When my mother and I were cleaning out the basement of the family home before her death, we came across a stash of Playboy magazines from the 60s. My father's? My brother's? As I wondered if I should show them to her, or if the shock would cause her to keel over, she came over.
"Those were your brother's," said my mother.
"You knew he had them?" My mother? Strict, New England Catholic had allowed her 16 year old son to have these in her home?
"Of course," she said.
"And you let them stay?"
She gave me a look. "He was a teenage boy. That was normal."
Raising two teenage boys of my own, I occasionally thought about that when confronted with which battles to fight. Since each boy had his own computer, easy access to porn was a concern and I did run a search to see what they could find. I was horrified at what was available on line-- free. Playboy bunnies are one thing; sex that involves urination, defecation, strange objects, and teenage sluts another thing entirely.
By the teen years there is not a great deal of control a parent can have over the computer or their movies, and it's silly to think you can do very much, so all we did was talk to the boys about the issues and hope for the best. I am sure they and their friends explored, and I am sad not that they might have seen some lovely naked women,which would have been fine, but that they probably saw some of the truly sick and degrading things that are out there-- simulation or not, these were not "normal" in my view.
That this could be available to preteens and younger appalls me. They have no context, no perspective, no way of handling things that are so alien and out of their framework, and, like you, if I saw some very young children looking at porn in the library, I would call the librarian's attention to it, and ask if she would at least mention it the parent.
I don't see objecting to porn in this way as either a crusade, or a negative form of interfering, nor as a parent do I believe that having someone call attention to something my child is doing out of my sight is interfering with my rights to parent as I see fit. It is just one of the issues that face parents that should be considered and dealt with in one way or another. It doesn't mean you give less time to other issues, or even that you place it high on your list of priority issues. I don't get the objections to your objections. |
