This has actually been a topic on my mind for awhile, and I've been looking for a way to approach it without coming off as too harsh. After discovering that is was going to come across as harsh, anyway, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and get the consensus.

Being childless myself, I'm getting awfully sick and tired of having my rights tread upon to "protect the children". You can't swear or show nudity or sex on TV, you can't have magazines out in the open, you can't even open a stinking bottle of aspirin without lining up those stupid arrows, or 'flick your bic' without first activating the "child-safety feature".

What I feel this amounts to is an ever-growing trend of parents shucking off their responsibilities onto the government, and onto corporations, because they are too lazy to monitor for themselves what their children are doing. Basically, if you don't want your children getting into something... LOCK IT AWAY! If you don't want your children to see something on television... CHANGE THE CHANNEL, or activate parental controls! It is not up to society as a whole to prevent you or your children from being "offended", it is up to YOU.

Don't get me wrong... I'm all for labelling items such as, but not limited to, video games and movies for content, so parents can make an educated decision. But I think it is TOTALLY unacceptable to remove items from a store, or not show something on TV that the "American Family Association" thinks shouldn't be there because a child might have access to it. That is not my problem, and not the problem of anybody else who doesn't have kids. It should be left completely up to the parents. If a parent can't handle this sort of responsibility, perhaps they shouldn't have become a parent in the first place.

What do you all think?

All right Stefan, you are starting to sound like a Libertarian!!

I totally agree with you. My rights, nor yours should not have to be infringed upon to counter balance someone else's lack of parenting.

Good post!

C'mon on over to the good side, Stefan.....

I completely agree with you on this. One of my biggest peeves with this "nannyism" is when laws are enacted to regulate "youth" that are NOT minors.

For example, there are a few states (I think Alabama is one, turnea?) that do not allow 18 year olds to purchase cigarettes. There is a group in Illinois that is pushing for this also (I forget the name of the group but the loser spokesman was on Eileen Byrne's show on WLS-AM today). All I can say to that is, "Huh?"

Can anyone explain to me why it is acceptable to allow 18 year olds to vote for our nation's leaders and be eligible to be drafted and possibly DIE for this country, but they can't buy a pack of smokes?

This also extends to gun ownership. In many states, one can not purchase a gun unless they are over 21! This is even more ridiculous to me. Especially if we consider that at 18, one may enlist in the armed forces and use a gun (properly, too!) but they couldn't go back to their home state and own their own for three more years. What a joke.

Now, I'm not an advocate for government interference of any sort, but I do find it odd that people who are completely incompetent to have and raise children do so - and do so often. YET - if one wants to own a car, they need a license. Want to be a real estate agent? You'll need a license. Want to try and catch a large mouth bass? Yep, you better have a license for that too.

Want to have kid? No experience? No money? No maturity? No problem! There are no prerequisites to having kids. Interesting.

So far so good. I also agree 100%, although i never really thought about it unfortunatley unit recently I wasn't interested in politics or what my country was doing to me. Parents have dumped their responsibilities on the rest of us too often. Another example is sex-ed, I know that it's extremely different now because of the overwhelming amount of information that needs to be fed to our young. But back in the day (or atleast tv tells me) parents were afraid of it even though without sex that child wouldn't be there.



ps...Although i do have ideas I don't have the facts...so if anyone could point me in the right direction for a decent libertarian site I'd appreciate it, not that I'm a libertarian but I'd just like to read up on them.

I don't have any children, but I can understand the reasons for making certain things child proof such as medicine & detergent containers and lighters. These items don't really add any inconvenience into my life (with the exception of the lighters, but you can buy them without the safety lock or remove it yourself), and they do provide a benefit to parents. That doesn't mean that parents should stop watching their kids, but it can prevent accidents from happening.

I'm fine with ratings systems on products, but it does annoy me that companies like Wal-mart pull items off of the shelves based on morality. As a private company, I understand that they reserve the right to carry whatever products that the want, and Wal-mart has always been a part of the "family values" system. My suggestion would be to stop patronizing companies like Wal-mart, if not for the censorship issues, than for the fact that they treat their employees horribly. Do a search, and you'll find lawsuit after lawsuit regarding Wal-mart's mistreatment of its employees. Family values? Yeah, right.

