Let children be children

A couple of weeks ago, Appoġġ,the government’s social support agency, asked a woman to remove ‘offensive’ photos of three children from her Facebook profile. All the children featured in the photos were not yet 11 years old.

One photo showed a boy holding an unlit cigarette, another had a heavily made-up girl posing with two boys in a sexy manner, and the third showed a boy pretending to shoot another boy.

These photos were posted among a set of photos of two women, posing provocatively in skimpy bikini-like outfits. Commenting on the incident, the Children’s Commissioner Helen D’Amato said the woman in question had been cooperative and removed the photos at once.

Ms D’Amato went on to say that the woman realised what she had done and concluded – very tactfully and rather optimistically – that the woman’s actions were the result of a lack of awareness.

Presumably the Children’s Commissioner was referring to the lack of awareness of the potential dangers the woman was exposing her children to by posting material which would attract online paedophiles.

Well yes – there’s that I suppose – the risk of dirty old men snooping around other people’s Facebook profiles lookingfor younger girls to ogle and children to groom. That’s not sofar-fetched.

Facebook is a happy hunting ground for these sad types who really ought to be doing something less sleazy than trawling the net and dropping cheesy chat-up lines and disgusting double entendres to girls who could be their granddaughters. I cringe when I come across this sort of behaviour – something which is becoming a more frequent occurrence as randy seniors who don’t have a clue as to how the Internet operates and who are unaware that their pick-up attempts can be read by others, try to act like Hugh Hefner.

Maybe the woman who allowed the children’s photos to be posted on her wall was not aware of the kind of unwanted attention she was exposing them to.

However, she also seems tobe completely unaware ofwhat constitutes appropriate behaviour for children. Having pre-pubescent girls caked up like little Lolitas and posing in a sexually provocative manner is not at all appropriate. It is behaviour which goes well beyond playing mummies and daddies or doctors and nurses, but is the result of children aping their parents’ overtly sexually provocative behaviour.

While we may wail at the way children are influenced by their peers and the ubiquitous effect of the media, parents are children’s primary and most important influences. If young girls grow up with a mother looking like someone out of the cast ofJerseylicious with a midriff permanently on show and with breasts forever bursting outof inadequate triangle tops, the likelihood is that they are going to assume that that’s whateverybody wears.

They are going to think that mode of dressing up is what passes for normal get-up. Children assimilate their parents’ attitudes and styles and reproduce them. If they observe their parents placing an inordinate amount of attention to dressing provocatively, that kind of attitude is going to wear off on them, and they will do likewise.

And if their parents think nothing of posting every single snap of them with teeny bikinis and denim cut-offs on a public forum where every stranger canogle them, children will think it is perfectly acceptable.

The issue of the premature sexualisation of children was discussed in the UK last year. At the time, David Cameron had criticised the way certain companies were using sexual imagery to advertise products meant for children.

He had said that although it was impossible to cut children off from the commercial world, it was important that they are allowed to have a childhood and that they are not subject to unnecessary and inappropriate commercialisation and sexualisation from a young age.

A report commissioned by the Home Office warned that children were being increasingly exposed to sexual imagery with deleterious effects as children bombarded with sexual images came awaywith the idea that sex was all that matters.

The best – but most dire – analysis was provided by Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at Kent University. He concluded that society as a whole and adults were to blame.

He said: “The whole of society is hypersexualised – sex becomes the common currency through which adults make their way in the world and continually send a signal to children that sex is all that matters”.

Furedi went on to say that, “one of the big problems that we are faced with is that increasingly adults have lost the capacity to draw a line between their own attitudes and those of children and increasingly we’re recycling adult attitudes about sex through the prism of children.”

That’s precisely what is happening and why children are turning into ever-younger Lolitas.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt