Are we being overprotective of our children? *Triggering*

I have noticed an increasing trend towards so-called privacy glass fitted in the rear of cars here in the UK, ostensibly to replace the need for sunblinds for children (but then why call it privacy glass?). It's not like everyone has these, but on cars from the last 2-3 years it seems to be common. A school bus passes my house every morning - last week it didn't have privacy glass, but this week it has had privacy glass newly fitted on all rear windows. Is it just me or does this seem a bit over-the-top?

A few years ago a company was criticised for trying to put a tracker chip to market that could be inserted into a child's mobile phone or even under the skin of their wrist or fingertip to allow concerned parents to track their child on the Internet. The criticism was that it encroached too heavily on children's privacy and that the company were not simply meeting demand but contributing to or even aggravating a culture of fear. Rare words these days when it comes to the subject of children.

I wonder whether the criticism of the latter example could apply (albeit to a slightly lesser extent) to the former example as well. Are we becoming increasingly overprotective of children? And if so, is this not counterproductive? Instead of simply letting them be children we risk begetting or perpetuating a notion of them as permanent targets for predators, perched behind privacy glass to shield them from the prying eyes and rapacious appetites of an ostensibly polite but ultimately savage and untrustworthy public, much as monarchs are surrounded by an entourage of security staff.

So why do I raise this question on a support forum? I'm sure I'm overreacting a little, but I don't feel comfortable with a climate of fear. It's not good for anyone. It reinforces the notion that all people who look twice at a child are potential predators, it generates unhealthy levels of anxiety in parents and it means we bring up our children in a world in which the bogeyman is only ever ¼ inch of tinted glass away.

I'd be interested to hear some views on this, both from paedophiles (how do such protective measures make you feel, and do they distress or reassure you?) and non-paedophiles.

This all reminds me of a good book I read some while ago entitled "Harmful To Minors: The Peril of Protecting Children From Sex by Judith Levine. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you and everyone else do.

It's a very thorough examination of how mass hysteria over pedophilia in developed countries has increased ten-fold over the past couple decades.

It highlights from a logical standpoint how the attempt to repress child and teen sexuality has actually caused many more problems than it has solved, where sex education is often taught too late and with too much emphasis on abstinence and that anyone who looks twice is a potential predator.

I think it's gotten way out of hand for many reasons, namely society's treatment of child and teen sexuality in general. We're taught early on that it is evil, and this only fuels curiosity. Combine that with parents who are on an ego trip to protect their children in every way imaginable and you get a recipe for disaster.

My reply here will namely use the availability of child porn as an example, but I still think this is an area that needs to be discussed in relation to what you're talking about.

My own theory about this is that there is no longer as much of a demand for child pornography as there is the ease in obtaining it, because modern law has yet to catch up in many aspects with emerging technology. At my old high school for example a few years ago, two young teens had sex and took videos of it on their cell phones. In less than 2 weeks, both the video and screenshots from it had spread around the school like wildfire, and the police involved in the case had no hope of containing it because by then, the video had already been sent to kids in schools in other states.

The modern solution here in the US is now to charge teens with making child pornography of themselves and they also face possible charges as sex offenders, even if they themselves are underage.

In other cases also from what I have noticed online is that it is no longer necessary for sexual predators to leave their homes in order to have a part in making child pornography; they can go on webcam sites where teens readily expose themselves or in some cases, they will use a pre-recorded video of a girl or woman and pretend to be that person whilst they talk to these teens and get them to do whatever they want. For example, teen boys will often believe they're exposing themselves to a woman, not realizing that the "woman" is actually a perverted man who then records the video of their sexual acts and posts it on gay webcam blogs.

Someone once attempted to use my own live video against me. Granted I wasn't doing or seeking anything sexual, but it was enough to freak me out.

I think that parents are all too content these days to harp on and on about children's safety and repress their sexuality, which causes mistrust and miscommunication among parents and their young children. The kids in all probability don't understand the hysteria, and where they have sexual urges, they are ignored, told they are too young to even learn, and so they go and act out in an arena that they feel is safe, but of course they are mentally unprepared for the consequences of these actions.

And who is at fault for that? The parents. Both parents and their children should be educated about technology and what it can do, because I don't think enough people are aware of this problem.

