July 2008 Archives
My pal Kristen just celebrated her birthday. Her sweet husband organized a surprise pirate themed party and everything went off without a hitch! There were many Pirate-y grownups and no kids.
I spent the hour or so I was there talking about The Strangers' Hump Festival and the evils of pornography. For the uninitiated, The Hump Festival is an amateur porn film festival - the thought of which both cracks me up and grosses me out.
The two Pirates I was talking to were both unopposed to pornography and they were interested to hear my views and have a chat about it, and their idea for a Hump Festival film involving dogs, but not in a bad way.
I guess I just got to thinking about my porn stance - what do I really believe? Is it inherently evil? Does it provide something good in the world?
I wouldn't censor it, but I don't watch it. I don't think, ultimately, it's good for anyone. It's confusing for kids to see (even teenagers - remember, their brains aren't quite finished developing) and as always, inappropriate for kids to see.
I think the one point I made that hit home, was that the porn of today, is not the porn of our youth. Playboy Magazine and the internet are two vastly different media. The vast difference being you can go from an image of a naked woman to very hard core porn in minutes.
In fact, I just went and looked at some on line. Just Google “naked women” and see what you get. Scary stuff.
I need to go wash my hands and maybe you need to figure out what you believe about porn. Go visit www.theporntalk.com they can help.
If your child is in elementary school, there is an excellent chance she will have an answer for you.
Even if you haven’t explained what sex actually is.
Those young ‘uns talk to each other, you know. And the ones that aren’t talking are listening.
And perhaps you had your own answer to this question before you were filled in about the actual-factual details. What had you heard or made up?
Let me know what you learn – I love these stories and just as soon as I get permission from the Mama who told me her story about what her son made up, I’ll fill you in.
I’m finishing up my first draft of my Guidebook for parents and have been working on the tedious task of putting together my reference list.
Last week, I was spending time at the Kaiser Family Foundation website reading up on TV and kids. They have done several studies on media and kids and it was very interesting to learn just how TV is impacting our kids.
Get a load of this - Kaiser's Vicki Rideout said: "What we found is that, overall, when you turn on the TV today, whatever time of day it is, whatever kind of show you're watching, the odds are about 1 out of 2 that it'll be a show with some kind of sexual content, and in the most watched shows, those on prime time, about 2 out of 3 shows have sexual content.
But the thing about it is, that very few of those shows, less than 1 out of 10 in fact, include any reference to what we might call safer sex type issues, a condom on a bedside table, a character who decides to postpone having sex, or some reference to the possible risks of unprotected sex." I cut this from here: http://www.kaisernetwork.org/reports/1999/02/kr990209.3.html
That’s a lot of sex on TV! There was also a recent report that found that kids who watch unsupervised TV in any amount, have sex about one year sooner than kids who watch supervised TV.
This isn’t all that surprising, considering those kids who watch unsupervised TV probably have a lot of unsupervised time in general. And as you may recall, unsupervised time is a great time to have sex!
So now that you know about all the sex on TV? What is your plan? Will you let your kids watch any TV, any time? Let me know.
