When I was growing up, my parents kept me truly sheltered from everything. Too much so. By “everything,” I mean both sex/drugs/rock and roll/anything from the real world AND popular culture. Their reason for sheltering me from popular culture was solely as a device to keep me sheltered from the aforementioned goodies. We watched Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and even racey things like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. My parents were really pretty extreme. I remember being eleven or twelve and going with my mom and brothers to see Benji: The Hunted as our big movie date in the summer because that was the only thing on the “acceptable” list. Even well into high school, we could not watch PG rated movies because they might contain a swear word. Suffice it to say, this, combined with the already extremely lacking social skills in my family, did not help us relate to our peers. I have spent many hours of my adult life catching up on movies like Rain Man and Pretty Woman. Obviously I’m over the pain of the alienation by now, but it wasn’t so fun when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I know my parents did the best they could, and as a mother now, I know that’s the best we can offer.
Fast forward twenty years, and I have two small children who have never seen a TV show (with the exception of some short two minute clips of muppets songs on youtube for my three year old), never seen a movie, and never played a video game. They do not own a single toy of a syndicated character or a single piece of “character clothing.” They’ve never heard of Dora (short of when a LIBRARIAN briefly introduced her to my older daughter!), the Backyardigans, or Blues Clues (is that even still a show?)
I recognize that I am hardly unique in this element of my life as there are many families who are choosing to keep their kids away from these things, especially at a young age. Unlike my parents, I’m not worried about the swear words, and I’m not planning to pretend that sex doesn’t exist. What I’m worried about, in addition to the quite obvious passive entertainment factor, is the advertising. As far as I can see, the shows themselves, in addition to the ads, are purely commercial. I’d like my daughters to grow up thinking about things other than what it is the TV is telling them to buy.
Does this make me different from my parents, or are we truly one in the same? This is an issue I struggle with. In just two short years, my older daughter (if we do not homeschool) will enter the school system and join her peers, probably all of whom will have grown up with TV. She will be totally out of the loop, and it breaks my heart to think that people will tease her and she may feel alienated because she can’t place a single one of their pop culture references.
It is not my goal to create freaks who live under a rock. It is instead my goal to raise creative, independent-thinking, compassionate children. I hope that in my efforts to do so I am not setting them up for some severe social disappointment. I’m confident, for the most part, that I’m doing the right thing, but every so often the doubt creeps in and I wonder if this will be one of my parenting mistakes.
