When I was around 10 years old, I went to the bookmobile, where I went every Saturday, to ask for Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the new sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was pointed to a letter posted on the wall explaining that the bookmobile was not carrying the book because it was deemed to be inappropriate for children because of its adult themes. I was furious. I wanted to organize a protest of this monumental unfairness and demand that the bookmobile carry the book. I couldn’t believe that they could just arbitrarily decide that I couldn’t read a book I wanted to read. (In the Kindle thread, I mentioned my childhood dream of a book that would instantly be any book I wanted to read. This incident was one of a number that were the impetus for that dream). My Dad pointed out that they had a right to decide what books to carry, and that sometimes adults have to make decisions for the benefit of children. But IIRC, he took me to the adult library so that I could check out a copy and read it for myself. I didn’t enjoy it that much, but I felt that I had achieved a moral victory.
There was also a shelf of forbidden books in our house, including some particularly racy ones written by a friend of my mother’s. My parents once caught me reading one, and we had a long talk about how some things just aren’t appropriate until you are older. I argued with them about why that should be the case, but ultimately I backed down. I never felt particularly oppressed by my parents, because they always tried to explain when I wasn’t allowed to read something, and in retrospect I think that most of their decisions were good ones.
Earlier this year I was reflecting, “Hey, remember when The Simpsons, Madonna, and heavy metal music were controversial?”
I sure do. Or maybe it was just where I lived, but I remember that those were no-nos. Not particularly from my parents, although we didn’t really show much of an interest in such things.
My dad did once threaten to ban Calvin and Hobbes because bro_mcl and I were acting up and he thought we got it from them, but that didn’t happen (and if we were, it was his own damn fault because he got us the books in the first place. I still have the whole set.)
When I was growing up, we didn’t have television (partly a child-rearing decision, partly because my dad was afraid he would spend too much time watching sports), which I think was good in some ways and bad in some ways.
Also, I wasn’t allowed to have toy guns.
However, book censorship or anything of that sort was never even a remote possibility.
Mr. Lissar wasn’t allowed to play with toy weapons, or watch violent tv. Neither were two other guy friends. I think it’s hilarious. They’re all heavily into violent video games, and take a variety of martial arts. Mr. Lissar will be qualified in two years to open his own dojo, after he’s got his ni-dan (second degree black belt) in kobudo and karate. Between them they’ve broken five or six bones, and taken kickboxing, capoeira, Russian Special Forces fighting, kobudo, karate, tai chi, Filipino stick fighting, spearfighting (naginata?), and archery. So I think that trying to prevent kids from becoming violent leads to future excellence in Ways to Hurt People.
I think I was anti-shielded. As I’ve mentioned before, someone put The Female Eunuch, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Brave New World on our seventh-grade reading shelf. I read all of them. They were a bit weird and violent for a 12 year old.
My best friend was. Went through the whole back masking album thing- I was invited to attend an outdoor bonfire sponsored by her church for items that were considered satanic, once woke up after a sleep-over to find that all albums and cassettes had been destroyed during the night, (including several of mine that were on loan), and I was also present when her when her parents went on a whole house witch hunt for products manufactured by Procter and Gamble. (I don’t remember the details of this one; something about there being 13 stars on the P&G logo symbolizing something demonic). Do you have any idea how many products were made by P&G in the late 80’s? Two huge trash bags were filled with household cleaning products, cosmetics, and toiletries and discarded. We were both warned often about sitting too close to the stereo speakers (masturbation?!?) and all door knobs were removed from bedrooms and bathrooms.
The outcome? Leslie was the most beautiful and curviest in our group. She was also the first in our group to lose her virginity. First to smoke weed and drop acid. The first with a pregnancy scare. The only girl in our sphere to pass out drunk at a party and have foul things happen to her, and the only one to participate in group sex. Only one to have nude pictures of her circulated around school. All before age 17. We went separate ways after high school, but when I ran into her a couple years ago she had gained a shocking amount of weight, was no longer beautiful, and deeply involved in her church. So I guess her conservative and superstitious family’s scare tactics worked: eventually.
