Never quite understood this bizarre values system. Is the only way to understand this through the lens of America’s Puritanical past? Any insight, parents?
It’s easy to explain to a kid why they should not shoot/mangle people. They could do permanent harm, risk a prison sentence or worse, etc. Not so easy to explain why they shouldn’t have sex. Sex is admittedly a lot of fun, and many adults pursue it at every opportunity. The reasons not to do it just don’t seem as compelling.
This puzzled me for a while, but perhaps this makes sense. The average person will experience sex in the normal course of his/her life (probably more like the rated R version than the X version, but whatever). Meanwhile, the vast majority of people will never experience the kind of hyper-violence that are in even run-of-the-mill violent movies and video games. So, violence that you see depicted in television shows, movies, and video games is, for most people, pure fantasy with no real relation to real life. However, nudity and sex will be a common part of most people’s lives, so waiting until children can properly understand and process the sex scenes in the context of a healthy adult is more important.
Because sex is something that is generally done in private, while violence is typically a public affair?
The clearest articulation of this idea that I’ve ever heard is that exposure to both sex and violence is bad - but the violence is clearly fake, whereas sexual conduct on television is usually not. Short of actual sex, that is - actors who’re kissing/groping/whatever really are more-or-less doing these things, whereas actors pretending to shoot one another aren’t actually doing anything of the sort. Thus, protecting kids from real sexual conduct is more important than protecting them from fake violence.
Personally, I don’t find this argument persuasive. At the end of the day, I would much rather my kids have sex than get shot. Indeed, I would actively hope that my (hypothetical) kids have sex at some point; I would be profoundly unhappy if they were ever shot, or ever shot anyone. I’d have far fewer qualms about kids watching sexual behavior on TV than violence.
Children experience violence in the ordinary course of their brutish, barely civilized little lives. If they’re not being pushed and shoved around themselves, they know people who are. Exposing them to televised violence and explaining how it arises, why it’s not acceptable, how to handle it and the feelings that it engenders makes sense for them.
Sex and sexual attraction is likely to be a much more abstract concept for them. They literally haven’t developed the emotional tools for understanding it clearly.
I don’t find this very compelling. If anything, a child is much more likely to commit an act of violence than an act of sex (especially at ages 5-12, where they probably find the idea of sex revolting!), and thus should be shielded from learning violent behaviors, no? You can argue that the average child might not engage in the sort of hyperviolence we see on TV, but fights and aggression are common with people of all ages and I think it would hard to argue that by adulthood most people haven’t experienced or witnessed some scene of real-life violence.
Also, do you think the fact that our society has serious hangups about sex has anything to do with it? I can’t really think of any serious curse words or insults that aren’t sex-related-- which suggests something to me.
I also think a lot of parents don’t feel comfortable talking about sex to their kids. Have “the talk” once, and then let’s not have to bring up the subject again.
This gets to the heart of the matter, I think. Why is it that scenes of passion and love (or even lust) embarrass us, but scenes of unbridled violence and destruction don’t? Is there a biological explanation, or is this just how human culture developed?
That’s my take on it. Kids are “violent” by nature. If not intentionally inflicting pain, they’re running into one another, wrestling, playing physical games, etc. It’s something they’re exposed to as a natural part of their young development. Trying to prevent them from acting upon it in an imaginary measure is a fool’s errand. It’s far easier to teach appropriate physical contact and allow an outlet through “fantasy”. Stopping them from watching cartoon ninjas won’t keep them from play fighting any more than saying “no toy guns” prevents them from picking up a stick and “shooting” it once your back is turned. It’s what kids do.
But the OP is kind of flawed to start with. There’s plenty of violent material I wouldn’t let me kid watch at age 11 (although he’ll probably start seeing it through other avenues with or without me) and plenty of low-grade sexuality I’m not worried about him seeing.
Exposing children to violence isn’t OK.
Regards,
Shodan
Working at a national video game retailer I had to deal with this all the time.
“Ma’am, I’m required to let you know that this game is rated M for mature for violence, blood and gore, alcohol, drug use, simulated gambling-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“- and partial nudity.”
