The so-called tween years are starting as early as six.

Experts said that by age six, girls needed branded clothes, at seven they wanted styled hair, by eight they were beginning diets, at nine they were styling their hair and by early teens were engaging in sex or sending sexually explicit text messages.

I’m trying to avoid the standard rant here as we’ve heard of this before from books like So Sexy So Soon.  There are so many factors at play. Commercialization of childhood, consumerism, yes. But also a culture that worries incessantly about socialisation of children, even at the age of one or two and herds them off into daycare for hours that aren’t legal for many teachers. As I recently told a friend–I wouldn’t personally worry about the socialisation thing: Plenty of time for my child to succumb to peer pressure and pick up smoking/drugs/horrifying sexual ethics later.