I was the daughter of teachers with a houseful of books. I read everything I could get my hands on, there was a subscription to Playboy that was as accessible as National Geographic, and I knew the hiding place for the more pornographic magazines. There was always beer or wine in the house. I wasn’t expressly denied anything; therefore I wasn’t overly curious about anything. I very rarely drank before age 21. I was the last of my group to lose my virginity, but not for lack of opportunities. I made decent grades. I made my share of bad decisions, but none had anything to do with the usual vices that ensnare most teens.
I remember once, in fifth grade, we had to read a book called My Brother Sam is Dead, which IIRC is about the Revolutionary War. There was a particular scene which featured brains hanging out of someone’s head (or something), and I remember my parents getting all up in arms about whether or not a school should encourage such reading. They ended up complaining about it to the principal.
I found this personally hilarious because by that age I had read V.C. Andrews novels with explicit sex and even rape scenes, To Kill a Mockingbird, Sybil and Our Bodies, Ourselves, to name a few. The ‘‘graphic violence’’ in that Revolutionary War book didn’t even come to close to what I’d already digested.
I am not a particularly violent person all these years later. (Though admittedly kind of perverted. :))
Oh, and I feel I have to add, given my husband’s line of work as a research assistant on media violence and its impact on the behavior of children: it is not media violence alone that has been proven to lead to aggressive behavior… it is violent media plus… plus a violent upbringing, plus neglect or cultural violence, etc, which increases the likelihood of aggression (far more than only a violent upbringing.) There’s a fancy word for that concept of ‘‘when both conditions are met’’ but it eludes me at the moment.
Oh, I had an English teacher who was head of the department (so, even though my senior year, I didn’t have her, her influence was still felt), who had a real hard on for catholicism and religion and C.S. Lewis. So now I associate fantasy novels (well, Tolkien and Lewis) with heavy handed scary religion.
I was also one of the kids who liked reading bizarre things. Those scary Alvin Schwartz books when I was younger…and then all manner of horror when I was in high school.
My parents never allowed us to play with toy guns (not even water pistols). Their reasoning was that weapons were not toys. However, at around ten years old, my dad would take us along to target shoot and taught us to handle and respect real guns.
My mother, when she was a girl, liked to read comic books, but her parents didn’t approve, so she rarely got the opportunity to do so. Subsequently, when she became a parent herself, she encouraged us all to “read” by buying us comic books, for which I am extremely grateful, as comics are one of those rocks of my childhood I dearly love to reminisce over.
This isn’t strictly speaking what the OP is referring to, I know, but there are still parents today who discourage comics as being childish nonsense, and my Mum, being the complete opposite, was reluctant to sell my collection even when I told her I wanted her to do so. In fact, come to think of it, I’m not sure she has even done it, and it’s been ten years since.
Violent movies were banned for us, though not because our mom thought they would corrupt us. It was more that she, herself, is very easily disturbed–a violent or gory scene can linger in my mom’s mind, disturbing her for weeks or even months–and she projected that on us, assuming that we’d have the same reaction but didn’t have the judgement to avoid the stimulus in the first place. She probably wasn’t entirely wrong, especially when we were younger, and as she was the one that got woken up when we had nightmares, I don’t really blame her.
We were also banned from reading a variety of books my dad had on ESP, aliens, reincarnation–he’s got a life-long low-level fascination with that sort of thing, and my mom didn’t want us reading those sorts of books until we were good enough critical thinkers to see through and around all the logical fallacies and such–she thought we were too credulous and we’d get wacky ideas stuck in our heads too easily. Probably not crazy, either. We were credulous.