Jaime, I couldn't agree with you more in regards to the laws that are designed to protect young adults (adults being the key word here) from themselves. To be honest, I think that age limit laws, merely serve to create a new rite of passage for young people, and sometimes in celebrating those passages, they react more irresponsibly than they would have if they were allowed to do them at any age. I started a more detailed thread a while back that dealt with this topic and alcohol. I'll have to dig that one up and post a link.

See what happens when you throw caution to the wind, Stefan? Apparently nothing. I must say I, too, agree 100% with this one. Actually, I found one of the best things about having kids was that there was always someone around who could open the aspirin bottle or light my cigarette for me. Seriously: have any of you ever come across a child who couldn't operate a child-proof bit of packaging?

Hmmn... While we're on this kind of roll, maybe we should start discussing age of consent!

Limpubus,

Check out www.lp.org,
www.cato.org

For what it's worth, one of my favorite Libertarian columnists is Jim Duensing. I don't always agree with him (and I'm not sure if he entirely follows the Libertarian Party line), but he's usually pretty sound and fairly well argued. His stuff can be found here ("Opinions So Good They Ought To Be Yours"). The main drwawback is that he doesn't post new stuff nearly as often as he should.

Yeah... This is where you get to see my more moderate side is on issues like this one. I'm totally against censorship of any kind, and don't think agencies like the FCC have any business setting rules of content in communications. They should be able to show whatever they want, whenever they want. The problem is... Too many parents rely on the television to be their baby-sitter, and its easier for them not to monitor their kids' viewing habits, than it would be to monitor them.

If these pro-censorship organizations keep going people will have to start blindfolding their kids when they give them a bath so they're not witness to their own nudity. LOL Simply absurd.

Yep. I'm afraid, as a parent, I was kinda the opposite. I used to keep a couple of Russ Meyers videos around for any time our boys wanted to watch ultra-violent action movies. For some reason, the massive breasts of Tura Satana tended to win out over the massive pecs of Sylvester Stallone more often than not.

I am a parent of a three year old and a one year old. I also teach school. I wish there was less violence in our popular culture and I really do not care about sexuality much.

However I wish we had less gratuitous use of profanity. I wish the first hour of prime time television was more family oriented, not so I could use it as a baby-sitter, but so more of the material I wanted to watch was ( or will be when they are a little older) appropriate for my children.

I also wish is were more common to get access to sanitized movies to show in school. Many of the Hollywood movies are great to use to teach history and I do show them, but I wish movies like 13 Days and All the President's Men could be stripped of their barrage of g*d da**its

I would rather it be handled by the market than the government. These ideas seem like they could attract viewers and buyers to me. I mean we sell doggie tooth paste don't we?

I don't know what grade you teach, Eeyore, but I actually think that sometimes it's better to show movies in thier original form, g*d da** and all. When I was in high school, we were reading All Quiet on the Western Front, and the teacher wanted to follow it with the film Gallipoli. The school board wouldn't allow him to show it, because it was too graphic, but he showed it anyway. It enhanced the subject matter, because war IS graphic. The point was amplified, and I think we were all better off for it.

I do show them, And I find them extremely valuable teaching tools. I teach the highest grade levels and they always laugh it off when I warn them that I am going to assault their ears with profanity. But I don't have to run anything by a school board either.

On the other hand I show the movie Amistad every year and it has no profanity and it is quite profound. It is the best film I have ever shown because it ties in so many themes of American history at the same time.

I think one the main driving forces of everything being "child-proof" is that we as a nation is so "litigation-prone".

If a child dies by drinking a bottle of drain cleaner, the parents will blame and sue the company who made it. So, companies aren't really that concerned about protecting children as to protect themselves from lawsuits.

Maybe it could all start with TORT REFORM, course that may be going into another topic.

