A Minute for Parents

Summary

Is There A Stranger In Your House?

Article

By JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton

Are the values taught in prime time television your values or do you have a stranger in your house? If you think your kids are not picking up on the sexual commercials and programming because they are “good kids”? Know that they are being taught, often on a daily basis to leave your values and accept those in the media.

I would bet most parents don’t average 12 hours a week with their youth, ages 12-17, but that is the average hours per week spent with television. Seventy percent of the top teen programs include sex, only ten percent mention risk/responsibility of sexual behavior and it is shown in studies that frequent exposure to sexual TV content hastens sexual initiation and early pregnancy (Jane D. Brown, Ph.D., Sarah Keller, Ph.D., and Susannah Stern, Ph.D. “Sex, Sexuality, Sexting, and Sex Ed: Adolescents and the Media,” The Prevention Researcher, p. 12). And if your kids aren’t watching that much television, are their friends watching it and sharing ideas?

Once upon a time “TV was so pure you couldn’t show a roll of toilet paper in a commercial” (Stranger in the House – Reclaiming The Decency Abandoned By Today’s Media, Morality in Media, Copyright, 2000). So where are we now?

Note that Stranger in the House came out in the year 2000, and everything is much worse now. Most of the examples even in the year 2000 are so explicit that I don’t feel I can use them. Let me give comments on the state of television in the year 2000:

Lynn Elber in the New York Daily News, 2/11/98) said: “On both sitcoms and dramas, productivity is down and hanky-panky is up. Way up. Colleagues do it, bosses and minions do it. . . TV, it has been observed, is increasingly obsessed with sex . . . . But the office has replaced the home as the focus in an era of widespread employment for men and women (Ibid. p. 12).

Wrote Nancy Hass in the N.Y. Times, 1/26/97), “But there’s one thing that virtually anyone who watches TV comedies these days will agree on: sex is everywhere. A study released in December . . . found that 3 out of every 4 shows in the ‘family hour’ (8-9 p.m.) now contain ‘sexually related talk,’ a fourfold increase since 1976” (Ibid.).

“Wrote Rachael Wildavsky . . . in TV Guide, May 1996), ‘Too many sitcoms, dramas and much daytime fare are deeply hostile to families, highly sexual and amoral at best”(Ibid.).

Another concern in the year 2000 was the use of vulgarity as well as graphic violence. Why was all of this on the increase? Carol Alteri, executive vice president of program practices for CBS said, “People have been desensitized. . . . and they hardly ever complain (Ibid. 18).

So where are we now? I have been reading the Parent’s Television Council newsletter for years and another answer is that the liberal media feel they have the right to corrupt kids (“Hollywood Demands ‘Right’ to Corrupt Kids!” Insider, September/October 2009). According to this article they are working to dismantle the broadcast decency laws. In a recent argument before a federal court, Hollywood told the court that there should be no laws restricting broadcast indecency whatsoever” (Insider, p. 1).

What can we do? Turn off the television and encourage others to do the same. Call advertisers and program directors and complain about the influence on your family. Introduce your youth to McKay Hatch and his web site, “nocussing.com” and see what one youth did. He organized a No Cussing Club that has gone nation wide. Encourage your youth to find others who refuse to grow up being educated by television.