Would you lobby the government to ban advertising to children? I would.

Michael Morton

I think you are both right. Children desperately need both a mum and a dad, and both contribute to their moral development, Yet a mountain of research does indeed suggest the crucial role of fathers in this area and many other areas.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

However, Jonathan Sarfati says:
Fathers, after all, are the ones who tell their little girls that they’re perfect just the way they are; that they don’t need to be one bit thinner; and that under no circumstances are they going out of the house dressed that way.

I don’t see why this role is particular to fathers. BOTH my parents told me throughout my childhood that I was ‘perfect the way I was’ (and that I wasn’t leaving the house dressed like that!). Are you presuming, Jonathan, that mothers in general don’t believe their children are beautiful the way they are, and that they allow their children to leave the house dressed inappropriately? Are you perhaps assuming women are more shallow?

And remember, young girls can still have healthy male role models in uncles, friends of the family, older brothers, cousins and teachers.

Zenobia Frost

Also missing from the report is the single factor that seems most predictive of girls’ self-objectification — the absence of a father in their lives. Although the task force urges “parents” to help their daughters interpret sexualizing cultural messages, there’s little mention of the unique role fathers play in protecting their girls from a voracious, sexualized culture.

Fathers, after all, are the ones who tell their little girls that they’re perfect just the way they are; that they don’t need to be one bit thinner; and that under no circumstances are they going out of the house dressed that way.

It can’t be coincidence that girls’ self-objectification — looking for male attention in all the wrong ways — has risen as father presence has declined. At last tally, 30 percent of fathers weren’t sleeping in the same house as their biological children.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Marketers here have no moral barometer at all, it seems; only a lust for more market-share and the perverted quest to turn ever younger children into “enightened” consumers.

And they don’t seem to see anything wrong with the explicit eroticism of so much of their promotional devices.

Now… how do I explain to my 9-year-old that her dancing — mimicking Shakira or some other teen starlet — would be called “erotically charged”, were she just a few years older, and yet at this tender age, looks just wrong.

I almost feel like I have to pollute my daughters mind just to explain to her why she shouldn’t dance that way!

And by the way, she hasn’t learned this kind of dancing from stealing into the living-room late at night to watch adults-only TV. No… she’s seen it at 9:30am on a Saturday morning when the cartoons got boring.

Very distressed.

Alister Cameron, Melbourne

C. S. Lewis once wrote ‘Human desire will be met rightly or wrongly but it will not go away’

There is an intrinsic desire of all human beings to be loved and to love and to know and be known by others. How horrible that our children need to feel that they look sexy in order to be sure that they will recieve positive attention and reinforcing affirmation from peers and parent figures.

Joshua Ferrara