The Age of Sexual Exploration
Latency age is considered to be between five or six
and puberty. During these ages kids are more
typically caught up in activities made available by
school, parents or independent play. Their activity is
influenced by a desire for fun, adventure, learning
and skill building. While gender may factor into
decisions regarding activities, sexuality is not
typically the driver of children’s engagement.
Adolescence is quite different. While still involved
in all sorts of activities, sexuality emerges as a more
influential driver of teen engagement. No longer are
kids making decisions on just the basis of fun, but on
how to have fun in the context of their developing
sexuality and attraction to others. Adolescence has
traditionally been the age of sexual exploration and
experimentation in a social context.
Enter the Internet and enter advertising. As a result
and influence of both, the age of exploration in a
sexual-social context has become steadily younger
and younger.
The Internet provides exposure to decontextualized
sexual behaviour – that is to say, sex for sex’s sake
independent of an intimate emotional relationship
between the participants. Whether accessed the
result of curiosity or accident, younger and younger
children are exposed to sexual content the likes of
which just wasn’t available in prior history.
Advertising, keying on latency aged children’s desire
to role model older kids, has capitalized on sexual
expression to capture market share on any given
commodity. Kids are taught through advertising
media, that their value and worth will be more
determined by the sexual responsiveness they can
engender in others towards themselves, than by
academic, artistic or athletic accomplishment. Gone
are the days of feeling good about oneself the result
of skill development and mastery and here is the time
of worth being a reflection in the glint of someone
else’s eye for sexual desirability.
As such children are exposed to and chasing sexual
behaviour in the absence of a cognitive or emotional
capacity to appreciate their actions, more and more
kids are getting into trouble. Today’s children are at
greater risk of sexual exploitation and voluntarily
engaging in behaviour that undermines moral
development. These owls come home to roost come
adolescence and young adulthood, when the skills of
relationship building are confused with sexual
behaviour.
The best medicine in view of these issues is
preventative medicine. Parents are cautioned to be
aware of children’s on-line activity and to provide
limits and guidance with regard to the choice of
clothing, activities, and yes, even friends.
Now more than ever parenting as a verb, an action
word, takes on more weight. We cannot afford from
a social, moral or even behavioral developmental
perspective to idly assume our kids are safe from
harm, even when tucked in their own beds.
Computer access still should remain in public places
within the home and communication devises should
sleep outside of the bedroom when the child sleeps
inside the bedroom. Parents must have access to all
children’s on-line accounts and before checking
one’s own social media page, parents must first
check that of their child’s.
We didn’t let our kids wander aimlessly into dark
forests, polluted ponds or dart out between parked
cars to busy streets. Now we must provide guidance
and supervision as our kids engage the most
dangerous highway of all, the super highway called
the Internet and we must provide limits upon the
influence of marketers whose sole purpose has only
to do with profit share over welfare.
Gary Direnfeld, MSW, RSW
(905) 628-4847
gary@yoursocialworker.com
http://www.yoursocialworker.com
Gary Direnfeld is a social worker. Courts in Ontario,
Canada, consider him an expert in social work,
marital and family therapy, child development,
parent-child relations and custody and access
matters. Gary is the host of the TV reality show,
Newlywed, Nearly Dead; parenting columnist for the
Hamilton Spectator; and author of Marriage Rescue.
Gary maintains a private practice in Dundas Ontario,
providing a range of services for people in distress.
He speaks at conferences and workshops throughout
North America.