Reply #32: Hmm Kinda in between you two [View All]

[tkmorris]

Swearing on a CD per se doesn't faze me. My kids definately hear it all elsewhere anyway, including from me. I think most kids whose parents go overboard to protect them from hearing swear words end up thinking their parents are kinda kooky anyway.

I DO however exert influence over what my kids listen to and watch, up to and including banning material from our house. Swearing doesn't bother me as I've said but other things do. Misogyny for example. Not happening around here.

Having said that though, I hate the concept of labeling. I agree with Keph, it tends to inhibit creativity. Furthermore if our kids are going to listen to it or watch it or eat it or play with it I can GUARANTEE you that I know more about the object in question than they do by the time they get their hands on it. It's true that movies and video games already have labels but it is also true that I have never once paid any attention to them. I have a 15 year old that in the last year has been told she could NOT watch a movie that was rated PG-13, while a month or so before she had watched an NC-17 movie that I had recommended to her. It just goes to show that the decisions of some faceless panel of people are not necessarily going to be ones I agree with. It's MY job to decide what my kids do, not theirs.

Does this make em mad? YOU BET! I can't tell you how many times I've heard phrases like: "That's a stupid rule", or "I know you said I couldn't but I can't understand why so and so gets to do such and such but I can't do this". Or they try to do the verboten at a friends house. I am fortunate in that between my wife and myself we actually CAN watch them 24 hours a day if needs be. I realize that not all parents are so fortunate and in cases like that perhaps the somewhat sketchy nannying provided by a V-chip may help them. It isn't ideal though.

I think the ratings system as is should be scrapped. If you want to educate parents about what a given piece of entertainment contains then by all means do so. Movies already do with that endless series of coded references to "adult situations" and the like that they use to justify the ratings given. Fine, keep the info but dump the rating. Frankly I have a real problem with a group of people that think sex is somehow too awful for kids under 17 to see but thinks an axe buried in someones head while tissue leaks out around it is somehow just fucking peachy keen.

Ya know what else? None of my kids has ever bought a CD that I didn't give the OK on. I tend to be pretty damned liberal in letting them be exposed to things, at least more than most people but I DO have the final word. Some people might think that's anywhere from quaint to abusive but we think it's just parenting.