‘Is there something wrong with me?” the writer asked. “I’ve never had a boyfriend and I am 12 years old.” I was reading a magazine problem page.
Was it a misprint? Should it have said: “I’ve never had a boyfriend and I’m 21 years old”? No, it was 12 all right. I read the reply and it was clearly directed to a child.
So, if 12 seemed worryingly late to the letter-writer, at what age had her contemporaries started pairing off: 11 or 10? Or younger?
It’s five days to Valentine’s Day and the clock is ticking. How many hearts will beat a little faster as they study the writing on the anonymous card? How many will feel cast down for the day because the postie arrived empty-handed? And how old will those bruised hearts be?
Or, should I say, how young?
I suppose I shouldn’t be that shocked. I met a beautiful 11-year-old at a christening last year and realised in mid conversation that she was wearing make-up. I looked in the papers at the weekend and saw pictures of seven-year-old Julia Lira, who will dance in the 2010 Rio Carnival parade. Her parents say she will be appropriately dressed but she’ll be alongside the rest of the samba queens who dance bare-breasted, wearing only glitter.
Her mother said: “Anyone who looks at a child like Julia, so pure, and says there is some erotic appeal must be very sick.”
It’s tempting to reply that any parent who doesn’t know there are a lot of sick people out there must be very naive.
I’ve spoken to mothers with eight-year-old daughters who tell me boyfriends are already on the agenda for some in their children’s classes. Not for their own children. They are still engaged with the business of friendship and play – but they have sensible parents.
I’ve also heard about 12-year-old girls (from well-heeled families) texting about having sex at weekends. I feel really sorry for them.
I’m not being hysterical. I know the relationship between an eight-year-old boy and girlfriend is about being best friends. But what a pity it can’t be called that. To start talking about boyfriends and girlfriends brings with it a pressure. Children are conformist at this stage and parents say some girls feel a need to procure a boyfriend just to feel normal. It’s ludicrous. It should be nipped in the bud by all right-thinking adults.
Why are we allowing childhood to become so fore-shortened?
What is the hurry to sexualise children’s relationships? And why don’t parents fight harder to reverse the trend?
We know about child development. We understand that play is essential to the cognitive development of children as well as to their social, physical and emotional development. And play means running and cavorting, swimming and cycling without a care in the world.
With the notion of boyfriends and girlfriends comes a certain self-consciousness. Even at its most innocent, there is the beginning of an emphasis on looks and clothes, weight and body shape. There’s a parting of the sheep from the goats – those with and those without a paramour. And for those without – though they are on the right side of the line – it must feel like not being picked for the football team all day, every day.
The perfectly normal pupil in primary six or seven may be already harbouring feelings of low self-worth thanks to this nonsense. It’s sad. It can lead to eating disorders and self-harm. It’s also totally unnecessary.
I know that better food means puberty arrives earlier than it did in previous generations. It may explain a precocious interest in the opposite sex in a few pre-teens. But this shift is cultural, not biological.
For small girls, a boyfriend is like an extension of the dressing-up box. Instead of climbing into adult clothes to try them out, they’re climbing into adult relationships that are also far too big for them.
A boyfriend or girlfriend is a status symbol for the child. Sad to say, it’s also a status symbol for some of the parents. They see it as another way for their child to achieve. They see the young pair being as cute as a “Love is …” cartoon and every bit as harmless. And sometimes it will be harmless, but only sometimes.
It’s not just early sex. What happens when the boyfriend shifts his affections? How does the child with no boyfriend cope? What lasting effect is there when a sense of rejection is experienced this early?
Childhood is a one-way ticket to the adult world. There isn’t a reverse gear. Once it’s gone, it’s irretrievable. It’s important, therefore, to celebrate it, not to rush children through it.
Some argue that our notion of childhood is a modern construct that stretches back no further than the Victorian era. They’re correct. Child labour was commonplace then – as anyone who reads Dickens will know. Children were sent up chimneys and into factories. But what is conspicuous by its absence in his chronicles is any sexualisation of children’s relationships with
one another.
There are sympathetic friendships between girls and boys – Pip and Estelle in Great Expectations, David and Agnes in David Copperfield, Cathy and Heathcliff in Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – but no romance until they are teenagers.
Parents may ask what they can do? If primary school children and those in early secondary come home from school talking about girlfriends and boyfriends, it’s a fait accompli, isn’t it?
Well, is it? Surely it’s a sign that school and home need to put a bit more effort into countering the trend by providing more rewarding distractions? It won’t be easy to reverse but it’s so important to try.
After all, if they start pairing up at nine, 10 or 11, are we surprised that some are having sexual intercourse at 12 and 13? First, you get a boyfriend, then there follows the pressure of what you do with him.
I can’t think of any parent who wants a gym-slip mum on their hands. Parents can use the PTA to send a message to teachers that children need to be re-directed.
And they can work with school to dismiss this fashion as objectionable nonsense.
Even as adults, most relationships with the opposite sex are platonic. Surely it’s for them that childhood should remain a training ground.
