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Nightmares in the nursery Humpty Dumpty, Simple Simon and other children’s nursery rhymes have been labelled more violent than peak-time television programmes. Medical researchers argue that putting children in front of the TV rather than reading them the traditional rhymes could actually reduce their exposure to violence. But the study was dismissed as facile because the impact of images on television was not taken into account. Dr Robin Campbell of Stirling University's psychology department said: “It has been known for a long time that things like fairy tales and nursery rhymes are full of violence, but it’s just verbal. There’s a big difference between verbal violence and violence shown on the television. Unless they’ve got some way of allowing for the difference between violence presented verbally and violence presented visually, their research is absolutely useless.” The doctors from Bristol Royal Hospital for Children made their claim after studying rates of violence in nursery rhymes compared to that shown in television programmes before the 9pm watershed. Traditional tales such as Jack and Jill and Six in a Bed were found to be among the worst when it comes to aggressive or accidental violence. After watching early evening programmes for a fortnight, the researchers found that television had almost five violent scenes per hour, compared to the nursery rhymes which had more than 52 incidences of violence in an hour of reading. The 25 nursery rhymes looked at had 20 episodes of violence, with 41 per cent of the stories being violent in some way. One in three featured an act of violence, with episodes of law-breaking and animal abuse among the most common. Dr Patrick Davies, who led the research team, said: “Although we do not advocate exposure for anyone to violent scenes or stimuli, childhood violence is not a new phenomenon. “Whether visual or imagined violence have the same effect is likely to depend on the child and the storyteller. Laying the blame for childhood and youth violence is simplistic and may divert attention from vastly more complex problems in society.” The researchers added: “Our results show a significant amount of violence permeates childhood, both with traditional and newer methods of child entertainment.” The researchers, who publish their findings today in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, studied data on TV viewing habits and the amount of violence on television from broadcast watchdog Ofcom. The authors then looked at the words of popular nursery rhymes, which they read to a toddler. Violent episodes were classified according to whether they were accidental, aggressive or intentional, and included implied or threatened violence. Of the nursery rhymes studied, Six in a Bed was the most aggressive with five episodes of violence. Next was Simple Simon with four violent incidents, followed by Jack and Jill with three. Other rhymes containing violence were Humpty Dumpty, How Much is That Doggie in the Window, Rock-A-Bye-Baby and Sing a Song of Sixpence.
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