In attempting to "protect their kids" they are only placing them in further danger.

Also, there has been a greater emphasis in recent years on police sting operations, whereby it is possible to entice someone to commit a crime who may not otherwise have done so. These operations are corrupt as well, specifically ones involving P2P networks where most people who search for child porn can find it and then get busted by police.

How this started in itself was a very corrupt practice.

In the 1970's and 80's when public awareness of child pornography increased, the police in cases which caught the pedophiles in question were told to burn the pornography, but some of them got some ideas in the 90's and began distributing it online as a way to catch more pedophiles...hence, the problem grew.

And the media became involved, statistics got overblown, etc. (much of this is in that book I mentioned).

So I believe that we're taking far too many extreme measures these days to shield children from sex so that we don't have to be responsible anymore for properly educating them, and I think that's a big mistake. Paranoia over these issues has caused such a hysteria that the effects are proving to be contrary to what people intend, and so more children are getting hurt and hurting themselves due to lack of proper parenting and proper information and education, especially where technology is concerned.

We need better laws, more rational ones. And we all need to get involved in open discussion about this, because I do not believe that it is in any human being's nature to want to harm another.

Its our beliefs and handling of the situation that is flawed, and until people begin to behave more rationally and get educated about these things, the mantra of "protecting children" only becomes an excuse and a blatant lie for being willing to succumb to a system that leaves us all blind too blind to face the obvious truth.

We are mentally and psychologically impacting children whether we realize it or not, so many parents are wrapped up in the guise of "safety" that they forget their kids just want to be kids. They're destroying innocence and psychological well-being for the sake of protecting it, and that can sometimes leave a kid to grow up feeling quite damaged.

Psychological abuse is the same, if not worse, than physical abuse.

People need to realize that not all people are predators and that they need to be prepared to handle their kids if they begin acting out from their repression. Otherwise, the kids themselves may even become overtly more sexual than they would have been if healthy discussion about it had occurred.

It is ignorant to leave sexual education solely in the hands of a school.

If parents are so worried about "child porn being rampant", they also need to address the fact that there have and will continue to be teens who take sexual videos or pictures of themselves because they don't know any better. And the parents have only themselves to blame for not properly educating their own kids and having a healthy discussion with them instead of boarding them up and building walls.

It is no longer about the stranger in his van with promises of free candy.

It's about the parents who believe that contents under pressure will not explode. They need to work on less pressure and more discussion. That's my take.

I know this was slightly off-topic, but it's an important point I've been thinking about lately.

These operations are corrupt as well, specifically ones involving P2P networks where most people who search for child porn can find it and then get busted by police.

Corrupt? No, the only corrupt is the corrupted mind who got himself busted, I support sting operations, I wish they'd sting away en masse. If you want to be this way then you eat what's coming to you.

The internet has been "free" for far too long in the united states and the results were predictable from day one. It's the most dangerous uncontrolled medium in existance.

It is ignorant to leave sexual education solely in the hands of a school.

If parents are so worried about "child porn being rampant", they also need to address the fact that there have and will continue to be teens who take sexual videos or pictures of themselves because they don't know any better. And the parents have only themselves to blame for not properly educating their own kids and having a healthy discussion with them instead of boarding them up and building walls.

(clapping) well said. Likewise stop the teaching of homosexuality in the public schools as being "normal" "natural" and "good behavior" when obviously there's nothing good or normal about it.

That's an interesting thought - overprotection as a convenience, a proxy for proper parenting. Presumably parents should teach their children how to stay safe by giving them a realistic impression of any dangers and how to handle them rather than resorting to the handy but lazy (and possibly psychologically traumatic) default option of scaremongering. To an extent, though, I think climates of fear are created by ignorance (which is also born of laziness in terms of the critical faculties). The bottom line is switch on your brain and be a good, rational parent.

Dan, I'd rather you stayed on topic and didn't try to turn every thread into your usual 'I hate gays and I'm not a gay' nonsense. If you want to express your hatred of homosexuals, praise the virtues of a religion of love whilst spouting words of odium and prejudice at every opportunity, or preach to us about the path to happiness in a tone that betrays permanent anger and misery, then by all means do so in your own thread, but not in mine.

dan1966 wrote:[

(clapping) well said. Likewise stop the teaching of homosexuality in the public schools as being "normal" "natural" and "good behavior" when obviously there's nothing good or normal about it.

That's enough of that, Dan. I'm going to put you on the mod preview in the sexuality forums and paraphilia forum, at least for a while. Anti-homosexuality posts are not appropriate here. Gay people don't hurt anyone simply by being gay.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to hurt you.

trying to crush CP, is like the war on drugs..... Futile.... Drugs have Been on the rise ever since a war on them has been declared.... and CP will be traded, made until camera are made illegal and have been destroyed... (same with drugs, want to make people not smoke weed, coke, and pcp, Get rid of the lighter...)....

When someone wants something to go away, it usually get bigger, and grows faster... In a way, it's like a revolt. When The government in Egypt tried to stop the revolt, it only got stronger....

and btw, i believe the sex offender list is wrong.... If someone is guilty and has to register b/c they pee in a park, It's BS....

Right now, we have over 700,000 people in the U.S. as registered sex offenders.... often, these people can not get a job, have a living, and get help... these laws are meant to protect people, but as the same time, they degrade those people on the list, make them out to be evil.

for someone to be registered prior to be a adult, you may as well tell them to go kill themselves... If any of the Crackheads in the government actually knew what it was like to hate tyself and then to be hated by the rest of the society is like telling them that they are scum, evil, and should die... people on the registry often are hated by everyone in their family, and can not live a semi-normal life... drug dealers who kill get treated better ffs.

I saw an advert for Werther's Original on television last night. It was very much unlike the adverts for Werther's that used to run when I was younger. I remember old ones featuring a grandfather with his grandson on his knee. Apparently they swapped grandfather for father in a subsequent round of advertising. The latest incarnation of the advert features a female narrator telling us about how she remembers having her first Werther's at five. Whilst we are told this, a stunning girl (supposedly meant to be the five-year-old, but who is clearly somewhere between eight and ten) in plenty of make-up (tastefully done, but alluringly adult, much like the Disney advert girls) enters a shop that looks like a cross between Hamley's and Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and is handed a sweet by the male figure, who is now neither grandfather nor father but simply a shopkeeper, though he's dressed like one of the chocolatiers on a Lindt advert (it's very similar in style to the Lindt adverts, so it's clear Werther's are trying to lend their product a touch of class). The only major interaction between the male figure and the girl is now a shot of his hand holding out the sweet and her hand taking it; it's gentle and benign, there's a slight pause when both are holding the sweet at the same time (but this pause is to allow the viewer to take in the sight of the product) and we get a sense of the old grandfatherly affection between old man and girl which is then reinforced by a shot of him looking down at her with a beaming smile and fondness in his eyes, looking over a pair of half-moon spectacles in a way that only an entirely asexual grandfather figure could.

What interests me is the way that the male figure has been increasingly distanced from the child figure in the subsequent incarnations of the advert, both physically and emotionally. From sitting on knee to father-son conversation to having a male figure who is simply a shopkeeper handing over a sweet. And at the same time, the child has become more 'sexualised' (for want of a better word - it's the word some hysterical members of the general public use whenever a ten-year-old girl features in Vogue in high heels and make-up, cf. the case of Thylane Blondeau). So on the one hand we have increasing sexualisation of the child and on the other increasing distance in the adult-child relationship. I'm not saying this is effected deliberately in terms of consciousness about sexuality and the erotic aspect of the adult-child relationship; in fact, I think this short article in the Daily Telegraph from 2006 shows how, ostensibly, the decision to adjust the role of the adult figure has been a product of changing perception of the necessary degree of formality in adult-child relations. Incidentally, I may have missed out on other incarnations of the advert (I lived abroad for quite a few years). But I do perceive here and in general a trend towards increased sexualisation of children and an increase in the distance required in the adult-child relationship to preserve an acceptable degree of chastity, these two trends being contemporaneous (perhaps coincidentally, but I doubt it) with soaring levels of moral panic and paranoia. Which begs the question: are we overprotective because we're afraid of the bogeyman out there or are we really denying the erotic potentiality of the young whilst at the same time affirming it?

