Bailey Review

The Bailey Review (titled "Letting Children Be Children") was an enquiry into what was described as "the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood". It was commissioned by the UK Coalition government in response to the manifesto commitments of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in the 2010 general election. The Coalition believed that children in the UK were "being pressured to grow up too quickly", and sought recommendations on how to address what they perceived as public concern about this. On 6 December 2010 Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, appointed Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of the Mothers’ Union, to lead the Review. The results were published on 6 June 2011.^[1]

Recommendations

The recommendations of the Review included the following:

• There should be a single website to allow parents to complain about programmes, adverts, products or services.
• Age restrictions should be put on music videos to prevent children buying videos with sexual content and to guide broadcasters over when to show them.
• Sexualised images on the front pages of magazines and newspapers should be covered up so that they are not in easy sight of children.
• Internet customers should make a choice at the point of purchase over whether they want adult and age-restricted material blocked from their home Internet, laptops or smart phones.
• Retailers should only offer age-appropriate clothes to children and should sign up to the British Retail Consortium’s guidelines regarding products and services for children.
• Outdoor adverts containing sexualised imagery should be restricted where large numbers of children are likely to see them.
• In the regulation of pre-watershed television, greater weight should be given to the views of parents than viewers as a whole.
• Children under 16 should not be employed as brand ambassadors and in peer-to-peer marketing.
• Parents’ awareness of advertising and marketing techniques aimed at children should be improved.^[2]

Criticism

Criticism after publication centred on the remit given by the Government. It was claimed that there was no open enquiry into the issue and the results were presupposed by the terms of reference. There was no attempt to define the "sexualisation" that was the basis of the enquiry, merely acknowledging that it was highly subjective.^[3] Questionnaires used were described as containing leading questions. The consultation focussed on the views of parents rather than women's rights organisations or experts on children. The choice of a representative of the Mothers' Union to lead the enquiry was seen as reinforcing this focus. The recommendation of a voluntary code of conduct rather than legislation was seen as potentially ineffective. The lack of any reference to mandatory sex and relationships education or a strategy on ending violence against women and girls were seen as signifiant omissions.^[4]

Implementation

Opaque screens on magazine shelves have been introduced by some supermarkets to hide the partial nudity found on some magazine covers from children. In 2013 The Co-operative Food called for publishers to put such magazines in sealed bags.^[5] Default filtering of adult content on the Internet in the UK is expected to become generally available from ISPs in 2014.^[6]

See also

• Sexualization
• Byron Review
• Internet censorship in the United Kingdom

References

External links

• The Bailey Review