Jessica Rudd

Jessica Rudd, a Queensland university student, presented this paper at the AFA National Conference in Brisbane on August 18, 2001.

Once upon a time there lived a little girl whose name was Goldilocks. Every afternoon when she came home from school Goldilocks put on her red riding hood and went for a walk in the near by forest to play. She knew the forest well- it held for her many fond memories and was a source of inspiration for her imaginary dreamworld.

She loved to pretend she was a superhero, using her red riding hood as a cape. Sometimes she would make up songs and sing them to her toys or simply to skip, her long natural golden hair flowing freely behind her.

On her eleventh birthday Goldilocks woke up to find a parcel in her letter box with a card attached. "Dear Goldilocks, Happy Birthday. Here are a pair of very cool sequined flares. We hope you wear them today because that red riding hood you always wear is so daggy, you always have the same style hair and you never come to discos with us because you're too busy playing childish games in your stupid forest. Grow up Goldilocks. Anyway, have a nice day, your best friends, Hansel and Gretel."

Having pieced together the astonishing abuse of English grammar Goldilocks realised that Hansel and Gretel were not so subtly hinting that Goldilocks no longer fitted in with the grade six crowd. This made Goldilocks feel very uncertain.

She thought her red riding hood was rather nice, she certainly liked the way she wore her hair and she loved to play in the forest. But somehow she thought Hansel and Gretel were right. She didn't fit in with the others, they were all so different to her. So Goldilocks decided she would change into the sequined flares.

She squeezed into the prickly pants. They were so uncomfortable but they looked great. So Goldilocks pulled her hair back in a tight pony tail, kissed her astonished parents goodbye and on the way out the door threw her red riding hood into the departing garbage truck.

At school, everyone thought she looked great in her new sequined flares. The only thing was that Goldilocks didn't feel so great at all. She missed her red riding hood, had a headache from having her hair pulled back so tightly and had tiny little impressions all over her legs where the sequins were.

When she got home in the afternoon, all Goldilocks wanted to do was to put on her red riding hood and play in the forest. But Goldilocks remembered that her hood was gone for good and her flares were much too cumbersome to skip in.

We'll come back to Goldilocks later. This afternoon I would like to discuss the changing aspirations of young people. That is: what the changes are, what's causing these changes, what affects these changes have on the family unit and what if anything can be done about them.

As encouraged by Susan Dekker and Patti Smith, I intend to speak as simply as I can about the real life experiences of young people in the 21st Century.

I don't pretend in any way as is often attempted by young people in public speaking competitions that I can present you with some magical five point masterplan which will solve all the social problems we encounter today. Instead I intend to speak descriptively of the experiences of young people as best I know how- given that the only letters I ever have after my name is the name of the person featured next on the class roll.

This established, your expectations shattered, let's examine the changes we can see in the aspirations of 21st Century young people. To take something of interest to most kids at the moment let us look no further than the Brisbane Show, affectionately referred to as "The Ekka".

When it comes to showbags, my littlest brother Marcus who turns 8 in October is no better than either of his older siblings were at his age. It's a bit overwhelming at 7 years old to choose one showbag from a tantalising list of around 300.

Last weekend, the night before our family expedition to the exhibition, I offered him a bedtime story to which he responded matter-of-factly that he was far too busy to be engaging in such leisurely activities as story time when he had to cut down a selection of 8 showbags to only two.

So our bedtime story was replaced with what felt like a meeting between judges on the selection panel for the local football team. We sat in our pajamas and assessed the merits of each bag slowly reducing the list to two: the GAG MAGIC BAG and the MEGA SUMO BAG- both sounding equally repulsive to me but he seemed happy with his choices and finally dozed off to sleep.

As I turned off the light and kissed his forehead I couldn't resist gazing over the list for a bit of nostalgia. To my complete amazement I realised that the contributors to the showbag pavilion have discovered a new market entirely.

It's known as the pre-teen market and it appeals mainly to young girls between the ages of seven and eleven. The sorts of bags I saw the pre-teens walking around with contained beauty cases, play stiletto shoes, hand bags, pretend mobile phones, stick on nails and earrings and body glitter and lipstick in both the iridescent and normal varieties.

Perhaps I am mistaken but is this not taking the Moulin Rouge concept a tad too far?

Pardon my priggish ideals but when I was that age I liked to read, to play dress-ups, to pretend I was an explorer, a doctor or a fireman.

It would seem that the clever marketing skills of corporations such as Matel Toys "Barbie" have created a new image for little ones.

All of this overpriced merchandise facilitates the premature growing up of young girls. These products enable little girls to morph into some miniature version of the spice girls.

So what's the problem with this really? What are our greatest fears when it comes to little girls going out looking as though they were auditioning for Pretty Woman?

Some say this new niche market is not really harmful at all. They put it down to dress-ups and playing pretending games. But I think it's more than that.

My concern is that these little girls no longer do this just for fun. When I was at pre-school I don't deny the fact that I used to dress-up, smearing on way too much of my mum's lipstick and walking around in her high heel shoes. But I think the difference is that mum always handed me a wet washer after my enthusiastic makeovers, suggesting that I didn't turn up at preschool with lipstick from ear to ear.

