Younger and younger children are asking sex-related questions

Eight-year-old asks children's hotline about dildos and pornography

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By Riitta Vainio
     
      Younger and younger Finnish children are today faced with issues relating to sex and sexuality.
      Children of only 8 to 10 years of age call up the child and youth hotline and ask about matters that might floor even a good many adults.
     
For example, an eight-year-old child might ring and ask questions like what is porn, what is a dildo for, or what does ”fucking” mean.
      Tatjana Pajamäki-Alasara, who manages the child and youth hotline of the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare, says that those children who call the hotline describe concepts and events that are familiar from television programmes.
     
Some of the callers have seen pornography from sites on the Net, or have got hold of adult entertainment videos or sex toys.
      Moreover, changes in their own bodies are bound to puzzle pre-teens and to cause questions.
      For example, as many as a thousand young girls have called the hotline to ask about menstrual periods, as they have been too scared or embarrassed to discuss the matter with their own mother.
     
According to Pajamäki-Alasara, questions relating to sexuality and children’s and teens’ own development have increased significantly over the past few years.
      Especially young boys’ need to ask about matters relating to sex has increased over the current decade, if we are to believe the statistics gathered from the child and youth helpline.
      Towards the end of the decade, even the number of sex-related questions asked by young girls has increased.
     
The largest group inquiring about sex-related matters consists of tweens aged 11 to 13, while questions about sex have increased particularly in the group of boys aged 8 to 10.
      Even children as young as eight can call the hotline in order to share their concerns regarding sex.
      Pajamäki-Alasara herself has a child who will soon turn eight.
      The mother’s greatest worry is how she could protect her child against incoming signals and messages that do not belong to a child’s world. Such matters come into plain sight for example on television, on the magazine racks in the supermarket, or in the flyer headlines of newsstand papers and magazines.
     
”In today’s world, parenting is not exactly a piece of cake”, Pajamäki-Alasara notes.
      Primarily, parents are responsible for protecting their child.
      ”However, I expect some joint responsibility also from the society, as everybody is responsible for growing children. If there is anything that can be done to secure their development, I hope that even the society would commit itself to the task”, Pajamäki-Alasara goes on.
      Th supervision of the use of the Internet is the least that the parents of children and tweens should do in order to protect their children, Pajamäki-Alasara insists.
     
The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare released recommendations on Friday of last week on how to provide a healthy secure childhood for all children.
      Adults have to prevent children from getting hold of material that could be harmful to their development. Adults also have to supervise children’s use of the Internet.
      Parents must do their bit to protect children by not letting them see television programmes that are not meant for them. It is not only programmes screened "after the watershed" that are not suitable for young children.
     
Parents have a duty to ensure that their own sex lives remain a personal matter and to protect young children from seeing adult sex, or x-rated adult movies and sex toys.
      Parents have to make sure that children are informed of the perfectly normal changes in their bodies already before they reach adolescence and teenagerhood.
     
It is important to discuss sex and sexuality with children, and for adults to provide at least some kind of counterweight to what is out there - to question the glossy human relationship models that are churned out by the media and warped by the porn industry, where sex is often seen merely as a performance sport without emotional attachments.
      Young people's need to discuss sexual-related health troubles should also be taken into account in school and student health services, urges the Mannerheim League.
     
The Mannerheim League, founded in 1920, is the largest child welfare organization in Finland.
      It has more than 90,000 members and 564 local associations throughout the country.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.3.2010


Links:
  Mannerheim League for Child Welfare

RIITTA VAINIO / Helsingin Sanomat
riitta.vainio@hs.fi