So yesterday I went to Sally Rippin’s house and after she very generously gave me a lift home and while we were in the car she asked me my opinion on ages for books, and should parents censor what their kids read.
And I was kind of stunned for a moment and didn’t really know what to say.
I started babbling about age restrictions on books and publisher’s warnings and parents and kids and libraries and I’m pretty sure I looked and sounded like an idiot (because I sure felt like one), but that was because I couldn’t put into words what I meant to say. And even then I really didn’t know what to say.
And that one simple question opened up a lot in my mind, and made me realise the answer wasn’t as clear-cut as I had once imagined.
I told Sally about this particular situation, where a mother had randomly picked two books off a library shelf for her daughter to read on a holiday only to find they contained sex (gasp!) and started a crusade against them.
I also told Sally about Nicholas Dane, this YA book that I reviewed and how I thought there was no way in hell it was suitable for kids under 16, and it should have had a age warning sticker on it (especially when you compare it to the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore, which has a 12+ warning on it – those books are TAME compared to Nicholas Dane!).
I also told Sally about the time my aunt bought (scroll down to read about it) me the entire box set of John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When The War Began books because my dad had banned me from reading them when I was in grade six. Needless to say, Dad went ballistic.
Sally told me about the secret books that made their way around her circle of friends when they were in high school – Flowers in the Attic, Forever.
I also told Sally about this blog post I read yesterday – and for the life of me I can’t remember who wrote it, so if you recognise it please tell me so I can give credit! – about a writer who, when growing up, purchased a book from a bookstore with her pocket money, based on the fantastic cover art. When she started to read it, she came across a fairly graphic sex scene. She was horrified and didn’t really understand what she was reading, so she hid it away, scared if her parents were to find it she’d be in trouble. She said her mother was approachable, and if she had of taken it to her mother and said something, it would have been fine. Instead, it stayed hidden. And she felt dirty and guilty.
As we were talking, I realised the topic isn’t as clear-cut as I once thought.
Before, I was happy to lay blame to that mother from earlier who banned her daughter from reading the books that contained sex.
Now, I think everyone is different.
I was always a ferocious reader and read well above my age (although I still loved books for my age). I definitely had the maturity level to deal with The Tomorrow Series however I would suggest not all twelve year olds would.
And that’s the thing: everyone matures differently.
We’ve all had the boys in high school sex ed classes who still giggled and smirked when the teacher was explaining condoms.
And we’ve had the girls who sit there, silently, who roll their eyes and say how immature those boys are.
Physically, they are the same age.
But I think, at the end of the day, it comes down to the specific child.
But does that mean you have to read everything before they read it to make sure it is okay?
Another issue with that is as they start earning pocket money and/or get a part-time job, they begin having some financial freedom – meaning they don’t have to rely on their parents to buy them books.
Which means, theoretically, they could purchase a book one day, pop it in their bag, and forget to ever tell their parents about it.
Another issue is some parents live with their head in the sand.
That was my dad, for sure.
Growing up as essentially a single dad, he had two daughters. And so he did what any single dad would do – shelter us.
And sheltered we were!!!
So while he would have probably agreed with that mum who stopped her daughter from reading about sex, he also didn’t know what went on at school and within my friendship groups.
Paraphrasing Melina Marchetta’s brilliant Looking for Alibrandi, one of the characters, Jacob Coote, says: “Getting sex education in year 12 is pretty much useless because we’ve all been sexually active for years.” (Massive paraphrasing there, but you get the point).
So while your parent may think you are so innocent and the Virgin Mary, you could, in fact, be the biggest skank at your school.
And that’s also the problem: you may be emotionally ready to handle material like that, yet your parents don’t think you are.
It’s easy enough to sit back and judge other people.
Judge that mother from above. Which I do, and judge her hard.
But at the end of the day, I’m not a mother. I don’t have children, and I am only responsible for what I read, and what I read alone.
You are told everything changes when you have kids.
And while it’s easy for me to sit in my ivory tower and say Oh no, I’d never censor books from my children! I do know I’d never let a child of mine under sixteen read Nicholas Dane and really, that’s censorship in itself as it’s a YA book and therefore, supposedly, right for anyone above twelve.
What is your opinion? Do you censor your kid’s books, parents?
Book Censoring: Is It As Easy To Judge As I Thought It Was?