The effects are interesting. For me, seeing young girls dressed and made-up like classy, elegant and beautiful little adults (this Werther's advert, but cf. the catalogues of clothing companies like Boden) evokes not so much what I'd want my hypothetical daughter to look like as what I would myself like to look like. When I see the girl on the Werther's advert, I see an approximation (a diminutive one, but only just on the right side of that fence) of what I would like to be. The girl appeals more to my insecurities and desires than to my idealised notion of childhood, which is only enhanced by the fact that the standard Werther's story is always narrated by an adult remembering childhood in a tone of fond nostalgia. Indeed, the advert was running late evening - a time when five-year-olds are in bed. This puts the advert in the same bracket as the ones for Sheba cat food, which feature a stunning, smiling model sashaying across the screen as she feeds her cat, with the silky smooth voice of the female narrator and seductive language appealing more to our taste, wants and needs than to those of a cat. I think we sexualise children in advertising and marketing material because we ourselves are sexual, and it is this imagery that speaks to us subconsciously and appeals more powerfully to our vanity and insecurities more than any image of idealised childhood. The child - like the cat - is rendered an extension of our own self-image, our own ego. And the increase in distance required to keep this chaste is perhaps a corollary of our unease at this process of sexualisation, at this teasing out of the erotic potentiality in children.

Just as an addendum, my cousin was recently told at his daughter's nursery play that he wasn't allowed to take photos 'in the interest of the children's safety'. Although the nursery were quick to point out that it was a general policy and not aimed at any individual, this vapid statement raises a lot of questions itself. Taken as an utterance symptomatic of prevalent sociocultural attitudes, what is being expressed here? Who is afraid, and of what?

We build a culture of a fear, because it is easier to steer frightened people to where we want them to go....

moomin wrote:We build a culture of a fear, because it is easier to steer frightened people to where we want them to go....

I think there's a lot of truth to that, though it's not necessarily a conscious process. It lends a lot of weight to emotivism (the so-called 'boo-hurray' theory), the idea that morality is a set of principles that embody the aggregate of human desires, in which moral statements come to be seen as little more than boo to this or hurray to that. We don't want people looking at our kids (boo!), so we create a climate in which people can easily be steered away from doing so. The problem is, the more something is taboo the more it fascinates.

On a superficial level, it's clear why we wouldn't want people touching our kids; the reasons include preventing trauma as well as parental jealousy and possessiveness, and probably stem from an intricate admixture of these feelings. This interpretation might be sufficient if we wiped the make-up off our children's faces, stuck them in frumpy clothes and didn't exploit their beauty in adverts aimed predominantly at adults (who are, after all, the ones with the purchasing power, even when it comes to products such as toys). The reality is we do quite the opposite - just watch toy adverts in between children's television programmes to see a panoply of beautiful girls aged under ten in lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow. Or look at the Disney adverts. Or see the baby clothing section on the website of Mamas & Papas, for instance. Within seconds you'll find images of toddlers caked in make-up, particularly mascara (for boys and girls) and a touch of lipstick (for the girls).

And that's what interests me here. It's not simply overprotectiveness, but the coexistence, perhaps even correlation, of overprotectiveness and sexualisation, and what this uneasy 'symbiosis' reveals about our collective relationship (as sexually aware adults) to children and to the notion of innocence.

Presumably parents should teach their children how to stay safe by giving them a realistic impression of any dangers and how to handle them rather than resorting to the handy but lazy (and possibly psychologically traumatic) default option of scaremongering.

Perhaps the three things parents could do is...

1) stop teaching the idiotic "stranger danger" montage that's been around for the past 50 years.

2) That there are times clothing should not be removed for anyone, even so called friends.

3) That sexual activity in childhood isn't right.

However...looking at how society is now it's no wonder my county has 21 registered sex offenders under 18 years old. The parents don't have a clue of parenting and schools endorse deviant sexual behaviors as normal, is there any wonder why sexual crime rates among juviniles have increased in the past decade?

just watch toy adverts in between children's television programmes to see a panoply of beautiful girls aged under ten in lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow. Or look at the Disney adverts. Or see the baby clothing section on the website of Mamas & Papas, for instance. Within seconds you'll find images of toddlers caked in make-up, particularly mascara (for boys and girls) and a touch of lipstick (for the girls).

exactly! There's a word for this...."prosti-tots"