“WHAT?!”
“Partial nudity.”
“OH HELL NO!”
My explaining to them that “partial nudity” means girls in bikinis typically didn’t change their minds. They didn’t want their sweet innocent snookums exposed to a tit: Pulverized whores are OK, as long as they’re clothed.
I think it’s because we don’t expect our children to grow up to become violent people so it’s like we’re just exposing them to fantasy, but we know that they’re going to become sexual one day and we have a desire to delay that for as long as possible. Regardless, I think it’s a ridiculous attitude to take.
I don’t think you’ll get one. It really does seem to be nothing more than a legacy of a prudish and puritanical past in a culture that glorifies violence.
I agree with this. Seeing sex on TV would result in all sorts of questions. However, if TV showed real violence - if those shot got gaping holes in them with lots of blood, maybe there would be questions about that too.
Violence on TV is a lot like porn. People pull it out at the slightest provocation, it happens more often than in real life, and there are few consequences if any. None emotional.
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Violence is something kids do. Sex, however, is an adult activity. They know all about how to hit and kick each other but they don’t know how to have sex. The system works.
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Kids can easily learn that shooting people and blowing up cars are bad things. They can’t easily be taught that sex is a bad thing. You can turn to an 11-year old and say “You know it’s bad to shoot people, right?” and they’ll say yeah. You ask the same kid “You know it’s bad to have sex, right?” and they’ll either believe you, which is bad, or they won’t believe you, which is also bad. Violence is easy to teach about. Sex is incredibly complicated. So we protect them from sex until they’re mature enough to handle it.
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It’s not easy for a kid to get a gun. It’s easy for them to get laid. Rarely will a kid get an opportunity to reenact what violence he just saw on TV. But constantly kids get opportunities to reenact the sex they just saw on TV. So it’s more important to protect them from sexual concepts than violence.
Ultimately, a 9-year old can understand the moral nuances and consequences of violence. But the nuances and consequences of sex? Some adults still haven’t figured that out, as evidenced by all the sex threads on the Dope. So we wait til our kids are older before exposing them to the subject.
Perhaps it would help, OP, if you articulated why you think violence and sex should be compared in the first place. Why not ask “Why do we protect kdis from sex but not spinach?” What makes viloence comparable to sex?
The human animal seems to have an inherent instinct regarding the association of age and sex. Children are (generally) not exposed to sex, are not expected to understand sex, until they reach certain levels of experience and maturity. And we (generally) try to postpone our childrens sexual experiences until adulthood.
None of this is true for violence. We do not have an inherent instinct regarding the association of age and violence. We understand that children are capable of violence in their own lives, and are exposed to certain levels of it in their peer groups.
I think it is because images of sex often produce sexual feelings. I can’t really recall having violent feelings being stirred up by watching movie violence, but there are plenty of times I had sexual feelings while watching movie sex. And violent images are typically in the context of good vs. evil with good winning out. So there is some sort of moral lesson. Sex scenes are usually there for character development or setting the mood. Many times they are not critical to the story. So it’s probably easier to leave them out and not have to deal with the issue of kids getting sexually aroused.
Huh?
So if you have a 6 year old, and a steamy love scene is on the TV, your first thought is that you have to shield your kid from it because you’re afraid he might go and have sex?
Not all violence is gun-related. In fact, there’s plenty of punching, kicking, and beating in movies. Kids can easily do this. In fact, it seems to be that it’s much more likely that they’ll end up being desensitized to this and act it out in real life than act out a sex scene.
Ever been to a school playground?
Growing up, I had infinitely more opportunities to act out violence than to act out sex. In fact, the only sex I would have been able to act out would have to have involved violence.
They are prevalent issues of morality within our culture. The 10 Commandments doesn’t mention spinach, alas. As a society, we seem to despise real-life violence but enjoy tremendously fictional accounts of it. Conversely, we seems to enjoy real-life sex, but (at least publicly) despise theatrical displays of it.
Children are exposed to violence early on “Tommy, quit hitting your sister!”, sex not so much.
My parents never had “The Talk” with me about spinach. Was a serious gap in my upbringing.