We weren’t allowed to own Barbies (though we could play with them at other people’s houses) and dolls were not encouraged. Stuffed animals were fine. Mom didn’t like toys that were too gendered. On the other hand, we also never really wanted dolls or Barbies–had we, I am not sure she would have denied us.
Finally, we had fairly severe TV restrictions: only Saturday morning (so mom and dad could “sleep in”) for many, many years and even into teenage-hood, she wasn’t happy with us watching a lot of television. But that wasn’t about content, it was just that she thought we should be playing or reading, not watching TV.
The only thing my father ever expressed his distaste over, was when I came home wearing a little enamelled cross. “I won’t have you wearing an symbolic instrument of torture” he said. He didn’t object to me listening to our record of the musical “Jesus Crist Superstar”; I guess he liked the idea of a “realistic Jesus”.
My dad would also pointedly stay outside of church buildings we visited on holidays. If my Mom pointed out how beautiful those medieval churches were built, my dad would scowl and say: “Yeah, built with workers’ backbreaking work”.
He also thought the TV shouldn’t be watched for anything but nature shows, but that was a very common leftist intellectual idea back in the seventies.
My parents didn’t shield me from anything else. I still think they did good that way.
I forgot to mention that I went to a private Baptist school. One of the highlights was the year they held the assembly to warn us about e-e-evil music. Along with the Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osborne stuff, they warned us against some seriously evil songs such as Lies, by Fleetwood Mac, My Sweet Lord, and Afternoon Delight.
You know, we’re all posting from the point of view of the denied children, but there are things I shield my kids from too. I’ll allow them to read and listen to whatever they want, but there are some movies and TV shows they just don’t need to see. (I wish I’d been smart enough to put Family Guy on that list before they’d seen it so many times).
Ah, some have mentioned TV shows, so I have to mention that I was forbidden to watch The Simpsons, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and Family Matters. Not because of any particular objectionable content (I was already allowed to watch R movies of considerable violence and sexual content), but because Mom deemed them ‘‘weird.’’ I was 17 before I ever saw an episode of The Simpsons… and holy hell, does that show rock.
I was always allowed to read anything I wanted. TV/movies were very restricted for violent/scary/gory content. My mother was mainly motivated by the fact that she didn’t want to be up all night with a kid having nightmares, which was exactly what happened when I managed to see a scary movie or TV show.
Mom did go through a brief phase of banning “gendered” toys from the house, which was thankfully short-lived. It was the early 1970s. We still laugh about it. We ended up with blocks as an acceptable toy, and I secretly drew faces on them and made them “clothes” out of Kleenex so that I could still play dolls. That’s the closest to “we must protect the children!!!” that ever happened.
Not really. Just about the only thing I can remember being protected from was the TV movie “The Day After.” My folks thought it would be too scary for me.
Almost everyone in my family let me read, watch or listen to pretty much whatever I wanted. My grandmother on my Dad’s side, God rest her soul, would even go out of her way to find D&D manuals for me that were tough to find in her neck of the woods, due to idiots trying to ban them.
Oh, one other thing. My best friend recommended I rent “Kentucky Fried Movie” from the video store, and I watched it with my Dad. That is, until the “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” part, which is when we looked at one another, decided we were too embarrassed to say anything, and I left the room.
My middle daughter was probably just about 10 the first time she heard the song Afternoon Delight; she immediately said “Ewwwww. They’re talking about sex, aren’t they?” I told her yeah, they are, but it’s okay because the people who wrote it were married! (Well, it was true).
We were in a group at one time that warned us against songs like “People Need the Lord” by christian artist Steve Green. The problem was that the beat was not emphasized on the 1st count of the measure. (Backbeat) That made it evil devil music and therefore unacceptable. Yea, we knew some wierd people.
That’s interesting. Dung beetle, would you mind if I stole your idea and started a pendant thread asking parents what they currently shield their kids from and why? While my kid still has to be born, I wonder what the current parent rationale about “shielding” is.
(Well, it was true).