So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids | 
 enlarge | Authors: Diane E. Levin, Jean Kilbourne
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 11710
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0345505069
Dewey Decimal Number: 649.65
EAN: 9780345505064
ASIN: 0345505069
Publication Date: August 5, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20080823231638H
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Product Description
Thong panties, padded bras, and risque Halloween costumes for young girls. T-shirts that boast “Chick Magnet” for toddler boys. Sexy content on almost every television channel, as well as in books, movies, video games, and even cartoons. Hot young female pop stars wearing provocative clothing and dancing suggestively while singing songs with sexual and sometimes violent lyrics. These products are marketed aggressively to our children; these stars are held up for our young daughters to emulate–and for our sons to see as objects of desire.
Popular culture and technology inundate our children with an onslaught of mixed messages at earlier ages than ever before. Corporations capitalize on this disturbing trend, and without the emotional sophistication to understand what they are doing and seeing, kids are getting into increasing trouble emotionally and socially; some may even to engage in precocious sexual behavior. Parents are left shaking their heads, wondering: How did this happen? What can we do?
So Sexy So Soon is an invaluable and practical guide for parents who are fed up, confused, and even scared by what their kids–or their kids’ friends–do and say. Diane E. Levin, Ph.D., and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., internationally recognized experts in early childhood development and the impact of the media on children and teens, understand that saying no to commercial culture–TV, movies, toys, Internet access, and video games–isn’t a realistic or viable option for most families. Instead, they offer parents essential, age-appropriate strategies to counter the assault. For instance:
• Help your children expand their imaginations by suggesting new ways for them to play with toys–for example, instead of “playing house” with dolls, they might send their toys on a backyard archeological adventure.
• Counteract the narrow gender stereotypes in today’s media: ask your son to help you cook; get your daughter outside to play ball.
• Share your values and concerns with other adults–relatives, parents of your children’s friends–and agree on how you’ll deal with TV and other media when your children are at one another’s houses.
Filled with savvy suggestions, helpful sample dialogues, and poignant true stories from families dealing with these issues, So Sexy So Soon provides parents with the information, skills, and confidence they need to discuss sensitive topics openly and effectively so their kids can just be kids.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Eloquent and practical support for parents! August 26, 2008
Christine Gerzon (Concord, MA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It doesn't sound to me that one of the previous reviewers, Mr. Males, bothered to read the book. If he had, he would recognize that the main premise is ALL children from a very early age are learning toxic lessons from the media about sex, gender, body image and human relationships that have devastating effects on every aspect of their development. These effects can not be measured solely by statistics.
Anyone who spends time with children knows that the lesson that corporate America teaches them (especially girls) is that self-worth is based on appearance and acquiring material possessions. The main purpose of this constant barrage (children spend more time with the media than with their own parents according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study) of commercialism into every aspect of children's lives is to increase corporate profits. When a culture is more concerned with money than healthy human growth, it is obvious that our children are at risk for a host of physical, cognitive, emotional and social problems.
We are at a crucial time in our history when more than ever we need competent creative problem solvers who can tackle the real issues we face as a nation and as citizens of the world. Levin and Kilbourne, internationally recognized educators, authors and social activists, solidly grounded with scholarship and experience provide us with the guidance we need nurture the healthy development of our children. If you want to read a comprehensive, eloquent and practical book on this extremely important issue, this is the one to buy.
A must read for parents and teachers alike... August 25, 2008
Diane Moore (Bermuda Dunes, CA)
A quick little story that ties into my review. One day, as I was teaching my class, I had a root beer in a bottle on my desk from lunch. One of my girls asks me, "Teacher, are you DRUNK?" Before I lost my top, I explained that it was soda. You would think that I teach a high school or maybe junior high class. But no, these are FIRST GRADERS. They are six. Although we could automatically blame the parents, who knows where she got this information?
SO SEXY, SO SOON, is co-written by Diane E Levin, and Jean Kilbourne. Jean has also written the book, CAN'T BUY MY LOVE, about how advertising gets us seduced into the world of consumerism. That was also a great book.
I am not a parent, but every year to me, it seems like the students are becoming more and more aware of things that they probably shouldn't know about yet. The authors state that it mostly has to do with the media. There is technology everywhere you turn, and when you don't have that on, you can look at the half naked models on the billboard on Sunset. Sex is all over, and as I was watching a commercial previewing a popular TV show, where all of the actresses are in sultry red dresses and biting into apples, trying to be sexy, I was staring open-mouthed at the screen, and I got it. I think that sometimes we get sucked into it. We are adults and we are "allowed" to watch whatever we want. But, the advertisers don't care about the young kids. They want to make the children a shopper for the rest of their life. That's it.
The authors claim that it's just not just about sex. Children and teenagers have been exploring sex for a long time. It's about how they are to think of sex. What used to be something to be shared between two people who care about each other, is now something transient. "Hooking up," not caring about anyone, just doing it cause it's there. I recently saw another commercial on TV where two people just met, they were talking back and forth while undressing, "I have never been to New York." "This isn't even my apartment." As they are taking off their Levi's and getting ready to have sex. So, basically, you just met, broke into someone's house, and now you are going to do it. This was on during the day.
In other books, you would probably read that if you just say NO to everything, your child will be fine. But, these authors take a different view. Say no to things that are inappropriate for their age, of course, but then...watch things with them. Be their filter. Talk about it. Or their parents and teachers will be the media, and you will have lost them. Most teenagers are going to do what they want anyway, with or without you knowing about it. But, if they go into the world with some information, and they respect themselves, they will be better off. Studies show that the parents who keep open communication with their teenagers are less likely to get into drugs and become pregnant.
