Making Parents'Voices Heard
13.
Making it easier for parents to express their views to businesses about goods and services. All businesses that market goods or services to children should have a one—click link to their complaints service from their home page, clearly labelled 'complaints'. Information provided as part of the complaints and feedback process should state explicitly that the business welcomes comments and complaints from parents about issues affecting children. Businesses should also provide timely feedback to customers in reaction to customer comment. For retail businesses this should form part of their code of good practice (see Theme 2, Recommendation 6), and should also cover how to make it easier and more parent—friendly for complaints to be made in store.ACTION: Businesses, supported by trade associations
Introduction
1.
We have been struck during the course of this Review by the apparent contradiction between the clear concern of many parents about the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, and the fact that regulators, broadcasters and businesses receive few complaints about such issues relative to other types of complaint.
Figure 11: Level of parents' complaints compared with the number of unsuitable images and products seen by parents
- The Review’s omnibus survey showed that 40 per cent of parents had seen things in public places (for example, shop window displays or advertising hoardings), and 41 per cent had seen programmes or advertisements on TV, in the past 3 months that they felt were unsuitable or inappropriate for children to see because of their sexual content. However, only 8 per cent of parents had ever complained about such things.
- In the parental Call for Evidence, respondents were asked to think about when they had been out and about with their child/children over the last few weeks and if they had seen any images aimed at children that they felt were inappropriate for their child/children to see. Of the 846 people who answered this question, a substantial minority (330) said they had.When asked whether they had seen images aimed adults they felt were inappropriate for their child/children to see, of the 874 people who answered the question, 576 said they had.
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