When I got my kids a library card when they were 9 I had to specify (again and again and again) that I wanted an unrestricted access card. Just like the adults.
What is this fear of knowledge? If my kids want to read up on how to make a bomb or a baby why is it my responsiblility to stop them? Now, if one of them decided to build a bomb (or make a baby) in his or her bedroom-- then I damn well will intervene.
If you need the library to tell you where your kid’s head is at, then you need more than the library’s help.
My mom had to do that for my sister and I as well, when she saw that the special kids’ section wasn’t catering to our reading level any longer. This was in the 1970s. I’m assuming that the worry at the time was that we’d read romance novels or see pictures of naked people.
I think that going so far as to demand a list of a minor’s reading material is a bit much, but parents have a responsibility for their children’s actions. The umbilical cord was cut at birth but this does not absolve the parent of all blame should the child get into trouble. Parents do need to keep an eye on their kids, but also need to give them a certain amount of privacy, as well as instill enough mutual trust that the kid should be able to talk to a parent about certain issues without fear.
I never said that I intended to keep a short leash on Aaron. It’s my freakin job as his mother to allow him freedom to form his own opinions and thoughts. I merely said that if he were reading certain kinds of literature, I’d want to know about it so as to head off potential problems. Even if he were reading The Anarchist’s Cookbook for shits and giggles, at least I’d have that explanation. And we can talk about it so Aaron can get a sense of why I might be concerned that he’s reading that, and if there are any problems he might be having, we can address them.
IMHO, the slight invasion of my son’s privacy, should it be warranted, more than outweighs his right to absolute privacy. I’m not talking about requiring permission for him to read every last book. I’m not talking about daily or weekly searches of his room, looking for God knows what. I’m merely talking about being aware of what he’s reading and doing so that problems, if there are any, can be dealt with before he or someone else gets hurt.
Blalron, if privacy is so fucking precious that you’re willing to risk the murders of innocent children because no one should keep an eye out for questionable materials, then you need to re-assess your priorities.
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
“I read a book in the library… and it convinced me to go around killing people.” Nope, not believable.
The point is you can only go so far to prevent bad things from happening until it goes too far.
It’s an important value to keep teens from having sex, but does that give parents the right to do daily hymen inspections on their daughters?
Neither is it their right to shield their kids from the outside world, and keep them from reading something that might contradict their parents precious belief system.
Nice strawman, but that’s not what she said. She said she was going to keep an eye out for objectionable materials, and that if she saw a bomb-making book she’d be asking questions about what her son was reading. That’s like finding a condom or The Joy of Sex in his room and asking if he’s sexually active or thinking about it, or if he has questions about sexuality, not having him checked for vaginal secretions or anything similar.
I would regularly bring home from the library books on the occult and paranormal, and at first my mom would ask in a tactful fashion basically why I was reading them, and we’d talk about it. Considering that she was raised an extremely strict Christian, that’s something that would ring her alarm bells, but she was also liberal and understanding enough to not freak out over other opinions or points of view. I think that’s a responsible thing to do as a parent, to have conversations with your kids when you notice something out of the ordinary.
we were talking about whether parents should be able to look at the records of what books their kids have checked out, not the ability of parents to discuss things with their children.
What if some fundamentalist christian parent sees that their kid checked out a book on evolution, and then beat the shit out of them because of it?
And you called MsRobyn in particular to task because she’d said she would raise questions if she found potentially dangerous reading material in her son’s room. She didn’t specify that she would definitely demand to know what books he was checking out from the library; that wasn’t clear by any means, from my reading of it. Save the big guns for people who come out and state that they’d happily see minors have no privacy.
I think MsRobyn has the best handle on this. The key is being well-balanced. One does not want to be too strict, but one does not want to be too lienient either.
Woah, just to defend myself, this isn’t a self-centered rant at all. I’m out of the house and old enough to read, watch, hear, do, etc, whatever I want. In fact, I don’t remember borrowing anything my parents would object to when I was still a minor. But this fear of information still disgusts me, and the rant inspired by these school library book banning cases where parents think it’s their right to force the government to aid in shielding their children from the real world. They reminded me of another issue (it may be local: P.G. County MD) involving confidential borrowing records for children. Of course I’m not against a general domination over children’s lives by parents, that’s what parents are supposed to do. But so many parents still have a hard time understanding that their kids are seperate people.
This is how I read your post pizzabrat. There is a biiiiig difference between reading something and believing/doing/acting out. Why is there this huge fear of children finding out things? Heaven forfend if little Lisa reads about bomb making, or worse yet, baby making!
The fact that I had to go back to my public library again and again (and this is in Brooklyn, not somewhere in the Bible Belt) to make sure my kids had access to books – not guns, not condoms, not holy water but BOOKS-- because those in charge of the library didn’t think it was acceptable for them to read about certain subjects angered me to no end.
Reading about things is good. Even things that are unacceptable, ugly, even titillating . Kids are curious and prurient-- just like adults. So? What good does keeping this information away from them do, if they want to know about it?
And what the hell does what happened in Colombine have to do with any of this? Adults can and do much worse yet no one thinks it’s a good idea to sheild adults from information.
I think horrific visions of some sweet, innocent 8 year old cherub stumbling upon The Story of O scares the living crap out of some people. Now think about your child at 8. Would he read it? Most wouldn’t. If she did read it, would her mind be forever warped by the experience? No.
Parents have a hard job. There are many things we have to protect our children from. Information isn’t one of them.
You guys have already identified a lot of the issues. Please keep in mind privacy laws vary from state to state as well.
