We had a nice, relaxing weekend. It was super cold so we stayed inside and lounged around. My daughter came to me at some point in the afternoon to tell me there were snow flurries coming down. I asked if she wanted to go outside to experience the flurries. "No," she said, "I don't want to put pants on." She's definitely my child.
That night, I made a spaghetti dinner and we debated what we wanted to do that evening. It's just me and the girls for a few more days. My husband is buried in snow out West. We decided on a movie night. After I did the dishes, I built a fire and we roasted marsh mellows and tried to agree on a movie. Which is difficult for 3 people. As I browsed the selections, I came across the movie Milk Money. I thought to myself, Wow! That's a weird movie.
The plot of this movie is that there are a group of 11-12 year old boys and they want to see a real life naked woman so they save up their lunch money and go in their piggy banks, go to the city, pick up a hooker, they pay for her to expose her breasts- which she does to CHILDREN, then for some reason they take her home.... I don't remember the whole thing. I watched it when I was 11.
This movie was released in 1994 and was rated PG-13. It was advertised to kids. This is the trailer. You will cringe on the inside when you watch it. You will think, Who thought this was a good idea? What the actual hell?
The reason I'm bringing this up is because when you are raising kids you have a tendency to refer back to when you were a kid. I do that from time to time, and the results are questionable. Take metal slides, for instance:
Hey kids! It's the middle of summer- let's go to the playground and get second degree burns on our legs.
Parental guidelines didn't go into effect until 1997. That is only 7 years before MY oldest child was born. That seems insane to me. Our parents must have been like, Let's watch this show and hope there is no excessive sex and violence....
No one cared about child obesity. They were like, Drink this Slimer Hi-C and shut the hell up.
Gross. What even is this?
Joe Camel was advertising cigarettes to kids:
In middle school, I actually slow danced with a boy to "I'll Make Love to You."
What the actual f*ck were these people thinking? I can see the school administrators and PTA in their meeting: I have a great idea. We can have a school dance and all the 6th and 7th grade boys and girls can get REALLY close together while we play a song about making love all through the night.
I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination and I am very laid back but even I have standards. I know you're shocked- you should be. When I hear about how "bad" things are today and how people have no morals and the "kids" today are just terrible, I think - Do you have amnesia?
We've been on a downward spiral for DECADES. My movie night browsing was just a reminder of that.
We finally decided on, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead. Great movie! The kids liked it a lot, but it also had some questionable things. My oldest daughter said, "Why is the 17 year old smoking in front of her mom and why does the 15 year old have a tattoo?"
"Because people did questionable things back then."
My youngest interjected, "And those clothes! Did people really wear clothes like that?"
"Yes. It was a crazy time."
So from now on, whenever I question my parenting I will remind myself that I pay attention to TV Parental guidelines that actually exist, and I try to feed my kids healthy foods, and my daughters aren't grinding at school dances to questionable songs or watching movies about hookers that take their clothes off for children, or sliding down sliding boards that might burn off the first layer of the skin on their legs.....
I'm kind of winning.
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