Attempting to Change the World for the Sake of Your Children

There is nothing more aggravating to me than parents that expect the rest of the world to assist them in their obligations of child rearing. It is not society's job to protect your children from negative influences: it's your job to protect your children from society!

Regarding music: stop attempting to censor artists because their lyrics don't fit your level of appropriateness. If you don't want your children hearing or singing along to expletives, delete it off their iPods. Throw out their CD's. It's that simple. The boycotts and protests, the banning and the burning: all of that is ridiculous. It's art, and it's freedom of expression. As soon as that music is made unavailable to the rest of the world: kiss your ability to voice your opinions against it goodbye as well.

About movies and television: there are MPAA ratings and parental locks for good reason. Use them. Don't take your children to a PG-13 film, hear a simple curse word and then write a letter of complaint to the film's producers, writers and director. Don't take it a step further and proceed to boycott all of the starring actor's future releases when the response you receive (if any) isn't what you expected. If you allow your children to watch MTV, there is a good chance that they will see a few half naked women, probably making out in a hot tub. If that's unacceptable, do your job and block the channel out. Don't call for your cable company's immediate removal of 'such an obscene channel'.

Books: if you don't like the fact that Harry Potter involves 'witchcraft' or feel that it condones and inspires 'satanic' behavior in young, impressionable youth: keep it away from your children. Don't ruin my Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (07.21.07) release party with your picket signs and preaching. If you feel the need to over-censor your offspring, please, do it at your own expense. It's not fair to those of us who'd like to raise kids with wonderful, fantastical imaginations that you're always raining on everyone else's parade. I mean, if you have a positive view of Totalitarian governments, keep them far, far away from Animal Farm if they have any sense of allegoric perception.

And finally, The Great Outdoors: I'm talking about outside your home and around the corner: out of the safe cocoon of the cul-de-sac. There is homosexual couple moving in three houses down? You call a Homeowner's Association meeting to try and have them expelled from the neighborhood? You call animal control anytime their Beagle puppy is wandering in their yard unattended and fear what sadistic tortures that poor dog endures in the confines of that home? Stop, please.

At the mall, as you were shopping for a nice 'thanks for not aborting your fetus' gift for your 15 year old heathen niece (that your children will never see again) and her new baby, you see a bunch of teenagers with black and burgundy hair, ridiculously tight jeans and probably more black eyeliner than Madonna (they're EMO, by the way) loitering in front of some dark and dreary place called 'Hot Topic'. You immediately inform the next security guard you see of your concerns that they might 'shoot up the place'. Stop, please.

I have shirt from T-Shirthell.com that says 'I'll be using these to my advantage'. In Harris Teeter the other day while grocery shopping with my tow daughters, a woman who'd been squinting at my torso for a few minutes approached me and said 'That is extremely inappropriate to be wearing, and I hope you don't bring up your daughters with those ideals'. I cocked my head to the side and refrained from asking the question of why she was staring at my chest so hard from across the store in order to read my shirt, and instead told her 'Well, being as looks don't assist you in life whatsoever and they will never be looked at for their physical attributes in the future, I'm sure I won't." I said it in the most aggravatingly obvious sarcastic tone I could muster up. She stomped away.

I saw her later strapping her own daughter into a patent leather car seat, in an Excursion. I bit my tongue again to keep from saying anything about the fact that she should care about the world her child would grow up in in just as much of an environmental sense as a societal one. I wasn't going to tell her to raise her kids the way I thought was right.

Having children is a great responsibility. It's the most rewarding and difficult thing that any human being can ever experience. Yet, many parents forget that having children a.) only gives them domain over those children that they themselves are directly responsible for and b.) is their job, and only theirs. They cannot expect the world to conform to their ideals and values. They can only do their best to raise their kids into the persons that they feel their kids should be despite the world around them. And also, to accept whatever their kids become, despite that devoted and sometimes bordering on tyrannical upbringing.