Wanted: a sensible explanation of why parents don't want kids exposed to sex but violence is okay

Great Debates
21

Kids hit their siblings all the time, and they’re hit in return. They know violence already. What they don’t know is sex. That’s a good thing. They don’t find out about it until they’re much older because we protect them from it. That’s also a good thing. Thus, the system works.

No. They might think that it’s an OK activity to engage in, and it’s not. At least, not for them. Not until they’re adults.

That’s not true. They don’t get desensitized to real violence from watching fake violence. There’s a reason why people get traumatized when they witness, say, a suicide jumper or a bad car wreck. And these are adults that have presumably been watching violent movies all their lives!

I have many years as a day care teacher, so yeah. And I can tell you that kids know that violence is wrong. They’re not surprised when they get put in time out for hitting someone.

But you knew it was wrong, didn’t you? Did you know that sex was wrong? And I’m talking about when they’re older. A 15 year old kid knows better than to punch a girl. But they don’t know not to have sex with her.

What about theft? That’s in the 10 Commandments. It’s a prevalent issue of morality in our culture (“Is it OK for a starving man blah blah blah bread?”) So is it your contention that kids should be or should not be exposed to theft on TV?

22

Separate post because it’s a separate point: I contest this notion. We don’t just enjoy fictional accounts of violence per se. We enjoy when bad guys get their comeuppance. We enjoy watching things blow up, sure. We enjoy artistic, acrobatic fight scense like a Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan scene and suspenseful who’s-gonna-win fights like Star Wars’s Death Star scene.

But no one enjoys when the hero gets his ass kicked. No one likes when the heroine gets raped or stabbed. No one likes when the funny guy gets hit by a car. No one likes when the quarterback gets a broken leg.

We like it when the good guy wins and the bad guys lose. We hate the opposite. That’s not violence - that’s storytelling.

23

AClockworkMelon had a good example of this, but I’m not sure what you mean, OP. What kind of violence are you talking about children being exposed to, specifically? Movies only? And in what way are parents saying it’s okay?

24

I think you’re totally wrong here. Every teenager fears getting caught having sex because they know they’re not supposed to do it, which is exactly why they sneak around to do it, and why they don’t would never mention it to parents. It also explains why the back seat of cars became so popular for sexual escapades; it had less to do with privacy, and more to do with not getting caught.

My argument is not that anyone should necessarily be shielded from anything. I’m trying to arrive at a logically-consistent and culturally unbiased metric that a parent could use to determine what their kid should or shouldn’t be exposed to.

25

To me, it’s like opposite world. Few kids will grow up to be murderers, 99.999% will grow up to have sex. Violence, whatever, I think it’s true any normal person or child will not have the urge to go out and stab people because they saw it on tv. But sexual contact is a normal, healthy, enjoyable part of life, it’s normal for kids to start experimenting with it very young (4 and 5-year-olds ‘kiss’, hold hands, have girlfriends/boyfriends, ‘get married’, and ‘play doctor’ - naturally their experimentation is totally different than that of 15-year-olds, who are physically mature enough to reproduce and have strong biological urges to do what leads to propagation, and lots of awesome things that don’t). Why not educate kids about it? Why hide normal expressions of romantic love and sexual contact from them?

There is this misguided idea that children are or hould be asexual beings up to and even after puberty. Doesn’t jive with my experiences as a kid - I was always keenly interested.

I was exposed to sex relatively young and in much more detail than anyone else I have ever discussed it with. My mom and dad answered all questions I had honestly, with perhaps TMI at times, since I was about 4. I read explicit scenes in my grandma’s romance novels from about 8 and up, and I had a copy of ‘The Joy of Sex’ from about age 10 on. As I got older, I only had more access to information and depictions of sex - this is mostly what the internet is good for. I think I forgot more about the biology, mechanics and culture of both gay and straight sex by the time I had it (not til I was 19, I wasn’t ready until then) than most adults ever know.

I was also sheltered from representations of violence as I grew up mostly without a tv and when I did have one my screen time was supervised and we only had three tame channels, rarely watched tv at friends houses and didn’t play video games, and I only saw a couple non G or PG movies until I was about 15.

It was the total opposite for most people I know. Anecdotal, but I don’t think this ‘system’ does anyone any favors. Kids I knew were ignorant about sex and constantly making mistakes once they started being sexually active - even with the help of the comprehensive sex ed in my high school. Perfectly intelligent adults I know are still incredibly ignorant about sex and constantly making bad choices. By mistakes and bad choices I mean not only unprotected intercourse but ejaculation right on the damn cervix at the prime time for conception (if you have a regular cycle and are not on the pill, it’s ridiculously easy IMO for every woman to know which week and a half out of every month she should really avoid having sperm blasted practically into her uterus - but apparently many women don’t even know the basic science of ovulation and female fertility, even though most are also 9,000x more paranoid about unplanned pregnancy than I am), STDs, unplanned pregnancies, inability to have sexual relationships in a way that doesn’t damage themself or other emotionally, inability to hold back before having sex with some person sending up red flags right and left that they don’t know well enough to trust who sometimes turns out to be irresponsible, infectious, abusive, or have a burning desire to impregnate/be impregnated no matter what YOUR plans might be… etc.

26

Probably for the same reason we as a culture view sexual abuse of children much more seriously than violent physical abuse.

