Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
November 2004

The Erosion of Intergenerational Boundaries In Media and Culture

For decades now, researchers and writers have, with increasing alarm, been pointing to the rapid shrinking of the period of time called childhood. Among those sounding the alarm when our current trend towards the erosion of intergenerational boundaries began to pick up speed were the renowned child cognitive and social development expert Professor David Elkind, Ph.D, of Tufts University, with his now classic work The Hurried Child (1981, 1988, 2001), Neil Postman, educator and social critic, with his book The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) and the Reverend Richard Patterson, Jr., with Brand Name Kids, The Loss of Childhood in America (1988). In the America of today, the boundaries that once separated entertainment, consumer products, and behaviors thought to be suitable (or at least tolerable) only for adults from that thought to be suitable for minors are rapidly falling to the wayside.

The entertainment industry is notorious for breaching the barriers between what has been traditionally considered to be acceptable material for children and what is better suited for adults. Not even a movie based on the perennial pre-school favorite by Dr. Suess, The Cat in the Hat, was safe from the taint of a Hollywood treatment, one that added foul language and sexed it up with a mock erection in response to a mock centerfold.

Many mainstream films also blur the sexual boundaries between children and adults, eroticizing minors, presenting them in sexualized situations, depicting or encouraging the fantasizing about or even overtly suggesting the occurrence of what some among our cultural elite euphemistically refer to as “intergenerational sex”—i.e., adults having sex with children.

A recent example of a mainstream movie that pushed the envelope in regards to adult-child sexuality starred the internationally known actress Nicole Kidman.

The film Birth, starring Kidman, according to an October 28, 2004, report by WorldNetDaily.com was described in the NY Post as "Mary Kay Letourneau meets Ghost," in reference to “the teacher convicted of rape for a relationship with a 13-year-old and the 1990 romantic comedy.” In the R-rated film, Kidman plays a widow who becomes convinced that a 10-year-old boy is her husband reincarnated. The movie contains scenes in which Kidman kisses her child love interest, asks him—over ice cream—if he’s ever had sex, and watches as he undresses and then joins her in the bathtub.

“Playing opposite him, he allowed me to believe he was a man,” said Kidman of the 11-year-old boy who played her love interest, according to a September 8, 2004, Reuters report published on MSNBC.com. A ridiculous statement, especially coming from a mother with children just a bit younger than her child co-star. Kidman has repeatedly defended the movie’s premise, explaining that it is, according to an interview printed in the NY Post and quoted by WorldNetDaily.com, “It's not about sex, you know, it's certainly not about sex. It's about love, it's about being ... under the spell of somebody."

The movie industry, however, hasn’t cornered the market on such portrayals. ABC broadcasts a program on Thursday nights at 9pm called life as we know it. This TV-14 rated network offering, that includes run-of-the-mill sort of vulgarity and sexual material that has unfortunately become an integral part of most teen-drama programs, has featured a female teacher and male high school student sexual relationship.

Part of their sexual activity takes place in the school itself, where, according to a description published online by the American Decency Association, “the 16 year old boy and his teacher stumble into a janitor's closet clutching one another in a hot sexual scene with focus being hot passionate open-mouth kisses. She pulls down his pants. He mentions that they have no condom. She slyly produces a condom in her free hand, placing it between her teeth.”

As watchdog groups have often pointed out, the entertainment industry frequently blurs the lines between adult oriented entertainment and that which is suitable for children by attracting young viewers to more violent and sexual adult fare through advertising and other marketing campaigns that purposefully or recklessly attract many children.

The recent controversy having to do with Toys R Us, Viacom and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation offers an excellent example of such behavior.

According to a November 15 Parents Television Council report, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation “has licensed a line of toys for kids ages 8 and up.” These include a CSI: Forensics Lab that comes with a microscope and fingerprinting kit, a CSI: Forensic Facial Reconstructive Kit, and a CSI: DNA Laboratory. The PTC points out that while a press release from CBS states "the target age is 14 and up", the box that the toy forensic facial reconstructive kit comes in “clearly says "Ages 8 +" on the packaging.”

"We are pleased with this latest extension of the CSI: brand,” said Ken Ross, VP and General Manager of CBS Consumer Products in a September 28, 2004, Viacom press release on the matter.

"These unique products are a terrific example of the perfect license application,” said Jennifer Bennett, Vice President, Merchandising and Licensing of Alliance Atlantis, in the same press release. "These activity kits will appeal to the younger fans of CSI," according to John Tullock, Director of Marketing for Planet Toys, as quoted in the Viacom announcement.

And what is it that these younger fans are watching? PTC reports that aside from “close-ups of corpses with gunshot wounds and other bloody injuries” young viewers can see such CSI scenes as “cannibalism, a fully nude female corpse, and mutilated victims of a deranged killer.” Furthermore, according to PTC reports, “the sexual situations are extremely graphic. In the past, scenes included a brother and sister having sex, men receiving S&M beatings from a dominatrix in a sex club, pornographic snuff films, and a woman making a sex video for her 15-year-old stepson.”

It is not just in media and merchandising that the boundaries between childhood and adulthood are being eroded, but in our nation’s education establishment.

As if making slain rapper Tupak Shakur’s poetry required reading isn’t bad enough for Massachusetts school children, now, according to an October 27, 2004, Family News in Focus report, school administrators have approved “plans to distribute condoms to sixth-graders in the Holyoke, Mass., public schools.” Making condoms available for grades 6 through 12, apparently, is the school system’s response to “a birthrate among school-age children that is more than three times higher than the rest of Massachusetts.”

A sixth grader is typically about 11 years old. He won’t legally drive until he is 16. He won’t vote until he is 18. He can’t even have a fast-food or retail job to buy his own condoms until he is at least 14. Why is his school giving him condoms—without parental consent—when he is just 11?

There is, as pointed out by David Kupelian in his November 12, 2004, WorldNetDaily.com article, also a growing acceptance of “intergenerational sex” in the ivory tower world of academia, with even a few members of the American Psychological Association questioning the existence of harm in consensual adult-child sex.

In a March 29, 2002, WorldNetDaily.com story by Art Moore about an event at Penn State University that “featured an outspoken advocate of pedophilia and sadomasochism as a keynote speaker”, Moore referred to another news story from that week published by the Newhouse News Service. According to Moore, the story “noted that a handful of academics at mainstream universities are arguing in academic journals, books and online that at least some sex between adults and children should be acceptable, especially when children consent to it.”

That these thinkers are gaining respectability in colleges today—colleges that already host sex fairs, produce their own porn-style magazines (e.g. Harvard), welcome proponents of pedophilia, etc.—should concern us all. From these colleges come our children’s teachers, our judges, lawyers and legislators. These colleges produce those who will shape our culture and our legal system. They will protect our children—or not.

When we allow the erosion of intergenerational boundaries in media and culture, we are permitting the long established protections that children have traditionally enjoyed to fade away. We allow our children to struggle with burdens that they are not yet mature enough to bear. We place them at risk of being victimized or of making immature decisions that can forever alter or even end their lives. Children are not adults, nor should they be. It’s time to take an active role in reestablishing the sanctity and protections of childhood.