In my library, we do not restrict access by age. Period. We do not act as substitute parents, for several cogent reasons.
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*Monitoring what a child reads is the parents’ right and responsiblity. We ain’t gonna be Big Brother and usurp that.
It’s flat impossible to second-guess the familial rules for everybody who walks through the door. Something that offends one person won’t even register with another, and we aren’t about to start keeping profiles.
Children need intellectual freedom as well. A lot of kids, unfortunately, don’t have responsible parents or adults in their lives they can turn to for answers. (Or they feel they can’t, which may amount to about the same thing.) Even the lucky kids with great parents sometimes have questions they just feel oogie about asking. It’s better to explore those questions in books than on the streets or in locker rooms, if ya get the drift.
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It’s anything but clearcut. Just remember the flapdoodle over Harry Potter promoting witchcraft. Now extend that unreason out over everything written. You’d boggle at the range of what people manage to find offensive and dangerous. We aren’t going to do the pre-selecting. And Biggirl is exactly right. Forbidden fruit is attractive but most kids who curiously check out the “good stuff” end up bored and wondering what the fuss was about.
Financial responsibility makes this all really fun, though. Minors can sign up for library cards but a parent or guardian has to co-sign as being financially liable for losses. Some libraries won’t tell parents what books their kids have checked out until the books become overdue. The parents, not unreasonably, ask how the hell they’re supposed to search for unknown books to get them returned without fines. Anyone who’s ever confronted a child’s messy room may empathize here.
I don’t think there’s a huge problem with kids having access to information. I think there is a huge problem with not allowing parents to know what information their kids are getting, and control access to it if they wish. It’s a parents job to know what their kids are doing and to exercise control over it as they see fit. Maybe a parent just wants to talk to the kid about what they are reading. Maybe they want to forbid it. Either way, that is their RIGHT as the parent.
That’s absurd. What if the school sends home a report card and some atheist liberal beats his daughter for that B- in history? Two key points here. A) A persons religious and political beliefs do not make him or her more or less likely to abuse children; and B) An abusive parent will be abusive regardless of what the children do.
This argument is a strawman directing attention from the fact that certain people are calling for the government to restrict a parents access to information about their own children. IMHO, that should not be happening unless a parent is found unfit. It should not be incorporated into a sweeping policy of any kind.
The shooting at Columbine High School raised a very important issue. Parents can no longer afford to turn a blind eye toward their children’s activities. It’s felt (and has been brought up in this discussion) that had Eric Harris’s and Dylan Klebold’s parents been a little more aware of what their sons were up to, and suitable action had been taken, Columbine might never have happened.
While I don’t think any library should send out notices to parents every time their child borrows a book, and as far as I’m concerned, libraries should not restrict borrowing privileges to a teenager based solely on age, I do think parents should have access to their minor child’s library records.
I like to think of myself as a responsible parent. This means that, occasionally, I need to set limits. This extends to intellectual freedom, when he’s reading literature that he can’t appropriately process, either on an emotional or intellectual level (or given his age, might be illegal). As his mother, I would think I’d be in the best position to judge what is and what is not appropriate.
Appropriateness aside, what kids read is occasionally a clue into what they’re thinking. All kids think about certain things; I doubt I’d flip out if I saw an adult magazine in Aaron’s room, because sexual exploration is a part of adolescence. However, if I found information that would indicate that he’s depressed, or using drugs, or planning another Columbine, I would feel compelled to act, and act quickly. In this instance (and I can’t think of any other reason to look), I’d want to look at his library records to see if there’s anything else I might need to be aware of. In other words, if he’s got still parts in his room, I’m gonna wanna know
if he can build the still, if you know what I mean.
Controlling what influences a child is exposed to is not just a matter of controlling information: it’s a bit ingenous to say it’s just information, of that it’s just the information that the parents are afraid of.
For example, I wouldn’t allow a ten year old to watch hard-core porn, not because I was trying to keep them from knowing about sex, but because I wouldn’t think that a ten year old would have the context to understand that porn presents one way to look at sex, but it is hardly the only way or even the authoritative way to look at sex.
Furhtermore, if we have a kid, I won’t let him/her watch anything with commercials on a regular basis. It’s not because I am trying to protect them from the information about what breakfast cerals and toys are out there, but because I recognize that those commercials are designed to manipulate small children by people who have spent years–decades–developing proven techniques that work, and I don’t think a child has good defenses against this sort of thing. Obviously, this isn’t the best choice for everyone–we all raise our children based on what is important to us.
My third example is a bit more problematic. My parents let me read anything I wanted except for books on the paranormal, and I was allowed to read mainsteam books on the paranormal. What I wasn’t allowed to read were these slim little fringe-press paperbacks my dad collects–books that are pretty explicitly promoting the exisitance of past lives, predicting the furure, proving that yetis and Atlantic exisit, etc. My mother’s reasoning was that at 10 I didn’t have the critical thinking skills to see all the gaps and problems in the writing–I still tended to accept what was written as being true unless the evidence against it was pretty overwhelming. Mom wanted me to wait until I was old enough to think critically about these things before I read them, because she felt like it was much more diffucult to think critically about something if you accepted is at “true” from a young age on. By the time I was 15, she didn’t care if I read things like that. Anyway, I don’t have a real problem with my mom doing this–I don’t think she was crippling my intellectual growth by not letting me read “Edgar Cayce on Atlantis” until I was 15. But some people I know seem to think that any restrictions on reading materials whatsoever is verboten.