Nowadays if you walk around the children's clothing department at Myer or David Jones you will see that the clothes for girls are simply miniature adult clothes. Tiny little bikinis and mini bras for four year olds. Accessories like little handbags, compact mirrors and pink fishnet tights. Hair pieces for toddlers and strappy high heeled shoes for going to birthday parties.

This isn't dress-ups, this is everyday attire.

The TV programs available for the pre-teen market are indicative of the same sort of superficial image-driven culture we can see in the showbag list. For example there is a program on the pay-TV kids channel Nickelodeon which is a typical American sitcom about the life of twin sisters no older than 13. I watched it with my youngest brother the other day.

The story line went that these girls were allowed to go trick or treating for Halloween but to their horror their father didn't allow them to go to a party for much older students afterwards. One of the girls' main motivations for attending the party was that her much older crush was going to be there. So the girls got dressed up to go trick or treating, bid their father fairwell, swapped costumes with two friends and went to the party. There is nothing really different about this story so far. What you would expect is that, in true Brady Bunch style, the father would find out and the girls would be reprimanded. Instead, the story went that the father found out, the girls were punished by having to help clean up after the party but this meant that they were going to be cleaning up with the girl's true love.

The message is obvious. Disobey your parents, do wrong by all means, your parents will punish you, but consequently your luck will change and what your parents had thought was a punishment for your irresponsible breach of their trust will actually work in your favour.

The books available for kids are just as bad. They focus on topics such as, how fashionable or unfashionable their clothes are, how annoying and out of date parents are how sad they are that they don't have a de facto partner at age 11 and how they are too fat, too small, too ugly, unpopular.

The jovial adventures such as those of the Seven Little Australians are certainly things of the past. I used love the Seven Little Australians, the Narnia series, and classics like Anne of Green Gables and the Secret Garden.

If you were to go into the children's book section of your local bookstore tomorrow you would find titles such as the "Babysitters Club" and "Sweet Valley High". Let me read for you a telling excerpt of a Babysitters Club book:

"Embarrassing or not, there I was sitting at the end of my bed, hugging myself. Why? Because I wanted to know how it would feel to be locked in a dreamy, romantic embrace with the boy of my dreams"

The character who's line this is is only thirteen years old and the target audience for these sorts of books is the 9-12 age bracket. In my view, the only thing this girl should be "locked in a dreamy embrace with" at her age is her teddy bear certainly not the boy of her dreams.

And if you think this is simply the Americanisation of Australian culture think again. Nikki Webster is no better. The youthful face of Australia at the Olympic Games last year, is now a face caked with Jager cosmetics' make-up brand "Just for Girls". That's right, the fresh Australian girl of 13 or 14 is now the cover girl for a cosmetics brand targeted at, yup you guessed it, the pre-teen market. At the launch of the brand she said that "she and her friends wear make-up on the weekends all the time!" What's worse is that her new catchy little number entitled "I've been missing your strawberry kissing" is a hit with kids much younger than she is.

If you were to take these examples of popular culture it would appear that kids or young adults in the 21st Century aspire to be no more than fashionable, sexy, successful, resourceful, new age image driven popularity kings and queens with a cunning wit and a complete indifference about their elders.

This is of course not to say that all kids are like this. In fact most of the people I know in my age group are genuinely caring people who participate in fundraising exercises for world or local charities or who sponsor children in less fortunate countries around the globe.

But I think the concern is that such personality traits are made acceptable to the modern world through television, music, literature and the like.

It's becoming cliched to say the words "young people these days" followed by harsh criticisms of the average modern day youth. But are the changes we see in young people today radically different from the changes we have witnessed in the behaviour of young people throughout Western history?

It is certainly not a new thing for older generations to criticise the new on issues of social ethics. For millennia new generations have taken the evolution of social behaviour to new extremes much to the disgust of their predecessors. Take for example the second and third wave feminists who defied the wishes of their parents and grandparents in a bid to be financially and emotionally independent.

So, to state the obvious, change is inevitable. However the changes we are seeing in the aspirations of young people at the moment are not being disputed by the previous generation simply for the sake of rejecting societal change.

In my view there is very good reasoning behind those concerned about "young people these days" and given that I am one of the "young people these days" I am prone to thinking that this issue is a real one which needs to be seriously discussed not just written off as being backward, conservative nonsense.

Now that we have named the changes and accepted that the changes are somewhat historically unprecedented let us reflect on what is causing them.

Many people are tempted to use the media as their primary scapegoat.

If young people learnt their values from television programs we'd be in trouble. After one night of watching television I came up with four consistent values.

OK, so that's a slightly over-exaggerated cynical view but certainly there is a culture of this degree of self-absorbed, single, new-age, yoga loving, tofu eating yuppies.

Unfortunately however television, music, literature, whatever ... are not the sole blame for the rather frightening societal shift towards this egocentric self-worshiping sub-culture.

