# Did Your Parents Censor Your Reading Material? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 5, 2003, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600 "2003-04-05T01:07:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/61 "2003-04-06T06:14:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*I would not allow a seven year old to read _Flowers in the Attic_. Sorry. \*\* I did. 😃 Actually, I think I might have been a bit younger. It was the first adult novel that I read. Didn’t \* understand \* it, but read it I did. ---
**Author:** ![Giselle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Giselle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giselle)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/62 "2003-04-07T05:44:06Z")
I’d say I’m mostly uncensored in what I read. My dad did get a little nervous when I started reading the Anita Blake books, but my dad gets a little nervous about a lot of things. My parents have actually been extremely supportive of me in my quest to read as many banned books as I can. ---
**Author:** ![herwono](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9f8e36/32.png) [@herwono](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/herwono)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/63 "2003-04-07T13:45:06Z")
When my mum found my romance novels she threw them into the garbage bin. Not because of the sex-scenes though (I don’t think she realises they have sex-scenes, and I’m not about to tell her). She thinks the novels give me an unrealistic view of life. \ I just keep my novels hidden now. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/64 "2003-04-07T15:21:11Z")
heck, in 1972 I was regailing my fellow fifth-graders with the exploits of Vlad Dracula, Peter Kurten, Fritz Haarman and Elizabeth Bathory (which I pronounced as BaTHORNy until two years ago when a 20-yr old friend corrected me- I MISPRONOUNCED IT FOR ALMOST THIRTY YEARS AND NO ONE EVER CORRECTED ME TILL THEN!). I wasn’t censored as much as I should have been. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/65 "2003-04-07T15:26:22Z")
They attempted to. When Vonnegut’s ‘Galapagos’ came out they bought it for me, but they told me they would have to read through it first, and then the book disappeared from sight for a few years, and I forgot about it until I found it later. That’s the only time I can remember that they attempted to censor my reading materials (aside from hiding the Playboys, when I found them I assumed they were left by the house’s previous owner because my Dad would NEVER read dirty magazines). What’s odd is that long before ‘Galapagos’, I was allowed to read other books that had explicit sex in them, like ‘Ringworld’ or ‘When Harley was One’. ---
**Author:** ![Darkrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@Darkrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkrabbit)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/66 "2003-04-07T15:53:59Z")
My reading was never censored. My dad is a big book-a-holic and enjoys reading everything (sci fi in particular). There was always reading material all around the house. One distinct ‘reading’ memory from my youth was hearing from a friend in the 8th grade of how he was punished because he was reading Edgar Allen Poe. Heck, I read nearly everything EAP ever wrote in the fifth grade! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/67 "2003-04-07T15:56:51Z")
No, but my Mom did keep the family bible with the Oz books and other fantasy novels… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/68 "2003-04-07T16:45:52Z")
The only times my Mom ever took a book away from me, was when I hadn’t given her a chance to finish it first. Not that I was awaiting parental approval, but that she wanted to read it, too. If we had twwo copies, there wasn’t a problem. Sometimes I also had to finish my homework before being allowed to read, but I became quite adept at palming and stashing books so that she wouldn’t realize I was avoiding work. In retrospect, I think she probably knew, but didn’t want to discourage me. TV and movies were a different story. We hardly saw any movies at all, and we weren’t allowed any TV show until after Mom had seen it and approved it. Mostly, we weren’t allowed to watch vigilante-action shows (except MacGuyver), or scary stuff. I think I was about 8 years old before I knew that there were any TV stations other than PBS. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/69 "2003-04-07T17:32:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FriarTed \* > \*\*heck, in 1972 I was regailing my fellow fifth-graders with the exploits of Vlad Dracula, Peter Kurten, Fritz Haarman and Elizabeth Bathory (which I pronounced as BaTHORNy until two years ago when a 20-yr old friend corrected me- I MISPRONOUNCED IT FOR ALMOST THIRTY YEARS AND NO ONE EVER CORRECTED ME TILL THEN!). > > I wasn’t censored as much as I should have been. \*\* I have the same damn problem!!! My family are mainly fiction readers, whereas I quickly drifted into non-fiction. We never really discussed what I was reading, so I’ve got a huge vocabulary of words of which I mangle the pronunciation. My husband gently corrects me on occasion, causing me to shrivel in embarassment. (My major problem is on which syllable to place the accent in a longer word, such as “misanthrope.”) I also can’t spell my way out of a wet paper bag, but that’s another thread. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/70 "2003-04-07T19:07:04Z")
There was no censorship in my family of rabid bibliophiles. No one even complained when I dragged in a stepladder from the shed to reach the upper shelves (the Nero Wolfe books were there, at a convenient height for my big brother). ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/71 "2003-04-07T20:53:55Z")
I read everything when I was a kid. The library was my favorite place. I don’t think it occurred to my mom that I would check out anything offensive. She did think it was strange that I started reading Steven King in 5th grade, but she never took it away. ---
**Author:** ![sj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@sj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sj2)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/72 "2003-04-08T00:55:29Z")
No, they also took me to see Blue Velvet when I was 12…among the other thrillers like Basic Instinct. I used to read my grandmother’s romance novels in grammar school. ---
