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By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

2013-03-06 05:32:05

Childhood is over for many children by the age of 12, according to members of a

parenting website.

Netmums website users are complaining that children are under pressure to grow

up too fast.

They say that girls are made to worry about their appearance and boys are

pushed into "macho" behaviour at too young an age.

The website's co-founder Siobhan Freegard blamed a "toxic combination of

marketing, media and peer pressure".

"The pace of modern life is so fast that it is even snatching away the precious

years of childhood," she said.

"Children no longer want to be seen as children, even when as parents we know

they still are."

"There needs to be a radical rethink in society to revalue childhood and

protect it as a precious time - not time to put pressure on children to grow up

far too fast," said Ms Freegard.

The website asked for its members' views and received more than a thousand

replies.

The most common view - from more than two-thirds of this group - was that

childhood was now over by the age of 12.

'Under pressure'

About a third of those replying to this online snapshot believed that childhood

ended even sooner, at the age of 10.

Parents voiced concerns that children were being put under pressure to act

older than their years.

Girls were made to worry about their appearance and their weight, boys were

meant to act tough and both boys and girls were under pressure to take an

interest in sex at too young an age.

"Children need time to grow and emotionally mature in order to cope with what

life throws at them," says Ms Freegard.

This is the latest example of parental concerns about children growing up in an

oversexualised culture.

Claire Perry MP, the prime minister's adviser on childhood, has warned about

children accessing inappropriate material on websites or through mobile phones.

Another MP, Diane Abbott, attacked what she called the "pornification" of youth

culture, in which young people were growing up in an environment of sexual

bullying and explicit sexual images.