Sexualisation, violence, commercialisation, commodification: Right to Childhood conference hears evidence of harm to children
From Melinda Tankard Reist's blog.
The Right to Childhood conference last Friday at Sydney’s Wesley Centre was a wake-up call to a society hell bent on forcing children to be exposed to imagery and messages which wreak havoc on their physical and mental health. Initiated by Dr Ramesh Manocha of HealthEd and co-sponsored by Collective Shout, close to 400 people heard expert evidence on just how bad things are for children and young people: and how all the indicators on health and wellbeing are set to worsen if not addressed as a matter of urgency.
Here’s a sample of some of the media coverage, and some related media treatment this week of issues impacting children.
Channel 10 News Segment: Right 2 Childhood Seminar
Advertisers blamed for increasing sexualisation: The World Today
Advertisers using 'same tricks as sexual predators’
…Ms Hamilton says her research indicates modern advertising is becoming increasingly exploitative, especially towards children…
"I have done a paper recently which looks at how the corporations do market products, whether it is clothing or cosmetics or whatever - toys - to kids, and interestingly they use exactly the same tools as sexual predators do to groom children," she said…
Another speaker at the conference, writer and social researcher Melinda Tankard Reist, says she is sickened by deliberate marketing - often with sexual undertones - to children as young as six months.
"They are very callous. I mean this is one of the reasons we use the term corporate paedophilia, because corporations are in a sense abusing children," she said.
"They are driving childhood out of children and we see this as a systemic assault on childhood…" Read full story here
Advertisers should own up to harmful images says Australian Childhood Foundation
ADVERTISERS would have to publish "impact statements" detailing how their ads could harm youngsters, under a plan being pushed by a children's lobby group.
Australian Childhood Foundation chief Joe Tucci said children as young as six were showing inappropriate sexual behaviour, which he blamed on saturation levels of violent and sexually explicit images in advertising, music videos, and computer games…
His call for companies using sexual or violent images to produce the impact statements comes amid growing concerns over the sexualisation of children.
Dr Tucci told a Sydney conference yesterday that 200 children showing inappropriate sexual behaviour were referred to his group a year, compared with 10 children a year a decade ago.
"There are children displaying aberrant sexual behaviour who can't even tie their shoelaces yet," he said.
"We ask children in counselling where they get these kind of ideas," he said. "They pick out magazines, they pick out pictures and videos…" Read full story here
Advertising Standards Bureau chief executive Fiona Jolly “denied there needed to be tougher restrictions on advertisers”.
We disagree and believe the industry has had its way too long. See Collective Shout’s submissions here and here which argue that self-regulation has failed.
Kids too afraid to eat
CHILDREN as young as four are being hospitalised for eating disorders after refusing to eat and going on dangerous diets in their quest to be thin.
The largest eating disorders clinic in NSW, based at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, has reported a 270 per cent spike in the number of children being admitted to hospital over the past decade.
Even more alarming is the rise in the number of children being treated as outpatients at the hospital - it has increased more than 10-fold, up from 298 in 2003 to 3157 in 2009.
Clinic co-director Dr Michael Kohn said patients are getting younger.
"The average age for presentation is decreasing and the reason is the stress on young people has increased, so that those people vulnerable to develop eating disorders are doing so at a younger age," Dr Kohn said.
On Thursday alone, Dr Kohn saw 12 new patients including a five-year-old. Read full story here
Princesses of the pageant prepare for protests
…Melinda Tankard Reist, of lobby group Collective Shout, which is organising the petition to ban child beauty pageants, said presenting children in such a way was tantamount to child abuse. ''I think any Australian who cares about the welfare of little girls doesn't want to see them dressing up like Tammy Faye Bakker or Joan Collins,'' she said.
Collective Shout's petition, which has more than 1200 signatures, will be sent to federal Minister for Early Childhood Peter Garrett and Victorian Minister for Children Wendy Lovell…Read full story here. And great to see 95% of voters in an SMH poll are also opposed to child beauty pageants in Australia.
See also:
Child Beauty Pageants: the misconceptions
"Being a little Barbie doll says your body has to be a certain way and your hair has to be a certain way. In girls particularly, this can unleash a whole complex of destructive self-experiences that can lead to eating disorders and all kinds of body distortions in terms of body image." Read full blog article by Collett Smart here.
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