27

You may be onto something here. One big difference between sex and violence is that sex is something where age or maturity level matters: a person either is or is not old enough for, is or is not ready for at some point in their life. So if you take an act that would be beautiful or erotic between adults, and change the age of one or both participants so that they’re children, it becomes squicky or creepy or horrifying.
But really, I wish the OP would clarify what he means by “exposed to sex” and “exposed to violence.”

28

Recently at notalwaysright.com:

29

My guess would be that the majority of violence takes place in private, not in public.
And yeah this whole Sex vs Violence thing is something that a lot of people outside of the US finds strange about US culture. If I had a kid, I would prefer that he/she had sex rather than kill someone. And post-puberty I’d assume he/she would be trying to find out about/have sex. I know I did. Still haven’t killed anyone, but have had a lot of great sex. So our system of allowing sex but being careful about violence seems to work.

30

Neither. It’s how US culture developed. In Europe, it’s pretty much the opposite. Sex is okay, and you’ll even see casual nudity in TV commercials occasionally, but violence is much more tightly restricted.

It’s just the US that’s crazy.

31

The modern Western human animal you mean. I believe that for much of our history we lived in one room dwellings, and children were exposed to sex from an early age - not to mention being exposed to animal sex. This is clearly a cultural, not an inborn, thing.

32

No it is not sensible.

33

Here’s one: Unless you live in certain places, an unhealthy interest in violence is unlikely to get your teenager killed. But knocking up a girl or getting knocked up is always a possibility everywhere.

Another factor is that violence-obsessed kids are usually . . . marginally less annoying or embarrassing for adults to be around.

34

It’s probably more because parents find talking about sex awkward than anything else. I don’t think knowing what sex is from an early age does any great harm, or else children in many eras and cultures would have been seriously messed up.

If I’m going to offer my two cents, I would say that in an intensely monogamous culture like ours adults tend not to talk about sex with other adults because doing so might cause sexual envy or jealousy.

I don’t think kids would either be revolted by the mechanics of love or turn into little sex maniacs who try to have sex with each other if we told them. Before puberty, we simply don’t relate to sex on an instinctive level - it’s no different from wrestling or some other meaningless physical activity like sticking your finger in somebody’s nostril. We find it hard to understand find it so fascinating.

Also: it’s not like the kids don’t find out anyway. I found out in second grade when the kids next door chanced an old porno mag in some bushes and passed it around. I’d be surprised if most of you people didn’t have a pretty clear idea way before of sex ed.

35

Weellll . . . Remember, pre-pubescents rarely have the strength to actually harm each other with their bare hands. Then they gain that capability (together with a flood of rage-inducing hormones) and some socialization is necessary to teach them not to; just as some socialization is necessary to teach them that acting on their brand-new sexual desires is a step to be taken cautiously if at all.

36

I still feel violence is clearly fake on TV. All but the smallest children know when Moe hits Curly with a hammer it’s fake. Children know when an actor gets shot he lives on.

We played guns and pirates all the time. And the “rule” was once you’re shot you lie still for a minute then get up again. We knew that playing dead wasn’t death. If our parents refused to buy guns for their kids, the kids got a stick and pretended or used their index and thumb to “form a gun.” There are degrees of violence. Even when we played war, we knew that the “death” we were playing was a huge vast distance, from death in real life. It’s about degrees

This isn’t to say kids can’t get hurt imitating violence. I wanted to jump off a ladder with an umbrella as a parachute. My mum stopped me.

Sex is much different. Actors are kissing and that imitation is something that is more likely to happen than one little kid gettig a gun and shooting another kid. Note I said it’s more LIKELY, not that it’s impossible. Certainly there have been cases where a small child imitates this when he/she finds a gun.

There is also the “loss of innocence,” that parents bemoun.

I live in the inner city and many children I see are raised by “the cuff of their parents hand.” They get hit and violence is part of their lives. And I don’t mean abuse, though some people would say it is abuse.

But once a child is exposed to sex there is an old standard of “innocence lost.” You can’t go back to being a virgin or having your first time.

Sex is supposed to be something special and shared.

Of course these are romantic ideals and rarely work out that way in life. But that doesn’t mean people won’t hope for them.

It’s much the same as I’ve seen marriage come and go in my 46 years on this Earth. When I was little it was special and seemed to mean something. Now so many people have the attitude, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get a divorce.”

I’m not saying that is wrong. I’m saying the view of marriage changed. Maybe it IS for the better. I certainly don’t know and it is what it is, whatever I or anyone else thinks.

But this is a reason for the oppositon to sex. We want sex to be special and we know violence is fake.

37

“And I believe that sex is the most beautiful and meaningful human experience that money can buy.”

– Steve Martin

38

Also, there are times when violence is justified, even among little children. Violence that’s done to defend an innocent, when necessary, or to defend one’s self.

The same cannot be said of sex at that age.

39

This sure wasn’t true for me, or my peers who got no answers from the adults in their life so came to me. Masturbation, sexual feelings and intense curiosity about sexuality/sex can start as early as 3 or 4.

40

Whenever this topic comes up I am always reminded of the time several years ago some network was planning on showing Schindlers List, uncut. Their is a brief scene where Mrs. Schindlers breast is exposed. If I recall Schindler lovingly fondles her for a moment before the scene fades out before it goes further.

This was back in Dallas while I listened to talk radio. The harder, right wing show host and callers were up in arms that this was going to be shown. No mention of the violence that was included in the story.

I’ve asked this question before of people on the right and have never heard a good or coherent reply.

Why is it that showing realistic violence is no problem but showing a husband lovingly caress his wife’s exposed breast will cause terrible emotional damage in frail little children?