Two of the magazines studied were aimed at men (Playboy and Sports Illustrated), two at women (Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitan), and one was aimed at both men and women (Newsweek). A uniform sampling of the last 2 years of the decades 1950-1980 was used, except for Ladies Home Journal, which was studied for the years 1952 and 1954. Results of the study indicated that children were portrayed sexually in approximately 1.5 percent of the advertisements containing children. The occurrence of the sexualized depictions of children was systematic in three ways: (1) Girls were depicted sexually more often than boys; (2) There was some evidence that this phenomenon has not decreased over the past four decades but, instead, might be increasing slightly; and (3) These depictions occurred more frequently in magazines targeted toward women than toward men or toward both genders. The article suggests the need for research on the effects on both men and women of the sexualized depictions of children. Tables, references