Sexualistation of Young People

Sexualisation of Young People Review
42
The role of parents
Parents are a powerful force in shaping
their children’s attitudes to gender
and sexuality. Girls’ interactions with
their mothers will tend to inform their
own response to cultural messages
about thinness and body ideals: 179
there is a clear link between the
extent to which mothers focus on
their own thinness, their tendency to
criticise their daughters’ weight and
the likelihood of those girls developing
an eating disorder. 180 Father’s attitudes
have a noticeable impact on the
gender-typing of children’s activities and
the extent to which children conform
to the norm. 181
There are some key variations by
ethnic group. One US study 182 found
that white mothers routinely engaged
in ‘fat talk’ with their daughters,
describing the girls as ‘... surrounded
by excessive concerns over physical
appearance and talk of feeling fat.’
Messages from fathers tended to be
critical and often included a sexual
element, such as a reference to a
daughter starting to develop breasts.
By contrast, African-American girls
were getting much more positive
feedback from their parents. While
dieting rates were similar to those for
white girls, African-American girls had
higher levels of body satisfaction and
self-esteem and were less worried
about their weight.
179180181182183
179 Ogle and Damhorst (2004)
180 Hill, Weaver and Blundell (1990); Levine, Smolak, Moodey, Shuman and Hessen (1994)
181 McHale, Crouter and Tucker (1999)
182 Nichter (2000)
183 Levin and Kilbourne (2008)
Parents can also contribute to the
sexualisation of their children in very
direct ways. For example, in the US,
children’s beauty pageants are high
profile events. Although the number
of children actually taking part is
relatively small, coverage in news, TV
programmes and advertising means
that the phenomenon has entered the
mainstream. Increasingly, too, parents
are allowing and even encouraging their
children to undergo plastic surgery (see
page 58) as a means of ‘fixing’ poor body
confidence or low self-esteem.
Conversely, parents also have a vital role
to play in supporting their children to
cope with and contextualise sexualised
images and messages. Researchers
point to the damage that can result
when children lack the emotional
sophistication and psychological
development to understand what they
are seeing and suggest that the solution
is for parents to play a more active role
in communicating with their children
about sexual matters. 183
However, there are limits to what
parents can achieve alone. It is
imperative that companies that promote
the premature sexualisation of children
for their own commercial interests act
more responsibly, and that companies,
advertisers and media outlets are
aware of and take steps to minimise
the negative impact that the images and
messages they promote are having on
children and young people.