Thinking of the Children

I was actually about the same age my son is now. Many afternoons, I would meet up with my friends Junie and Chaurice, and we’d walk to Junie’s house. Her parents both worked, and while she technically wasn’t supposed to have friends over, well, when does that stop junior high kids? Mostly, we hung out and talked; we weren’t particularly wild kids. But one of the things we did that marks us as Generation X as clearly as the fact that all three of us were that ‘80s boogeyman Latchkey Kids is attempt to watch the Spice Channel. Junie’s parents didn’t have the Spice Channel. We watched it scrambled. I’m not sure we ever saw anything titillating, but we could have.

There’s a lot of ado these days about age-protecting various things online. The biggest issue is, of course, with Pornhub, but there’s an idea that children need to be protected from all kinds of things. And don’t get me wrong; I absolutely agree that there is such thing as age-appropriate. I need to go through my movies again soon to redetermine what the kids are allowed to watch alone, with a parent, or not at all. But the thing is, my son is indeed in junior high. And I care a lot less about what he sees, because, you know, he’s about old enough to start figuring out his own boundaries.

Further don’t get me wrong—I do not advocate a return to the Wild West generational neglect that we of Gen-X suffered. I watched Robocop the one and only time I’ve seen it at all at a slumber party in fourth grade. Our own Bridgett Taylor saw The Last Emperor in class, Joan Chen threesome and all. We saw the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet in class, nude scene and all, and our teacher forgot to get a bunch of high school freshmen to have permission slips signed. While my mom was in class and later, after she graduated, at work, I could’ve watched whatever nonsense Showtime chose to play regardless of rating, and my friends with Cinemax saw a lot more. So much more. Everyone my age is saying, “Oh, you mean Skinemax?”

Not, to be perfectly frank, that I worry about my kids’ seeing nudity in a non-sexual context. People have bodies, and bodies aren’t inherently sexual. And goodness knows that my son, at least, will self-censor sexuality himself, because he finds it uncomfortable. That’s his choice; he doesn’t even like kissing. I’m not sure about my daughter. I know that both of them find violence pretty scary, but they’re less good at self-censoring for that, so my job as a parent is to do that for them and keep them away from something they find fascinating but let themselves watch even though it bothers them a lot.

There has got to be a middle ground, though, between what was acceptable for kids when I was growing up and a lot of what’s seen as acceptable for kids today. I will die mad that Jake and the Neverland Pirates talks about how a “good pirate” doesn’t take other people’s things. I didn’t watch The Pirates of Dark Water as a kid—though as an adult, I can be impressed by its voice cast—but I’m pretty sure even though the pirates were the good guys, they took stuff from the bad guys. There’s a lot of videos on YouTube of nursery rhymes and fairy tales with the dark, scary bits removed.

But like, The Secret of NIMH with its onscreen murder was rated G. The Adventures of Mark Twain and the Mysterious Stranger. Airplane! is PG. Never Cry Wolf is also PG. And, okay, those of us who remember Ghostbusters and Gremlins and Temple of Doom, oh my, remember the days before PG-13. But even after it existed, Spaceballs and The ‘Burbs were PG and not PG-13. The ratings were just different in those days. Toy Story 4 was rated G, but Gabby’s Dollhouse is the first wide-release G-rated movie I’ve actually heard of since 2021’s Paw Patrol: The Movie.

Is the Paw Patrol sequel so much scarier than The Secret of NIMH? You can’t prove it by me, as I’ve not seen the damn thing, but I suspect not. A lot of ink is getting spilled about “the death of the G-rated movie,” but I blame the MPAA for this and not studios. My daughter used to be age-blocked on Disney+ from watching Moana but not, say, Pinocchio, and I ask you, which movie is scarier, the one with no real villain or the one with several, one of whom delights in turning naughty boys into donkeys?

If your worry is porn? Teenagers will find it. I know multiple people who have stories of woods porn, the wild porn of the forest. I suspect this is porn acquired by older teens who leave it in the place they hang out that is found by younger people. Meanwhile another friend of mine just knew when his stepdad’s Playboy was due in the mail and arranged to be home before his stepdad was. There were certain movies you’d rent in the days of VHS where one shot or another would be in worse quality than the rest of the tape—the moment in Pump Up the Volume where Samantha Mathis takes off her sweater, for example.

And when people are sheltered from things like that, it’s actually bad for them. Because the world is not perfectly safe for adults just because they were raised in a youth without violence or swears. You as an adult will have to cope with the reality of crime and war and so forth. You will, in theory, have to face your own sexuality. If you have no exposure to sexuality, what do you know about it? How can you know what you’re looking for in a spouse if you haven’t had exposure to portrayals of adult relationships?

Again, there’s a middle ground. I know in my heart that, had Sinners come out in 1985 and not 2025, some parent would’ve rented it for their elementary school-age kid’s slumber party. You’re not Generation X if you don’t have some kind of story along those lines, unless you were sheltered even by modern standards. But children are too sheltered today, and we’re making it even worse. How are these kids going to handle being grown-ups?