Good idea, I started a thread on Tort Reform.

I'll be a dissenter.

As the parent of a toddler I readily admit to not being able to have my eye on her constantly. I'm human, I'm distractable and sometimes irresponsible. I'm also a parent of a toddler.

My toddler has attempted:

washing powder
clorox spray
carpet deoderizer
furniture polish
a lighter
medicine

She made a mess with the carpet stuff, but the rest she was protected from. The child stuff is NOT complicated and a child CAN figure it out. I like it because it slows them down long enough for me to get over there before any damage is done.

I know, I know, bad parent, huh? Well, kids are quick, kids are sneaky and NO PARENT is constantly on his or her toes.

Convenience versus health and life.

Guess what? You lose.

My kid and every other kid comes first. You still have access to EVERYTHING and access is limited to children for us parents who don't have ten eyes and can't be everywhere at once.

I just have to say... when you walk into the room years from now and your kid has a lighter or a bottle of BLEACH, you'll be damned grateful for the childproofing that held the kid off from HARM or DEATH long enough for you to catch him. Damned grateful indeed.

You know... this irks me. Safety, people! So what if the lighter has a switch on it? So what if the arrows have to line up on the tylenol? So what if you have to twist the nozzle just right to get chemicals to spray? Quicherbichen and realize that saves children. Children of good parents and children of parents who could give a rat's hind end.

I think it takes a village to raise a child.

Madtown

I appreciate what you're saying, Max, but I feel that such child-proofing should be an option. Households with kids can buy such products, households without don't have to. I've got an aunt with severe arthritis and the lighter switching, arrow alignment, and nozzle twisting are very difficult for her - if not impossible. For the rest of us adults, such devices are irritating and unnecessary. If you have toddlers, they should be available - if you don't, there should be alternatives.

And, btw, I will not be walking into a room "years from now" to find one of my toddlers doing anything. I'm assuming at this stage that the rearing-of-toddler days are well behind me. If we decide to foster any more kids, it will again be after the toddler days are well behind them.

I'll agree with Wertz on packaging. Child-proofing should be an option, but not the standard for all products. As he said, for some people it is not merely an inconvenience, but a nearly impossible and sometimes painful task.



I agree with this, but it takes parent(s), as well. It isn't, as I said before, up to all of society to make sure your children don't have access to things you think they shouldn't have access to. That is up to the parent. With parental controls and other access prevention features, parents have unprecidented control over what their kids watch on tv, or see on the computer. With simple locks, harmful materials can be locked in cabinets, and a lighter or matches can be kept in a pocket. It is unfair to place the burden on everyone else when it is YOUR child, and YOUR responsibility to rear them safely.

Parenting is a very hard thing to do. No argument here. But today my daughter and I went to the Mall. There were these 2 little boys. I would say they were about 5 and 3. We were getting on an escalator and we hear these 2 boys call for their mom. I don't know where she was but not real far behind but enough for these 2 boys to lose sight of her for about 30 secs I would think. Ok here is my feeling about this. How many kids have been abucted, kidnapped, raped, or killed last year? It only takes a few seconds for some nut to do something like that. I really think this mom should get her head out of her you know what. I am not talking about parenting at home. but when you go to a public place like the Mall you have better keep your eyes on your kids. Why not hold hands? Maybe I am way off on this, but I sure would have felt terrible if something would have happened to these 2 little boys.

Momof3: That's exactly the sort of thing that I'm referring to in this thread, that too many parents are just irresponsible, and think it is everyone else's job to look after their children. I work in the retail industry ( ), and I see this sort of thing every day... Small children running unattended through the store with no parent anywhere in sight, many times, sitting outside the store altogether. The parents feel, apparantly, that because I work in the store, I'm responsible for making sure their kids don't get in trouble, or worse, as you mentioned. Another example of shucking responsibility off on somebody else. I have a very busy job to do as it is, and it makes it much more difficult when I have to attend to small kids running around, tearing the place apart. I've actually, on a couple of occasions, called the police in to make a point to these parents that they can't just leave their kids unattended. I don't get paid to be a baby-sitter, you know?