I mean it's not as if producers and screenplay writers sit down over a Starbucks coffee and a donut and think to themselves what they want as the social norm because if they did, knowing the kinds of twisted people show business breeds, I think we would have some rather peculiar television shows by now and nobody would watch them which would defeat the purpose entirely.

So these ideas, these markets, these trends we see reflected in the media- they've got to come from somewhere.

Perhaps these new values come from access. A staggering number of Australian children have, with the click of a button, access to the world wide web- the information superhighway. This opens doorways to weird and wonderful things to buy, to read, to listen to, to watch. It opens gateways to new systems of belief and new religions.

With technology and the convenience and sophistication of modern society, children now have choices. Two weeks ago I came back from spending a month working in exchange for board in a chateau in France. I remember before going I told my grandmother who remarked on the amazing opportunities with which young people are presented now. And it's true.

If you read Henry James or Jane Austen novels for example, even the very rich had limited choices in terms of careers, of life experience, of religion, emotion, entertainment, fashion and the rest. In those days a rich man would become a doctor, a lawyer, a politician or a clergyman.

Even up until the 1950s and 60s the choices available to women in terms of career opportunity were very limited. Nowadays the opportunities for women in the workforce are nearing equal to those of their male counterparts.

However, there is such thing as too much choice. For children it's difficult to filter or sort through the millions of opportunities and choices to which they have access. I guess that's not dissimilar to that sort of overchoice faced by my little brother when he had to choose one showbag from three hundred.

Another condition caused by technology is that different communities have become much more reachable to young kids than they used to be. So nowadays kids can play musical communities if you like, that is that if they feel isolated from their family, their school, their country town whatever ... a virtual community more suited to them can be found almost instantly on the internet. To give you an example, if for some reason I were to have a disagreement with my Dad about, well, let's say results of the elections in the US, I could just go into my room in my really daggy pajamas, jump on the computer and, within 5 minutes, I could be in a virtual chat room discussing the results of the US presidential election with a politics student like myself in Alabama. This is no small feat.

Thanks to the ease and accessibility of technology, kids of the new millennium are not waving but drowning in a mish mash of popular culture and values.

Children need help in selecting the right showbag from a list of three hundred. They need to know that there is plenty of time after thirteen to be locked in a romantic embrace with the boy of their dreams. They need to know that bras are for supporting breasts- not pre-pubescent chests. They need to know that just because Nikki Webster uses make-up with her friends on the weekend, doesn't mean that every girl puts gunk all over her face before going out.

So what can we do to help children filter and choose?

I think that more than anything, kids need a system of values against which to assess the merits and failures of all of the choices they are faced with.

If we reflect on Western history we find that the values which permeate societal behaviour have always come from the church. It was the family's role and indeed responsibility to facilitate a spiritual life. It was almost unheard of 100 years ago that a family would spend Sunday morning drinking cappuccinos at their local café, instead of going to church. Most children were taught religion at school and wrote "JMJ" for Jesus, Mary and Joseph alongside the date. Structured religious teaching was the norm.

In the present day, between the 1991 and 1996 Australian censuses there was a 35% increase in the number of people who declared themselves as having no religion at all. I find that staggering.

I am by no means saying that people without a specified institutional religion are without values. I am however saying that this statistic shows a decrease in the actual family facilitated teaching of a consolidated value system. The church seems to have left centre stage and has become a creaking establishment inhabiting merely the margins of our culture.

I don't know if this is a good thing, nor do I know if it's a bad thing, but what I do know is that it is happening and that in the absence of the church's ethical leadership, society has thus far failed to create a system in its place.

It's vital in this day and age parents don't forget that when it comes to their kids, THEY are the only ones who can provide direction. If they see their children being pushed prematurely by their peers into the rough waters of adulthood which even grown-ups struggle with, then THEY, the parents, are the only ones who can do something about it.

With a lack of consistent and structured value teaching, now more than ever, the family is needed to actively raise children, to provide leadership and direction into the seriousness of adulthood.

When Goldilocks went out that morning, she felt as though she had no choice but to follow the advice of Hansel and Gretel, her "best friends". She felt depressed that she couldn't get back her hood- her childhood if you'll pardon the pun. She longed for the comfortable, carefree secure cocoon under which all children should be able to escape or at least retreat from the severity and seriousness of maturity into their imaginary dreamworlds.

Goldilocks needed to know how wonderful it was that she was an individual. She needed the confidence, strength and experience to be able to say, "hang on a tick, what do Hansel and Gretel know about what's cool and what's not?!? Their populous, crowd-pleasing behaviour shows that they're the ones who need to 'grow up', not me!"

Parents should equip children with the necessary emotional confidence, awareness and ability to evaluate so that when it comes time to grow up and make decisions for themselves, children at least have an inherited ethical compass on which they can rely. It is, in my belief, the role of the family in the 21st Century to supply children like Goldillocks, Nikki, Hansel and Gretel with the tools they need for life so that, when they're ready to hang up their hoods for the last time they will all know how to live happily ever after.