Writer's Block: Forbidden Reading

[qos]

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My parents, despite their tendency to conservativism, never censored my reading as I was growing up. I suspect they may have been a bit concerned if they realized the sexual education I was getting via romance novels and even some of my science fiction, but I was careful never to mention those parts if/when I talked about something I was reading.

In recent years, my mother's comment was We trusted you -- suggesting to me that they would have expected me to avoid "inappropriate" material. There were certain things that I avoided because of personal taste (horror or hardcore porn for example), but I never avoided a book just because I knew my parents would not approve. I can't remember ever hiding a book.

The funny exception to this was the two or three times I bought Tiger Beat magazine. My father had a flat rule that we could not buy teen fan magazines because he didn't want us "worshipping movie stars." It wasn't actually a ban coming from a spiritual bias, but his general dislike of the thought of his daughters swooning over tv and movie stars. Twice during my junior high years I took the long way to walk home, bought Tiger Beat at the grocery stores, smuggled it home in my purse, and hid it in the bottom of a drawer.


The consequences of my experience as a teen are two-fold. First, I have a general policy of not wanting to censor Wolfling's reading any more than my own was censored. On the other hand, unlike my own parents I have a very good idea of what she could be getting into -- especially given her tendency to read fanfiction online. However, I realize that I can't control her reading without putting her under pretty severe supervision, and that's not going to be good for either of us. So I've told her that I'm not going to make rules I can't enforce, or that she will eventually break in this area, but that I would prefer she kept her online reading limited to stories with age-appropriate ratings.

I've also told her not to ever worry about freaking me out with something she's read because odds are that I've already read it, or something like it. I may even have done it. Not something my own parents could have said.

We'll see how it goes. . .

Comments

[elevengirl.livejournal.com]

My reading wasn't censored, either, except the one time I, at about age 8, picked up a magazine at a store thinking it was about the career of nursing, since it had a nurse on the front. That magazine got "accidentally" put back on the shelf before we checked out. My mother later told me that I was not prepared at the time to learn about sexual fetishes, which is what the magazine had been about (she flipped through it when I handed it to her). She wasn't narrow-minded, just didn't want the fetish cart in front of the "how do people make babies" horse (we hadn't discussed that yet).

And I always knew I could discuss anything with her. That, I think, is the best freedom she gave me.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing that story.

And I agree: the freedom to share anything with a parent is a very powerful freedom. It's also one that asks a lot of both parent and child in the area of trust, respect, and level-headedness.