Bottles and Binkies and Boobs! Oh My!

We live in a society that doesn't seem to know what to do with children. The stage of life called "childhood" is shifting. The lines between infant and child and child and adult are blurring. I touched on this phenomenon in my previous post "Prosti-tots". The wearing of provocative Halloween costumes by preteen girls, however, is only one facet of this disturbing trend.

We adults can't make up our minds about when we want children to be children, babies, or adults. We want to both infantilize and adultify children whenever it suits us. Young children, for instance, are allowed to continue doing things like sucking bottles or wearing diapers long after they're past the age for it. As recently as five years ago I worked for a day care where kids couldn't move up to the 3-year-old class unless they were potty trained. Now, 3-year-old teachers are expected to change diapers. It's like adults want to keep children babies for as long as possible. Working parent guilt may be partly to blame.

Infancy does pass quickly. Some working parents, feeling they've missed out on it, may try to recapture it by letting their kids suck pacifiers or wear diapers when they're too old for it. Other working parents may be too tired to fight with rebellious toddlers and let them have their way just to keep the peace. Either way, toddlers and even preschoolers are being infantilized for the satisfaction of adults. And it gets worse.

Once we adults decide that infancy is finally over, we want an immediate transition to maturity. We want kids to stay in diapers until they're five but show their cleavage at ten. We switch them from bottles to bustiers with ease. We dress our girls in sexy Halloween costumes and think it's cute. Even everyday clothes for kids, especially girls, are getting more "sophisticated". Several years ago the show 20/20 did a story on this trend. The children's fashion industry even had a name for it: KGOY or kids getting older younger. I find that really, really sad.

We grown ups need to get our proverbial act together. We need to understand that we are here to train children, guide them through the various stages of growing up, and finally send them into the world as responsible adults. We have no right to either retard or accelerate that process for our convenience. Three-year-olds shouldn't be wearing diapers and sucking binkies just so parents can cope with their guilt. And ten-year-olds shouldn't be looking like Britney Spears because Moms want to relive their carefree, pre-motherhood days through their daughters.

Stunting or accelerating children's development can be detrimental, even dangerous. Provocatively dressed young girls could give the wrong idea to the wrong people. And children who are infantilized may never become autonomous individuals but remain forever dependent on Mom and Dad. We can and should do better by our kids. They don't deserve to be stunted or pimped out because we've got issues. Let us deal with our problems, not mess up our kids with them.