levin: Often, we just say “No that’s not appropriate” or we just give adult explanations that are just simpler, but we don’t connect. We don’t get give-and-take interactions or let kids know that what they think is important too. About 95% of adults do not know how to talk to children about violence. But once they get a vision on how to do it, they get a different model structure in their heads. There are several examples of such conversations in So Sexy So Soon. You should build the conversation from where the child is. You’re not going to have them to think exactly the way you do. Being connected that way is so important. You want your children to see you as their guide and not their critic. You can be a friend to them, but how are you being their friend matters. You can be the kind of friend to them that guides them in the right direction.
BOYT: How can parents protect their child’s innocence when we are surrounded by subliminal messaging and advertising?
Diane Levin: First, stay connected and figure out how to stay connected. Second, limit media and screen time, gradually letting it into their lives when you can monitor them; the longer you delay it, the better. Thirdly, talk about the media. “What do you like about that show?” Then when their feelings come up, ask them. “What is it that you like about this?” Not every conversation is going to be profound, but you can take it to where you can stay connected.
About Diane E Levin
Diane Levin is Professor of Education at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, where she teaches a service learning course on the reconciliation process underway in schools in Northern Ireland and a summer institute on “Media Madness and Children.”
She has written eight books including: So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and How Parents Can Protect Their Kids (with Jean Kilbourne), The War Play Dilemma, Teaching Young Children in Violent Times, and Remote Control Childhood?. She speaks around the world on the impact of violence, media and other societal issues on children, families and schools.
Diane is also a founding member of the CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood) and TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment).
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