I do appreciate how difficult it is to be a parent, but if you are going to be a parent, then it is implied you accept that responsibility.

Excellent! Irresponsible parents drive me nuts. Several weeks ago, there was some guy in the building in which I work who was waiting for some kind of employee seminar on "1040-EZ Forms for the Terminally Stupid" or something - and he had this kid who was running up and down the atrium screaming - and I mean screaming - "DADDY! DADDY! DADDY-DADDY-DADDY! DADDY!!!" This went on for a full twenty minutes, with the father totally ignoring his brat, until I finally emerged from the the glass-enclosed office in which I was then working and told this guy to please shut his kid up. Though I didn't put it quite that nicely.

Seconds later, the guy (who, as luck would have it, was built like a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers) was in the office, pulling me from my chair, and screaming in my face about "telling him how to raise [his] kid"! Suddenly we were surrounded by about half a dozen of my colleagues - all of them women, several of them mothers - who started bodily dragging the guy from the office - when security arrived. They continued dragging him (and the still-screaming kid) out of the building altogether. Apparently, one of the security guards, as she was shutting this guy in his truck, told him not to return until someone told him how to raise his kid. I was delighted - and the people who had organized the tax seminar ended up sending me a pair of free passes to the cinema by way of apology for failing to properly monitor the people waiting in the atrium. That's the way the world should work all the time!

"Child-proofing", in my opinion, would be much more appropriate for public places than pill bottles. Keep calling the police, Stefan. Call them often and at the least provocation. These parents need some kind of reality check - and they're obviously not going to happen upon it on their own.


(And, btw, my partner and I have raised two very troubled youths, without once having caused any difficulty for any other member of the community. It was really very easy - and indescribably rewarding - once you're actually committed to being a parent.)

Ok, I have a six-year old so this caught my attention. We just subscribed to sattelite tv so we now can lock-out certain types of shows, based upon the rating, I think.

Now, I'm no prude, believe me. I like scantily-clad women as much as the next guy, but my question is, should commercials have the same rating as the show that airs them? For instance, say I'm watching the NFL playoffs and then a beer commercial comes on with the women mud-wrestling or behaving in a very suggestive or overly sexual manner. I suddenly have to worry about what my son will say. Should I just ban him from watching the game? Or should the commercial match the rating of the show (just to repeat myself). It know that the target market for beer ads are the same folks who are probably watching the game, but should that be it? Sports is an All-American activity and yet, I have to question now whether my son should watch.

You know, if I recall, I thought good old Bill Clinton even questioned if movie previews at the theatre should also match the rating of the movie.

Mark

Are TV ads rated? Or are they all supposed to be for general audiences? If they are, program content ratings matching advertising ratings seems like a pretty self-evident idea to me. I've never seen these mud-wrestling ads, though. Do they have any with two guys - or do we have to wait for, like, the Tony Awards for those?

As to movie previews, I'm sure you know that they are rated (though the rating of the preview does not necessarily match the rating of the film). I don't know whether it's legislated or voluntary, but I know that most cinemas do match the rating of the previews to the rating of the film. In fact, many R-rated pictures release two trailers: one with an R-rating and one for a "general audience". You may have noticed the disclaimer which reads something like "This motion picture has been rated R. This PREVIEW has been approved for all audiences". But again, matching the two strikes me as fairly self-evident.

If you're arguing that R-rated films should only be advertised at other R-rated films, I suspect you'd run into a lot of resistance: it's kinda like arguing that cars should only be advertised on programs which are guaranteed an audience of those over sixteen.

That's a good question, and I wish I knew. I can surmise that at the least TV ads are palced in time slots according to audience.
When I watch Howard Stern on E!, I get to purvey all those nifty 'Girls Gone Wild' ads.
So I think you nailed it:


Did I read correctly recently that Joe Leiberman was relaunching his crusade against immoral Hollywood?
And if so, how would that affect things like parental controls, ratings, etc...? Anybody know?

