Parents' Forum

March 2010 7pm

In our seemingly ceaseless appetite to problematise teenagers, the latest discussion is the sexualisation of children. Cameron and Balls are fighting it out as to who identified this issue first, and who can introduce the most regulations against advertisers.

This forum critically examines are children being sexualized? What does this mean? What is the content of the strategies proposed to counteract this alleged sexualisation and what do they mean for how we think about children, sex, and adult authority.

The forum will be introduced by Dr Jan McVarish.
Dr Jan Macvarish is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Kent. Her interests lie in the sociology of interpersonal relationships, parenting, family life, sex and intimacy.

Contact Jane Sandeman at parents@instituteofideas.com for details of the venue.

Some articles to read beforehand:
Linda Papadopoulos on the Sexualisation of Young People

Stop sexualising children, says David Cameron

Carol Sarler: The dressing-up box is a pretty safe place for little girls to play

Let children be children

The British Family looks to be an interesting 4-part series presented by Kirsty Young. On BBC2 at 9pm from Monday 11 January 2010.

Here’s the promo: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q08ft

And here’s a piece about the background to the series: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8441207.stm

(Republished from the Spiked Review of Books, 25 September 2009)

Jennie Bristow’s new book is as engaging and witty as those rebellious ‘bad mum’ memoirs. But it’s far more important, both explaining and critiquing the tsunami of state meddling in family affairs.
by Ann Furedi.

‘[W]e are adults, not children to be bossed around. We should and must take responsibility for our own families and stand in solidarity with other parents.’

Jane Sandeman’s foreword to Jennie Bristow’s witty, incisive and eminently readable book sums it up succinctly. The book is a clarion call for parents to resist the experts’ persuasion that ‘there is a recipe to be assiduously followed’ that will produce the perfect child.

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I was watching clips of old cricket matches yesterday (don’t ask) with my husband and 10 year old daughter. At the end of the Test Match at Edgbaston in 1981 when England won the match, the crowd invaded the pitch. My daughter couldn’t fathom what was going on – this was so alien to anything she’d ever seen. We told her that was what it was like in the olden days-people did those kind of things.

But it does make you wonder what this means for children. What does it mean that they live in a world where public space and private space is so controlled? Even their first experience of going to nursery is that there are barriers to entering the space.