Are tweens the new teens?

In the October 12, 2010 edition if Family Circle, Deborah Swaney writes a compelling article about the sexualization of younger and younger girls.   She starts with the time when her 7 year old asked to get a bra which stunned her completely until she started checking the local stores.  to her horror, she found that sure enough, manufacturers are marketing cute little bra and pantie sets to girls as small as 4 and 5.  It is bad enough that tweens are exposed to this stuff before they truly need it but the child sized gimmicks just tend to enhance the desire to be grown up.

Tweens are such a growing market in all areas and when it comes to books and clothes the girls dominate the market.  Girls spend more time with books compared to boys and relate to the teen idols on shows such as Hannah Montana, Suite Life on Deck, and animated shows like Phineas and Ferb.  All of these exposures to popular teen idols present incredible sales potential for markets of all items.  While books may not seem tied to these shows and idols, publishing houses have figured out how to increase sales by turning episodes of each series into books with some twists in the plot.  For the girls these books enhance their enjoyment of the shows and allows them "on demand" episodes through reading anywhere and any time.  

Ms. Swaney discusses the signals marketers are send our tweens when catering to their desires to be like the teenagers in real life and on television.  From my own experience, growing up in the 70's and 80's, young children were encouraged to stay young and play with Lincoln logs, Lego's, Barbies, and so on rather than giving them opportunities to be more grown up than they are ready to handle.

If one compares the tweens from today to the tweens from the late 70's and early 80's, it is easy to see that kids from 8 to 12 are more worldly now than previously.  They may consider themselves to be more mature but emotionally, I don't think that is accurate.  Some children, especially girls are maturing faster but having a physical maturity does not equate with emotional or social maturity. 

As librarians, how do these new "norms" for tweens effect our job?  There is a fine line between guiding and censoring reading material and magazines.  And where do we draw the line for teen nights, children's story hour and such?   Can we as librarians set aside our personal thoughts and concerns to support tweens in whatever they desire to check out? 

These are on-going concerns that all librarians must deal with.   How we handle it depends mainly on the rules for the library.  Some libraries do have rules about children checking out adult books, while other libraries have no rules what so ever.  The best solution probably lies somewhere in the middle but each librarian must figure that out for themselves.

Swaney, D. (2008, November 29). Girls growing up to fast. Family Circle, 100. Retrieved October 14, 2010, from http://www.familycircle.com/teen/parenting/sex-talk/growing-up-too-fast/?page=6