The Sexualization of Children – Breaking Down Security in the American Family

Family Security Matters ^ | 9/18/08 | Tom McLaughlin

[wagglebee]

When parents tell me their oldest child is going to be in middle school, I sense they have mixed feelings. They’re proud but worried. They’re worried about their children’s loss of innocence. No parent can put that off forever, of course, but they shouldn’t have to worry about it when their kids are only 11 years old. When it’s parents against the culture, I hate to admit it but the culture is likely to win. Parents know this at some level and fear it.

 

Students are more sexual these days than I ever remember. I shouldn’t be surprised given the escalating sexualization of the entire culture in which we all live. Our children grow up permeated by sex on the television they watch, in the music they listen to, in the literature they read, and in the advertising they’re continually bombarded with from all angles every single day. So of course I’m going to see it more in class, and it can be awkward at times.

 

On the first day of school I passed out textbooks, just as I’ve done for decades. I have to record what number book each student gets, so I call their names one at time and they tell me what it is. In four out of five classes, at least one student said he or she had textbook number 69. Each time, there were knowing looks and snorts by other students, mostly boys but not exclusively. There should only be one book numbered 69 in the whole batch of course, but at least three students last year had changed the number in the book they were assigned.

 

I had to decide in an instant if I was going to confront the sniggling behavior or let it pass. The first time, I ignored it. I recorded the 69 in my computer and called the next student’s name. When it happened again in the second class, I realized that at least one of the books had been altered and I had to ask myself how I would deal with it. To do so in the moment would call more attention to it. Considering that there may still be many students who didn’t know what sexual connotations the number 69 has, I hesitated. My attention to the matter would cause them to ask questions and find out.

 

Maybe I’m naive to assume they’re unworldly, but I hope not. I wanted to believe most of them – maybe only some at this point – are still innocent enough at 13 or 14 to understand why the boys were snickering. So, I ignored it the second time, but I was disturbed. This was the first day of school. I’ve been teaching a long time and it wasn’t always this way. I ignored it in the third and fourth classes too and tried to put it out of my mind by filing it in the mental folder I call “another depressing sign of the times.”

 

Last fall, nearby Portland’s school board gave King Middle School permission to prescribe birth control to students as young as 11. Last spring, the Centers For Disease Control reported that 1 in 4 teenage girls in America ages 14-19 has a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). I remember how sad I was reading that. I remember mentioning it to a group of teachers the same day and getting no response. It made me feel like a dinosaur. I’m not the oldest teacher in the district, but I’ve been here the longest. Sometimes I feel like yelling to students and teachers that it wasn’t always this way, but what good would it do? It’s the way things are now and I guess it has to continue trending like this until a critical mass in the wider culture out there says, “Enough!”

 

I hope I’m still around when it happens.

 

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Tom McLaughlin Tom is a history teacher and a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. He writes about political and social issues, history, family, education and Radical Islam. E-mail him at tommclaughlin@fairpoint.net.

[wagglebee]

It’s the way things are now and I guess it has to continue trending like this until a critical mass in the wider culture out there says, “Enough!”

Except we may never reach that point.

[wagglebee]

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[SumProVita]

Home school.

[wagglebee]

Education/Homeschool Ping

[ripley]

“the sexualization of children...”

how sad; that children are not only murdered in the womb, but their souls are distorted and warped in a systematic and deliberate manner, to be softened up for conformance to a regimented society that frowns on sexual restraint and respect for the reproductive process.

IMHO

[trisham]

I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for a conservative to teach in a public school these days.

[Maelstorm]

Someday they will step over a line that can not be retreated from. Right now I’m happy to have my children taught at home.

[Shadow44]

Or to even have moral standards as a teenager.

[trisham]

Imho, the only choices today are home schooling or private schools.

[DJ MacWoW]

If you are going to toss your young ones into a pack of wolves, why be surprised if they return snapping and snarling like wolves?

[Man50D]

Attacking the foundation of the ocuntry, the family, is one of several methods used by socialists to repalce our Democratic Republic with socialism. Some of the points of the Communist Goals that were read into the 1963 Congressional Record illustrate this plan.

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

[BBell]

My kids were always asking what the commercial was about whenever this guy showed up:

I told them it was for a pill that makes your feet grow. They believed me until my daughter got in middle School and found out. My daughters friends thought she was naive. I wish she still was. Now my daughter laughs whenever the "viva viagra" commercials come on because she knows I hate them. BTW, these commercials are coming on all the time when I watching Fox News.

[narses]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[narses]

Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[narses]

[constitutiongirl]

Your post is accurate and chilling.

[Amelia]

Except we may never reach that point.

As long as parents insist on dressing their preschool-aged girls like streetwalkers, and allowing their older girls to dress that way...

And especially when the mothers dress that way too...

As long as we have parents who never married, or who are divorced and shacking up with their latest "love interest" in front of the kids...

As long as parents allow their children to listen to rap and rock music with explicit lyrics....

As long as we have parents allowing children to watch television shows with suggestive plots, and even allowing elementary-aged children to watch R-rated movies...

I could go on and on, but as long as this is going on at home, what do you expect children to bring to school?

Most children are not learning these things at school, they are learning them at home.

[Quix]

A mother of a 12 year old in my intro to psych class asked me how to handle her 12 year old son . . .

The son had been observed by her—happenstance she saw it—absolutely pawing—would have been molesting his girlfriend had she not been obviously mutually engaged.

I gave some decent comments about limits and boundaries but feel I didn’t do a good job at all.

HOW ABOUT IT, FREEPER SUPER PARENTS—PLEASE HELP THE SHRINK here.

[Gabz]

Imho, the only choices today are home schooling or private schools.

I went to Catholic school and at least 1/3 of the girls in my 7th grade class were sexually active in one way or another --- and I was in 7th grade in 1973.

Where I live, the private school is where the troublemakers from the public schools wind up. None of the good kids want any part of that place, nor do their parents.

[Robulus]

Quite frustrating I am afraid. A parent sent an e-mail to my principal Friday stating that he had contacted our state chapter of the ACLU for teaching religion, morals, and conspiracy theories to his child, one of my 140 students. No specifics given in the e-mail. My students respond overwhelmingly well to my teaching which appropriately encourages living right and honoring, not corrupting our bodies. I teach them to be critical thinkers and to be no ones fool in life. They are seeking steadfast direction. The adults involved are another story altogether.