Logically, one would think theaters would run age-appropriate trailers for the movies they precede--showing ads for "Ice Age" before a viewing of "Shrek", for instance. The kids see the preview, and then immediately after the movie start whining to their folks about wanting to see Ice Age, until a week later the parents have had enough and take their kids to see it, to finally shut them up, at which point the kids see a trailer for yet another movie, and the vicious cycle begins anew. I'm guessing that when you see an obviously age-inappropriate trailer paired with an incongruous film, the theater has either misjudged their audience, or misunderstand the content of that film. I'm wondering how many trailers for the universally despised "8 crazy nights" ran before kids' movies, simply because it's animated.

Incidentally, I guess there have been all sorts of objections lodged with Miller Brewing Company about that mud-wrestling commercial previously mentioned. Apparently, the complainers found it offensive (consider that the vast majority of those objecting were married women over 40--I don't think too many guys had a problem with the ads).

Also incidentally, I'll bet if they did show the Tony Awards version, half those women would have no complaint.

But that's the stuff of another thread...

I'm in agreement that items should not be removed from shelves because of their content, and that shows should not be taken from television programming because of their content either. And while I can see the safety benefits behind Aspirin and lighters, I agree with the earlier statement that it should be optional. As Wertz pointed out, some people may have medical conditions, such as Arthritis, which may make the operation of such "child-proofed" devices difficult -- if not impossible.
Furthermore, I agree with responses where people contend that parents can change the channel and what not. But I think it goes beyond this, too, because there are times when the parents won't be present to change the channel or supervise all the actions of their children.
My intention is not to offend any parents viewing this post, but the general trend in America, anymore, seems to let the teachers or television teach children all they need to know unless an issue comes up in direct conflict with parental beliefs. It doesn't seem that parents continually teach their children -- with or without external prompting -- about the nature of things, social morality, etc.
I'm only 20 and not a parent, so clearly I'm not very well informed on the tasks of raising children. It just seems to me that parents aren't taking their children aside at young ages and planting the seeds of understanding. I see plenty of parents refuse to buy a "Parental Advisory" cd or refuse to let their children see an "R" rated movie, but very rarely do they explain to the child why. How many other visitors to the post are all too familiar with hearing the almost universal answer, "Because"?
I cover this in more detail on another thread:
Warranted Censorship?
The censorship is, after all, a contributor and also a driving force behind the "Child-Proof" Society. My post covers my opinions on this in detail. Essentially, I'd rather see increased knowledge and understanding in society rather than excessive censorship.

I'm with you. This site seems to be divided between parents with small children and those with older ones or none. People forget. My 14 months old thinks the bookcase is a ladder. There's nothing he isn't into. I put all of the chemicals on a top shelf in the house, but he could probably find a way up there.

On the other hand, it's very easy for an adult to open a child proof bottle. I don't see how this inconveniences anyone.

Per entertainment, I only allow my children to watch the disney channel. Even Nick Junior uses bad language. There's nothing cute about a 3 year old swearing. It reflects poorly on the parent. If you are around small children, a little common courtesy goes a long way. Simply stop using profanity as a verbal crutch people!

Nudity doesn't bother me at all. Nudity is not the same as overt sexual explicitness. I vacationed in Sardinia and my kids ran around naked with the other kids. I wore what the other beachgoers wore (thong only). Sexuality is all around us in every medium. It's hard for me to believe anyone feels otherwise. Can't see a naked bottom on tv? Turn the channel, there's bound to be one somewhere. Why the obsession with why you can't see people committing sex acts on all channels all the time? Better buy cable.

In terms of censorship, I totally disagree with censorship of the media. It completely defies our right to free speech. Sure, free speech can be abused and can be misused, but is it fair to take away such a right from the many to punish the sins of the few? I heartily say no. It is not fair for the majority to have to bend because of the whims of a minority. Long have we been a country that prided its self on having citizen unafraid to stand up to authority when it believed that authority was wrong. Should we stop being that country of free thinkers just so that a select few could have the comforts of ignorance? I think not.