As for the book itself, I found it a great read that I could hardly tear myself away from. I read it in a day, it was easy to understand, and it made me think about things for the rest of the night. It even gave you scripts to help you through some difficult conversations with your children. The reason I scored it a little lower was because some information was repeated in the book.
Highly recommended!
Savvy and Sophisticated: a must read for everyone who loves children August 25, 2008
ChildLover (California)
Drs. Levin and Kilbourne have written a savvy and sophisticated analysis of the insidious and treacherous sexualization of our children as a marketing tool in an increasingly depraved market. As a psychologist and a woman who loves children, I understand far more deeply the impact this abuse engenders going forward in the lives of young people, girls and boys alike.
I particularly appreciate the way in which the authors acknowledge the importance of sexuality within adult relationships and how crucial it is to show our children that its power is best experienced and most fully expressed within the context of a loving, durable relationship.
Kudos to these eminent authors for writing this crucial book and for writing it so well.
 A disturbingly dishonest book August 18, 2008
Michael A. Males (Oklahoma City, OK United States)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
From reading this book, you'd think all kinds of troubles must be at record high levels among teenagers, especially younger ones, am I right? We must be suffering staggering peaks in rates of teen pregnancy, rape, sexual violence, dating abuse, assault, sexually transmitted disease, serious crime, unhappiness, fashion craving, and related "pathological sexual behavior" (the authors' words) driven by violent, salacious advertising and media. Isn't that the impression Levin and Kilbourne are trying to give us?
Take another look. These authors don't actually show, or even claim, that kids today are acting worse. Instead, they cite atypical cases of youths in mental health treatment, anecdotes, and assertions--the sort of "evidence" that could be dredged up for any group in any era--to insinuate that youngsters MUST be acting worse.
If you're like me, you might wonder why the authors don't cite the large, scientifically designed measures covering all Americans or representative samples, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), Monitoring the Future (MTF), and other standard references professionals and academic scholars typically rely on.
If you check these, you'll see why they're strangely omitted from a book that hints that today's teens as a generation are suffering record levels of sex and violence.
In fact, NCHS reports, birth, abortion, and miscarriage (that is, pregnancy) rates among teens have all fallen to their lowest level since reports were first issued 30 years ago. Birth rates among teens are at their lowest level since first tabulated a century ago. Rates of rape, other sexual violence, and assault victimizing teens have plummeted over the last dozen years to the lowest levels since the NCVS began in 1973, while dating abuse (first surveyed in 1993) has dropped by 70% through 2005. Rape, serious assault, and sexual offense arrests of teens of both sexes have fallen to record low levels through 2006, the FBI UCR shows--all remarkable trends, since the definitions and policing of these crimes have expanded sharply over the years. Consistently measured sexually transmitted diseases peaked among teens 25 to 30 years ago and have since declined sharply, the Centers for Disease Control reports--again, a remarkable trend since reports today are more complete. Teens today report feeling happier, less fashion conscious, less depressed, more optimistic, and safer (among other improvements) than those of 25 to 30 years ago, large-scale surveys such as Monitoring the Future and The American Freshman find.
Further, teens under age 16 and teenage girls show particularly large declines and record low rates of nearly every problem we would expect to be increasing if Levin and Kilbourne's dire claims are accurate. The best information we have shows teens today, especially younger ones, are safer, happier, less violent, and less victimized, particularly sexually, than teens of previous generations back as far as we can reliably measure.
Now, any measure can be disputed, but I challenge these authors and readers to find other large-scale, comprehensive measures of thousands of Americans that show young people are getting worse. A few lurid anecdotes, clinical case studies, and claims that "I just think kids today are acting worse" could be used to indict every generation going back decades, even centuries. They're not evidence of some "new sexualized childhood." Indeed, things were probably much worse in the past, if studies finding thousands of pubescent prostitutes in American cities in the 1800s, 12-year-old "V-girls" servicing World War II soldiers, and the prevalence of pregnancy and rape in past generations (among others) are credible--and they certainly are as or more credible than anything stated in this book.
So, we have to ask: why do these professional, scholarly authors simply omit a vast array of solid, standard measures? Because the best evidence would disprove Levin and Kilbourne's panicky insinuations and with them their larger claim that "the media" is corrupting young people today. That tactic is quite simply dishonest. It is also dangerous, because it prevents us from understanding and combating very real problems of sexual violence and related troubles among all ages in America and worldwide. The best information indicates that poverty, family abuses, and harshly repressive customs toward girls are the most serious predictors of real violence, sexual abuse, and early pregnancy.
If you think youths' worst problems are media images, Barbie dolls, video games, and thong underwear, I'd like to introduce you to the impoverished, violently and sexually abused kids from disarrayed families that I worked with who suffered real problems. To the extent that sensational, shallow works like this one detract from facing these more difficult issues affecting youth--and it's not encouraging that this book is endorsed by other escapist authors such as Elkind, Pipher, Wiseman, and Poussaint who profit from issuing wildly inaccurate pop-junk about young people--then girls today will be endangered more.
http://www.YouthFacts.org
An Intelligent and Common Sense Approach August 11, 2008
nbm16
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I responded to the intelligent and common sense approach to dealing with the issues at hand. I appreciated the emphasis on communicating with children about the things that society is forcing upon them. Rather than just having to say, "No, no, no - ban, ban, ban!", parents will be helped by this book because it provides tools for children to use out on the streets. Like it or not, this is what they are facing. It always seems as though the people who have the most difficult time in life are the ones who were brought up in a shell with parents who tried to protect them from the world. The successful people are those who were given the opportunity to gain "street smarts" and coping skills, along with the ability to make choices based on good information, such as that provided in this book.
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