Today's kids are forced to become adults too early

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

You sit and listen to kids talk today and it about breaks your heart because they're not kids anymore. They know too much. They've lived too much. They're only 6 or 8 or 12 or 14 and they have adult worries. Their parents are divorced or their mother's an alcoholic or their father's abusive or has a girlfriend or is never home or is always home because he lost his job two years ago and hasn't worked since.

They spend their days in front of TV watching people cheat and lie - on the news, on soap operas, on sitcoms.

They know about affairs, AIDS, incest, crack cocaine, driveby shootings, mobs, riots, fathers who kill their wives and their children and kids who lose their families and end up on the streets.

They know the meaning as well as the words to songs like "I Ain't Too Proud to Beg:" "Two inches or a yard, rock hard or if it's sagging," and "All Night:" "I wanna love you all night so the morning comes before I do."

They know about men who beat women and women who like to be beaten. And they know not to trust anyone - politician, police, psychiatrist or priest - simply because of their honored profession.

Sex, rape, violence, murder, slashings, stabbings, gropings, marauders - on TV, on the radio, in movies and magazines - have catapulted today's children into premature adulthood.

At a recent forum, I was listening to a group of high-school girls confirm all this. They were talking about how difficult it is to be young today, how pressured kids are by the world. I was struck by how, despite all the moral pollutants they had to wade through, despite having to grow up in an unprincipled world, they were like flowers: fresh, bright and alive.

Remarkable considering all they have been exposed to.

They were the "experts" at a meeting of women. They came to tell adults what girls need, how they feel, what they want, what they expect, what they are looking for.

About a dozen young women, from the Girl's Coalition of Greater Boston, talked about how the media portrays women as objects. They held up ads that said: "How you can get the shape guys love in 14 days," that promised: "A body that will get you noticed - even in clothes."

And though they mocked the ads and agreed they were ridiculous, they also acknowledged that their repetitiveness, their constant hi-gloss message had had a grave effect on girls their age.

Girls were starving themselves to be attractive to men.

Girls were running, lifting, painting their faces, moussing their hair, shaving their legs, girls were having sex - not for themselves, but to please boys.

These are the statistics from one New Hampshire high school: 28 percent of students in grade 9 admitted to having sexual intercourse; 46 percent in grade 10; 51 percent in grade 11; 67 percent in grade 12.

You cannot afford to be shocked by 10-year-olds who are sexually active, the girls said. This is what's happening.

We need sex education in middle school and high school.

We need more information about AIDS. Current information, not films from the 1970s. We need you to be aware of the problems we face.

We are what you made us, is what these girls were saying.

We are the result of everything we've experienced, all we've heard, read, seen and been exposed to.

Parents need to combat the media, the girls agreed.

Wait until you're married has to be instilled again. We need role models. We need guidelines. We need you to tell us what to do. We need to be parented. We're still only kids.

I sat there thinking that the world these girls have grown up in is so sordid it's a wonder it could produce kids like this at all: honest, smart, articulate, funny, eager to act so that the world their children inherit will be a gentler place than the one they've known.