Status of Childhood today
February 12, 2011 by Akilah Richards
In my opinion, childhood is an endangered concept in our society. The notion it “takes a whole village to raise a child” is rapidly declining the way I see it, though child molestation and pediphilia have been around for decades, the fact is we can no longer trust everyone in our “village” to raise our children. When I was growing up, the same evils of society were there but I was fortunate enough to have parents who sheltered me from them. They kept my innocence as a child alive in both what I saw and what I thought. I believe that childhood is the responsibility of the parent and those who are termed family for the child should ensure that these children are not growing up faster than they should. This means monitoring media (television shows, radio songs), even other children who appear to be a little to “grown” for their age. The fact of the matter is that our children are being exposed to more at a younger age song lyrics and media sell sex to our children openly. Though childhood is subjective due to factors like culture/society childhood is the vital time for learning and whether we accept it or not our children appear to be learning much faster. In some videos on youtube ( a little lengthy) I found some evidence that supports these claims about exposure and our children. These videos expose children’s clothes with explicit sexual innuendo, some show children mimicking celebrities like Beyonce and Miley Cyrus dressed in “provocative” ( I use this term loosely) wear and dancing in “sexy” ways. In my opinion childhood is declining because of the lack of parenthood. If parents were doing everything that they had to do to child-proof society atleast within their grasp, I do not think this argument would even exist. We as a society already know that the concept of childhood is declining on a broad scale but it didn’t happen over night, therefore the argument should become what are the parents doing about protecting their children in a society that is continuoslydangerous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jppUkWGKgls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nna8Q1RkBbQ
