UK tries to limit sexualisation of children

UK Prime Minister David Cameron gave his backing today to plans to shield British children from the spread of sexualised imagery in magazines, advertising and music videos. Cameron said the Bailey Review, a report into the sexualisation of children, represented "a giant step forward for protecting childhood and making Britain more family-friendly". The report recommends lewd pop videos be restricted to later television slots and magazines featuring sexualised images covered up on shelves. It also wants a new website to be created for parents to complain about inappropriate marketing.

“It’s almost impossible to protect your child from sexualized media,” said Miranda Suit, the co-founder of the British charity, Safermedia, who says she is grateful there has been an official review. Suit told Vatican Radio parents need support in protecting their children from over-sexualisation.

“We think it is absolutely vital to give parents support, because there are going to be more parents where both father and mother are working, there are going to be more pressures on families in general,” she said. “Certainly, the biggest complaint we’ve had…is from parents who say that they are trying very hard to protect their children, and sometimes they succeed within their home to create a very family-friendly environment, but as soon as the child is outside, or as soon as the child is on the internet unsupervised, there is a terrible world of very explicit sexual material out there.”

She said parents are hoping the government changes its policy of leaving the matter exclusively in the hands of parents.

“They have said that because in the past the government has tended to emphasize parental responsibility – and of course parental responsibility is very important – but very responsible parents have been finding that even they cannot do a good enough job, in their opinion, because as the Bailey Review says, there is this wallpaper throughout our environment of sexually explicit images,” she said.

Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Miranda Suit: