“How much does one ease up on the protection we gave them as children in favor of the kind of freedom we will eventually fully release to them as adults?” In an email trade with Layla’s father, I wrote those words describing the timeless question parents of adolescents often ask themselves. We both struggle with the question, and we are not alone.
With Philip entering high school, it is a logical coming of age milestone to grant him wider freedoms. But I know it would be foolish of me to grant him those freedoms without training him to manage those freedoms. He is fourteen years old now. In less than two and a half years he will be seventeen and it will be legal for him to see an R-Rated movie without parental consent. The Motion Picture Association has all kinds of criteria that separate the R rating from the PG-13 rating. With Philip, I only care about one of them: The moments of soft pornography.
While it may be an over-generalization, in my mind R-Rated movies fall into two categories. There are the action movies which usually have a small amount soft pornography. And there are the comedies which often have a large amount of soft pornography. I decided now was the time to teach him how to handle the enticing images. A particular action movie had captured Philip’s interest. It was Gamer. I told him I would take him on the condition that he and I would talk about the soft pornography element of R-Rated movies before and after we watched it together. He agreed. As it turned out, Gamer fit my generalization by revealing four bare breasts in a manner that did nothing to advance the story line.
We all know adult men who are addicted to pornography. Some of them have had to admit to their problems and establish controls in their lives in order not to succumb to the addiction. Others live secret double lives, stealing awake late at night to indulge online or via some other medium and then hiding or erasing the evidence. And finally there are those who have openly embraced the addiction as a lifestyle. All are poignantly handicapped relative to the non-addicted. Except for the most vigilant members of the first group, they have a diminished capacity to keep their eyes from wandering. In developing romantic relationships, their relative interest in the woman’s body ranges from disproportionate to downright toxic. They find the unnatural shapes caused by breast implants and liposuctions to be most appealing rather than disturbing or monstrous.
While I do not want to be judgmental toward any individual, I do want to shape the kind of person my son grows up to be. And given how much our culture’s media displays such images, I believe it is an important part of one’s education to learn how to manage one’s reaction to these images. With really only one compromising scene, Gamer proved to be the perfect film for the first such training. Philip and I could discuss it afterward, and we did. He easily agreed the scene was unnecessary to advance the plot. Actually displaying the four breasts was unnecessary to accomplish the character development of the gawking adolescent in the movie. In the end Philip could see the requisite scene for what it was. It was there to satisfy someone with an agenda different from his own.
If Philip recognizes and embraces the values I hold, I know he can learn to master his own mind. With such mastery, he can enjoy the highest budget, most action-oriented movies. He can enjoy any public beach. And most importantly, he can one day fully enjoy the private intimate relationship he will share with a spouse.
The majority of parents I meet do not agree with my approach. One group declares the images are no big deal. I suspect most of these are people who themselves indulge in pornography as adults or have chosen to accept such indulgence by a spouse. The other group believes stricter rules that shelter their sons and daughters right up until each son or daughter leaves home is the way to go. While I certainly have a greater respect for this latter group, I have witnessed too many disastrous results to embrace their strategy. That said, of all the actions I am taking as a parent to raise my son well, this is the one I question the most. Time will tell whether or not it was a wise choice.
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