Children should be seen and heard
Catherine Lumby, 22/6/08;Professor Catharine Lumby is director of the journalism and media research centre at the University of NSW.
A male friend of mine was at a dance class with his three-year-old daughter. The kids were twirling around, having a ball. A typical proud father, he took out his video camera to record the moment. He knew the class allowed parents to film the kids. A woman approached him and asked him to put the camera away. She was suspicious because he was a man filming young children.He complied. Thinking about it later, he was enraged. I felt for him. Our sons play together and he’s a wonderful father - exactly the kind of man we want involved in our children’s lives.
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How have we come to a situation where a man like my friend is under automatic suspicion for videoing his young daughter discovering the pleasures of dancing? And what’s at stake in sending men the message that they are viewed as potential pedophiles first, and caring members of our community second?
We are only recently coming to terms with the extent of child sexual abuse. We’re reeling, I think, from the knowledge of how extensive it has been and is.
We’re struggling with the fact that the vast majority of abuse is perpetrated by family members and people well-known to the victims, including people who work in trusted educational, sporting and religious institutions.
It’s confronting to realise that something so horrific could be part of our social structure, rather than something perpetrated by monsters who jump out of bushes. It’s tempting to think there must be something “out there” that is fuelling this behaviour - that it must be pictures in a retail catalogue or young girls wearing crop tops.
As a parent as much as an expert in the field of media and youth, I believe that blaming images of kids for child sexual abuse is a very dangerous path to go down. It reminds me of the days when we blamed women for rape because they were wearing a short skirt.
Those who prey on children will naturally look for excuses for their behaviour. But the idea that we should respond by telling our kids they have to cover up or by searching for “come-hither” looks in photos of 10-year-old girls is a kind of madness. It asks all of us to start looking through the eyes of a pedophile - a completely aberrant gaze to bring to our children.
Preventing child sexual abuse is one concern animating the sexualisation-of-children debate. The other, is the extent to which children and young teenagers are now so bombarded by media and marketing that many parents feel powerless to control it. People of my generation grew up when television came in one colour and a couple of channels. Suddenly our kids are doing four things online at once.
It’s a confronting time for people who care about children and young people. But it’s equally a time when we need to think rationally about what needs to be done to protect children and young teenagers from harm.
A recent book by Maggie Hamilton titled What’s Happening To Our Girls? examines these issues. It’s heartening to see an author writing on this subject actually talking to girls and young women. We certainly need to hear a lot more from them if we want to understand
how they’re faring in a highly mediated and consumerist world. Unfortunately the book sometimes falls into the trap of simply counting off the negative aspects of contemporary life. Teenage girls’ sexuality is mainly discussed as a threat to their well-being. There’s little discussion of what they might enjoy about their emerging interest in love, sex and relationships.
One of the problems with the debate is that we seem to be sweeping eight-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds under the same tent. A 15-year-old isn’t an adult, but she is not a child, either. We need to acknowledge that young women have as much right as young men to explore their emerging sexuality and not constantly send them the message that it’s only “sluts” who have sexual feelings.
In our submission to the recent Senate inquiry into the issue, Dr Kath Albury and I argued the need for a federal sex education curriculum that ensures all children and teenagers get age-appropriate sex education, giving them an opportunity to talk about values and explore what they’re learning from the media.
We also argue that media industries need to work with the Federal Government to set up and fund a one-stop shop where consumer complaints can be funnelled to the appropriate complaints body and parents and young people can gain access to resources to help them make decisions about age-appropriate media content.
Above all, we need to be talking to our children about their media consumption - about what they enjoy, as well as what might be harming them. We need to listen to what they tell us, as well as guide them in their decision-making.