As a child, I was allowed to read whatever I wished. My parents had the theory that no knowledge could be bad, and you could learn something from any book. Never did they forbid me to read any book, no matter how “mature” the subject matter.
I’ve talked to many people, most recently a 14-year-old girl in a bookstore who told me that her parents wouldn’t allow her to read “grown-up” books, and even forbid her from reading some children’s books which they considered to “racy.”
Most commonly, it seems, book censorship is done for religious reasons, such as a Christian parent forbidding their child to read * Harry Potter. * But I’ve also seen many non-religious parents censor their child’s reading material for various reasons.
What about you? Did your parents allow you to read whatever you wanted, or did they put restrictions on your books? If so, why, and as a parent, do you intend to do the same?
My parents never censored my reading material, except for the nudie mages, but thats a different story. They just believed that reading anything would be better than watching tv or playing video games.
The only time I can remember my parents taking a book away from me, I was 8 and I had just checked “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” out of the library. Just as well, I really wasn’t enjoying it much, as I remember.
What my parents did censor was TV and movies. Still do, and I’m 23…
It took me years to realize how lewd some of the stuff I was reading actually was. If I read it now, it would seem tame, of course, but for a 10 year old, it was pretty racy.
I read essentially anything I could. I think that’s a lot better way of growing up than - “No, you can’t read that book. Here, play Street Fighter instead.” (Hmm… showing my age again)
Not that I’m aware of. I do have a vague memory of my mother asking me if I had a copy of My Darling, My Hamburger at one point, but that was well after I’d read the book, so I said yes.
There was never anything stated that I couldn’t read - but I don’t think my mother was usually aware of what I was reading (like… Clan of the Cave Bear somewhere around 10).
Somewhere around age 11, my parents actually had a fairly severe argument about whether they would censor what I checked out of the library or not. I had been going through the library’s section on ghosts, haunted houses, ESP, etc. (pretty standard for a curious 11-year-old), and my father had some weird objection that this stuff was Satanic. My mother, who is usually much more strictly religious, argued quite strongly that I would figure out the books were hogwash on my own (I did, although not in the way she expected) and that it would be an exercise in critical thinking on my part - that they would be weakening a growing experience for me if they interfered. The subject never came up again after that, partially because I switched to the religions section and partly because I began smuggling the really heretical stuff home hidden in the middle of a pile of SF/Fantasy - which, however heretical or raunchy, my parents never objected to because, despite being on the fundie side, they had been serious hardcore SF geeks in college.
My daughters do not read as wide a variety of books as I think they should. I can’t even get the twelve-year-old to put down Harry Potter to read The Mists of Avalon.
Yes, but not for maturity or content, but for “quality.”
If they thought the book was trash, or pulp, or poorly written, (or it looked as though it may be so) I wasn’t allowed to read it and had to hide it from them. (with us, it wasn’t as though if they forbade books we were going to stop reading them, or they had to beg us to read… it was much more likely to be the opposite) But well-written, classical sex and violence were perfectly ok.
If I ever have kids, will I do the same? I’m not sure.
Nope. The only restriction was that we couldn’t handle the more expensive hardcover volumes without asking first and until we had shown we could treat a book properly.
My reading was never really restricted, until my Mom came home from work one day when I was about ten and I asked her what “mutual masturbation” was. I’d found this book, you see, and it was called “Games Children Play.” I’d no idea it was a psychology book when I found it on her nightstand, and by the time I figured out what it was, I was too interested in what it said to put it down. Mom’s only restriction was that I please ASK her before I went rummaging around in her room looking for reading material. Unfortunately, I never found anything good in there anyway after that
I do restrict my daughter’s reading, to a point. There was a big stink raised at our local junior high school about a Judy Blume book called “Forever.” I rode my high horse over to the public library, checked out a copy, and read it. I then determined that it was more explicit than I’d suspected, and I told her she could read it when she was in high school.
I don’t believe in public censorship, but I do retain the right not to expose my daughter to stuff I know she’s not ready for, or stuff I know to be inaccurate or feel to be unnecessarily lascivious on sexual matters. So, I generally read (or at the very least, skim) most of the books she brings home.
I had Baldwin’s Another Country expropriated from me when I was 11 or 12. I got a hold of it because of the sex parts, and it was taken from for that reason. What I should have had expropriated from me was Catcher in the Rye, the reading of which just made my bad attitude even worse, and I am still dealing with the consequences 35 down the road. The power of litratchah!!
Quite the opposite, but then I don’t remember reading anything terribly graphic or age-inappropriate, either in terms of sexual or violent content. In fact, one day the branch librarian around the corner from our house refused to let me check out an Agatha Christie mystery, of all things (I think I was 10 or 11 years old), because it was in the “adult” section. When I came home and complained to Mom, she dragged me back to the library and proceeded to ream out the librarian in front of me for censorship.
What Mom didn’t know was when my sister snuck Mom’s copy of The Joy of Sex over to our next door neighbor’s house. I remember looking at it and being really, really confused about why the people in the drawings were doing some of that stuff.
I was allowed to read whatever I wanted. It didn’t scar me at all. I do remember reading The Color Purple in 5th grade and being utterly mystified by it. It made much more sense when I read it a couple of years ago.
I was lucky, nobody cared as long as I kept myself occupied.
I tend to take the liberal approach when it comes to my own daughter. Because I’m avid reader, she’s had plenty of age appropriate books in the house since before she was born. I was a little disappointed at first that she wasn’t the reader I was. She reads and enjoys it well enough, but she isn’t consumed with it the way I was. Then I realized that’s a good thing. I was reading for escape most often, and she seems to be a happy, social child, so maybe she doesn’t need it. I’m okay with that.
I had the great fortune to have a librarian as a mother. By age 10, she was worried that I had read out the children’s books.
Alright, I needed to read, not wanted, needed, give some adult books please.
She was ok with that, and gave me some adult books, nothing risque, coz she read everything, and handed me the books that were she deemed appropriate.
Note that at the time there were mountains of books in our house.
I was OK, I’ll read what you are not allowing me to read, not all that hard to sneak one. One day, on the way to school, I was carrying Wambaugh’s “Blue Knight”. Not great literature, but verboten nonetheless.
A very Catholic gradeschool, btw.
My father, who then and later gave us boys a very long leash, saw that, and said “Alear, what have you got there?”
I showed him.
Wiser he is in retrospect than I thought at the time, he said, “You can read that, but don’t bring it into school.” I left the book in the car, and spent the whole day with little to read other than what textbooks they had.
Was I censored? Probably. Was it just? Yes.
I’m given free reign on what I read. I’d venture to say I’m a sight more well read than my parents, and they seem to realize that. They did censor movies, once. The Interview with the Vampire, when it first came out. Sort of glad they did…
Hey, wait, I lied. When the book form of Girl, Interrupted came out after the movie, I wasn’t allowed to read it. Mind you, the moment I was told that I read it. I don’t see why, really. She may have thought I was of the ‘impressionable’ sort, though I’m sure (I hope) she knows better.
