Media shapes the early childhood learning environment to the extent that it highlights ethical issues, gender roles and cultural concerns. Popular media, in particular radio, television, newspapers and popular magazines play proactive roles in constructing the perceptions of how families need to look like.
The “ideal image” of a family has immense impacts on “real” families upon bearing in mind that different families comprise of people with differing personalities. The impact is the development of differing cultural identities among people right from the earliest stages of physical and cognition development (Maples, 2001, p.67).
Media associates certain races and or cultures as being more superior to others in terms of finance and portrayal of familial roles that people regard as “ideal”. Sexualisation of certain familial roles creates images of reservation of certain duties for a particular gender among children (Lumbay & Albury, 2010, p.143), for instance, thinking of beautiful soap operas aired in television screens.
Such images reflect themselves in the development of children. In fact, during children plays, play roles are subdivided alongside the constructed ideal familial gender roles seen on mass media.
Popular music, video games, newspapers and even television are not just harmless entertainment forms. They aid in constructing behaviors and attitudes among their audience that people may perceive as media mania instigated (Mackay, 2002, p.37). For instance, ideal families are presented as widely lacking violence.
More often, the parties involved in such familial relationships are ever on agreements. Arguably, this is not existent in the real families. Differences are the order of the day. In this context, “ideal families” presented in Australian media afflict families thus rising families’ relationship breakages as each partner seeks an ideal person reminiscent of one appearing on a soap opera.
A conflict of culture occurs when values and practices differ from those reflected in the dominant “Anglo” images of family presented widely in Australian media. Cultural conflicts are widely evident based on the ability of the mass media to shape attitudes and peoples’ behaviors with the realm of a family in the “ideal family” images regarded as desirable and acceptable.
This means that media images influence people’s cultures to the extent that the images portrayed form a comparative basis of appropriateness of audiences’ culture in comparison to the ideal culture portrayed in the mass media. Adolescents in particular are function cautious. Given that dressing outfits are part of a particular people’s cultural artifacts, a crash occurs where young people tend to emulate differing people’s dressing outfits advertised in the media.
The sexualization debate in Australia places the responsibility of erosion of children’s innocence to media particularly TV, radio and popular magazines (Rush, 2011, p. 114: Taylor, 2011, p.49).
A mid such criticism, it is pertinent to note that “ideal” family images portrayed in the media may avail romantic scripts, problem solving scripts, social interactions and more importantly ways of appreciating other people’s cultures, ethnic origins, racial affiliations and classes. Such scripts may be crucial for Australian young people lacking real world experiences.
Reference List
Lumbay, C., & Albury, A. (2010). Too much? Too young? The sexualisation of children and policy in Australia. Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, 155(1), 141-152.
Mackay, H. (2002). Media mania: why our fear of media is misplaced. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Maples, W. (2001). Culture representation and identities. London: Rutledge in Association with Open Learning University.
Rush, E. (2011). A response to Taylor: the full picture of sexualisation of children debate. Australian Journal of Early Childhood Education, 36(4), 111-119.
Taylor, A. (2011). Troubling childhood innocence: reframing the debate over media sexualisation. Australian Journal of Early Childhood Education, 35(1), 48-57.