Do we really care less about what our children see with regards sex and violence in films?

On the website of VARIETY we have recently seen an article that says the following: Parents Desensitized to Sex and Violence in Movies, Study Finds When it comes to sex and violence, the more parents see, the less they care. That’s the takeaway form a new study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center on the attitudes that parents of children aged 6 to 18 have towards film content that may be objectionable or disturbing. Researchers showed bloody or erotic scenes from PG-13 and R-rated movies such as “8 Mile,” “Collateral,” “Die Hard” and “Casino Royale” to 1,000 parents and found that they grew desensitized as the body count mounted and sexual activity heated up. The research was conducted online last January. The findings will be published in Pediatrics and the report serves as a companion to a 2013 study by Annenberg that found that gun violence in PG-13 movies has tripled since 1985 and movies with that rating contain more gun violence than R-rated movies. “The rise of violence and gun violence in PG-13 movies means that lots of kids are able to go into movie theaters and see explicit violence,” said Dan Romer, associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the study’s lead author. “We wanted to find out why parents didn’t show more concern. Why was this happening without pushback?” To get their results, researchers showed parents three pairs of movie scenes featuring either violent or sexual content. Sex appeared to be more taboo for parents than violence, but not by much. After viewing the first movie clip, respondents thought the minimum age to see a movie with that kind of violent content should be 16.9 years old on average and 17.2 years old for sexual content. After watching the sixth and final scene, parents grew more lenient, deeming 13.9 years acceptable for violent films and 14 years old for sexual ones. The study’s authors argue that there may be social costs to greater permissiveness. “We’re undergoing a massive amount of exposure for kids to gun violence and in a society in which there are lot of guns that could influence attitudes people have,” said Romer.

Two things I would like to stress here: first of all, a ratings system does not mean the parent can delegate the movie choice to the cinema. If a young child like my 6 year old grandson wants to see ALIEN, it is still up to me to say NO. Similarly so with violent films or sexual films. (Mind you though, the violence (if it is not too brutal) leaves an impression of coolness with young children but the sexual behavior will gross young kids out. They do not want to see that (if they at all understand it in the first place) as they have no interest in that whatsoever. Yet.) Still, parenting is the duty of the parent and not the cinema that shows films.

Second: too much of anything will desensitize you for that very thing. Whether that is violence, sex, porn, horror, mutilation, zombies, whatever! Showing children any such material is wrong in the first place on the basis of the first point I make. Greater permissiveness will only occur if the person watching this will make the conscious decision to no longer care or be impressed by what he or she sees. I would seriously advocate using the series of BAND OF BROTHERS and THE PACIFIC as study material for teenagers who study the second World War as these series show you how it really was. Not some thirty year old Hollywood war movie that has soldiers with shiny white teeth grinning at each other. But that is something else because it can be seen as realistic study material. It does not mean you can show your young kids everything.

Of course, it is a discussion without end but the conclusion that needs to be made is that the skill of parenting should never be abandoned and the parent is the one who decides what young children can see.