The Sexualization of Early Childhood

Gender is part of human identity, in the biological term; it refers to male and female. Human life highly relates this assortment because the God create the human in the sort of man and woman (Gen. 1:27). Children are born with sex. It is normal for children to go through the process of understanding sex and sexuality, caring relationship, and intimacy. Since born, children have exposed and experienced the differences between male and female. An infant can identity female by bubbling mom and male by bubbling da-. It is not a problem that a child learns sex and sexuality. The problem is how the children develop their sexualizations that relate the objects of their sexual desire when they expose in sexualize or sex in the all kinds of media such as TV, internet, movies, game, and advertisement. "This is especially damaging and problematic to children and adolescents who are developing their sense of themselves as sexual beings"(Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, P.4). Base on Levin and Kilbourne (2009) , "as children struggle to understand what they see and hear, they learn the lessons that can seriously harm their ability to grow up to have healthy attitudes about themselves and their bodies and to have caring relationship in which sex is an important part. The media's sexualization of childhood can contribute to pathological sexual behavior, including sexual abuse, pedophilia, and prostitution (P.4).

Children are exposing in the highly sexualized environment that negatively affected our children of learning sex and sexuality. For example, we can see in our families. Kimberly Gaston commented on my post "Gender, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation" (Sara, 2014)," I can tell you that in 2014 you can not say I have never heard homophobic terms such as "fag", "gay", "homo", "sissy", "tom boy", or "lesbo" as an insult by a child toward another child, nor, by an adult toward a child, so far." so many insult words relate the sex that children heard and learned when they were very young. We can see in our communities. Scott was sexual abused when he was 11-years-old by his friend who liked to read pornography magazines. Scott experienced that the result of the sexual abuse is the trauma, pain, and damage done inside emotionally and mentally that cannot be described with human words. He suffered long term trauma due to the sexual abuse (Nute, n.d.). "According to the most reliable studies, as many as one in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually abused at some point during their childhood (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p. 5).  We can see in the city. According to Census Bureau (United States Census Bureau (USCB), 2012), in 2011, Atlanta population of age above 16 is about 555,900. 18.3% (101,730) people are in poverty, about 28280 ((27.8% of poor) individuals are parents who are under 18 years old. For my understanding, they are teenage parents. I can not image that such young who are still teenagers could have enough knowledge of taking the responsibility on families and educating their children.

We, as early childhood professionals shall promote the children's positive self-images by supporting parents doing their job right and  learning to say no to the sexualized media and commercial culture (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p. 7). We shall never say to children any words that relate the sexualization of childhood. Explain in promote healthy attitude of children if overheard children said those words in the classroom. Educate children a positive sexual identity development way. Lee (2008) suggested, "every classroom environment can convey certain messages about values and beliefs, and such messages can impact young children as to what is considered appropriate and acceptable...an impact not only on how young children understand important social issues, such as those of gender, but also what they think about themselves and others"(p. 17) .

References

Lee, L. (2008). Understanding gender through Disney’s marriages: A study of young Korean immigrant girls. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36(1), 11-18.

Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1-8). New York: Ballantine Books.

Nute S. (n. d.). Sexual Abuse. Retrieved from http://www.scottnute.org/sexual-abuse

Sara W. (2014, March 22,)Gender, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation, retrived from http://saraecs.blogspot.com/2014_03_16_archive.html

United States Census Bureau (USCB), (2012), Economic Characteristics. Retrieve From http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml