Sexualisation and our children

Recently on the BBC TV programme Question Time a question was asked about the sexualisation of our children; there has been a bit of an outcry recently about some of the music videos being shown on television and the selling of padded bras to pre-pubescent girls. Germaine Greer, the feminist answered with some pseudo-Freudian psycho babble about girls flirting with their fathers when they kiss them goodnight. And a number of the other panelists answered with the usual politically correct answers. Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday columnist made some interesting points and was laughed at and lambasted by the audience. But what he said was interesting, and if any of the audience had listened to him they would have realised that he was speaking a lot sense.

Prior to the 1960's Great Britain was a very conservative country, having a child outside of marriage was seen as wrong, being a single mother was frowned upon. Marriage was seen as sacred, and divorce was an unusual event, abortion was illegal and so was homosexuality. During the 1960's a revolution occurred, and in 1967 abortion was legalised and homosexuality was legalised as well. In 1961 the contraceptive pill was introduced and during this decade a change happened within society, a new liberal attitude towards sex and relationships grew and people started to look at the world differently.

Now, I do not think these changes were necessarily bad, but what I have seen happen over my lifetime is peoples attitudes change towards sex and sexuality even more. You only have to look at the graphic nature of many modern music videos. Many films that would have been rated as adult only 20 or 30 years ago are now down graded, and those that were rated for adults only almost look innocent to our modern more progressive eyes.

What concerns me is, as we become more open to new ways of thinking those institutions that held our society together start to look old fashioned and those with an agenda are happy to undermine them, particularly the institution of marriage. Marriage, for all its faults has been the bedrock of society for hundreds of years, but many do not believe in its importance anymore, thus we continue to see the growth of a more fractured and unstable society.

As I have said above, during the 1960's many things were legalised and legitimised, with this legitimisation we have seen the growth of a more broken society. As happens within government, those in charge think they know best, so they then legislate against things. So the government may bring in ratings for music videos, outlaw padded bras for children, but in essence does not get to the root of the problem.

Abortion was legalised in 1967 and in 2009 there were 189,100 abortions performed in England and Wales, I personally think this is an appalling statistic. Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, yet contraception is freely available. If we are to believe those who are in charge the best way to stop all this is to educate, but since the 1960's the teaching of sex education has increased in schools, but we continue to see the rise in teenage pregnancies and abortions. The growth of one parent families has increased unabated, and the amount of children growing up without a father has continued to grow. The statistics do not show things getting any better, but still those in charge think they know best. I am sure the government will bring in some legislation to try to halt the dire state of our nations morals, but they will not get to the root of the problem.

You would think that with all this sex education, the free availability of contraception and the morning after pill things would be getting better, but as the facts show they are not. Until people realise that marriage and the two parent heterosexual relationship is the best way to bring up children nothing will change, but unfortunately for our politically correct leaders they are unlikely to admit this, and we will continue to see a downward spiral. On top of all these problems the open accessibility to pornography via the Internet and on children's phones adds to these problems. I know this all sounds rather negative but if we continue to ignore these issues and do not tackle the fundamental root of the problem things are never going to change.