**Author:** ![catnoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ab992/32.png) [@catnoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catnoe)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/73 "2003-04-08T12:57:14Z")
My reading wasn’t censored. Dad was a reader and Mom wanted to be but was a bit dyslexsic (is that how it’s spelled?). She used to take us to the library once a week in the summer. I had a brother who was four years older (and 2 younger sisters) and I read everything he did as soon as he put the book down. We were all reading a bit ahead of our age group. Didn’t read romance/bodice-rippers except when baby-sitting and they were in the house. The one time I brought one in our house (I was about 13) Dad took it from me and said I could read it after I’d read all the Louis L’Amour’s in the basement. He considered the romance novels of that sort to be garbage. By the time I was 13 I had already read Hermann Hesse and Ayn Rand and pretty much everything in the school library. Did a book report on Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’ in the 9th grade. I read Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Cancer Ward’ and ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ when I was 15 because a favorite ‘genius’ uncle was reading them. Oddly, I didn’t read a lot of the ‘classics’ till I was out of school. I did read the ones the class was suppose to be reading. A favorite incident was in my junior year and we were suppose to read ‘The Scarlett Letter’. The teacher wanted to know who had read the book and who read the ‘Cliff notes’ so she put questions on the test that weren’t covered in the condensed version, I was one of only a few who actually read the book. I remember being pissed when it took me a week to read ‘Gone with the Wind’ when I was 12. But no, reading was not censored in our house, amount of time spent in front of the TV was. My sisters and I had 4 1/2 hours of TV time between us Monday through Friday (mind you this is the early to mid 70’s). No Saturday morning cartoons till chores were done. ---
**Author:** ![Theom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a9a28c/32.png) [@Theom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theom)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/74 "2003-04-08T16:30:47Z")
When I was 13 my mother requested I didn’t read Rising Sun by Michael Chriton (sorry I really can’t remember how you spell it) but that was about the only censorship thing. My friend was banned from reading the Adrian Mole books. We were eight at the time and I remember being confused as to why… I thought when Nigel Formed the Gay club he was just being Happy! Seriously!!! Sensoring books is a bit pointless beacause the kids are either going to be too young to understand so it is a moot point regardless or else if they ARE old enough to understand they should have your respect to deal with the content. ---
**Author:** ![DeVena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dec6dc/32.png) [@DeVena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeVena)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/75 "2003-04-08T16:54:02Z")
Nope no censoring here - and I read EVERYTHING. One summer, the parents kidna… umm TOOK us 4 kids across the county in a motorhome. I think there are laws against doing this now. “Look kids! Something fun to do - but they want us to pay. Awwww - Nope. Lets find a park or a campground that’s free.” Got a lot of pamphlets and stuff from Hari Krishnas in San Francisco and The Book Of Morman in Utah. And a book called “Unknown but Known” by the medium Arthur Ford from a junk store in Vegas. I left as a sheltered 12 year old southern baptist kid - I came back VERY confused! ---
**Author:** ![Deadly\_Nightlight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Deadly\_Nightlight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deadly_Nightlight)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/76 "2003-04-08T17:07:17Z")
I was never too censorec, but when I reread the book Sybil over and over again, my mom made me read somethign else, I was about 11 then. My parents really didn’t care what I read as long as I got good grades. ---
**Author:** ![ElJeffe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@ElJeffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElJeffe)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/77 "2003-04-08T19:29:13Z")
I was typically allowed to read whatever I pleased, but there was one incident with a comic book. It was a series called “Faust”, and was chock-full of sex, violence, and devil worship. I liked it because the main-character was a bad-ass, and the story was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I was 14 at the time, and this was one seriously explicit comic. I certainly wouldn’t have let me read it if I were her. Anyway, she kinda freaked out and took all of my comics and hid them until she could go though them. Little punk that I was, I hunted them down and took them back (what, like she wouldn’t notice? I wasn’t too bright back then, I guess), which seriously pissed her off, so she just threw them all out. Bummer, because I had a lot of comics that were worth something, too. Ah, well. Served me right for being a snotty teenager. Jeff ---
**Author:** ![Politzania](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@Politzania](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Politzania)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/78 "2003-04-08T19:37:28Z")
I don’t recall much censorship but in most cases I don’t think they knew what I was into. For example, I was reading my mom’s stash of _National Lampoons_ when in early middle school - don’t know if she knew I was reading them or not. I think I read _Forever_ in 5th grade & _Clan of the Cave Bear_ in 6th or 7th grade. Also looked thru my uncle’s _Playboys_ when no-one was around… :o ---
**Author:** ![Lizard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@Lizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lizard)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/79 "2003-04-08T19:44:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lissa \* > **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."** This was my childhood, almost exactly. In fact, I remember very clearly my mother looking at just the _cover_ of a book on more than one occasion and saying “You’re not going to read _that_ garbage.” Why? Who knows. She had all kinds of ultr-conservative ideals, and was something of a control freak to boot. In movies, 100 people could be machine-gunned to death, but if one pair of breasts appeared she would try to cover my eyes. Even into high school! Since I considered all of this very hypocritical, (Mom had a who stash of soft-core, feminist-style dirty books in the basement) not to mention **infuriating** , I have no intention of doing this to my own kids. I have no example of how to be this open-minded though, so I just hope I don’t make a hash of it. ---
**Author:** ![milo\_minderbinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@milo\_minderbinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milo_minderbinder)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600/80 "2003-04-08T22:39:37Z")
I remember being banned from the living room as a kid because my Brother and Sister in Law with whom I lived with at that time wanted to watch an 18 rated movie. Seemingly the use of profane language I heard every day and the usual tits and explosions were too shocking for my pulpy juvenile mind to deal with. So I sat in my room and read American Psycho instead. milo [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-your-parents-censor-your-reading-material/166600.md?page=5)