Mentally, they are at two very different ages.
i read 'candy' when i was 12 – my sister gave it to me to make sure i never took hard drugs. the effect was that i because utterly horrified with drugs, and drug use, until i was well into my 20's.
i think parental decisions about books their children are allowed to read is slightly different to censorship issues however – mainly because kids can, and will decide to break the rules fairly often (mother confiscated my copy of "deenie" by the great judy blume when i asked her about masturbation, so i just went and read it at the library). parental decisions in the home are something i don't feel comfortable commenting on.
the complexity of censorship in the case of 'rated books' (ie, american psycho in QLD) or 'banned books' (mainly things about drugs, and sex) – is a different case. and then, the censorship of the archivist, verses that of the librarian, different again.
it's tricky.
I have a two year old, and I would be comfortable letting him read almost anything he felt like tackling.
When I was in Year 5, I read all of Came Back to Show You I Could Fly (about a drug addict who befriends a young boy) and started Stephen King's IT – because it was on my parent's bookshelf. The YA book, even with some older concepts, was great. I got to the scene in IT when the man is belting the female MC because she won't do what he says and put it down. It was something that took me a while to process, but I was able to judge what I wanted to read and what I didn't.
Every child is different, and I might nudge my son in certain directions, but if he seriously wanted to read something I wouldn't stop him (with the solid exceptions of Fan Fiction Fridays and hard-core pr0n – I believe in responsible parenting ^_^)
The main issue, for me, is how you talk about the book afterwards. Encouraging discussion on the themes, and even whether it was a good book and what, if anything, they enjoyed about it helps develop your child as an individual.
Excellent point Julia B, discussion during and after reading books is vital.
I would like to think that I would let my kids read anything they felt ready for. But I'm a voracious reader who read above my age group for years and I love Young Adult – so I would also probably read the book first if I thought it would upset them.
That would be the only reason I wouldn't let them read something – if it would upset them. Material that is too old for them could be read later, and material that is just digusting would be explained and removed. But potentially upsetting material, like Stephen King's IT (which I have read and loved and delightfully scared by) would be discussed with them, and even read together.
My uncle and aunt took turns to read the Harry Potter series out loud to my two cousins, which I thought was brilliant. It gave them the oppourtunity to stop reading and start a discussion when things got scary, as well as being excellent family bonding time.
I think censorship is more about removing things completely. I would let my kids read anything that were able to understand and handle, except illict pornographic material. They might understand it, but it's often just disgusting and doesn't add to their intelligence or enjoyment of the world. I accept that they will be exposed to *regular* pornographic material (sex scenes in books, sexy advertisements, etc.) but you've gotta draw the line somewhere!
I'm now, so, so, so curious about Nicholas Dane.
I agree with you, for the most part, that everything is dependent on the individual child. That parents need to make that decision, based on their specific child's needs.
For me, growing up, my parents have been extremely open. I've always been allowed to read whatever I've wanted, whenever (although they did help me choose until I was eight). The thing with this is that I've always been a rather mature reader, and could handle a lot of stuff that other children wouldn't have been able to handle emotionally. My parents knew this.
They also knew that I was a BRILLIANT self-censor (and I think most kids do this. Like the YA author whose post you mentioned). I tried to read 1984 when I was around nine years old, and it was one of the few books I really wasn't ready for (that I wanted to read. At eight, I wasn't exactly interested in Fight Club, or whatever) — emotionally, it would've absolutely slayed me because it's so very bleak. But I put it down, after three or four pages, realising that this wasn't right for me/was disturbing me. I read it a couple of years later in Year 7 instead, and loved it.
And yes, I agree about the sheltering effect in (I love the Jacob quote. One of the bits I remember most strongly from LFA). Sometimes parents are keeping literature that directly relates to their kids out of their houses, or they're keeping out great, fun stories for silly reasons (I judge harshly on parents who keep out Harry Potter because it's 'demonic'. And on parents who won't let their fifteen and sixteen year olds read Will Grayson, Will Grayson because it involves homosexuality. Even though I try not to judge, as other people's morality etc is up to them, I just can't help it).
So yes, this is a long comment to say I'm ALL FOR parental censorship in individual households, it's when it goes further and turns into something institutionalised (keeping a book out of a children's library, for instance), which affects others' children, that I find it unacceptable (like with the mother you mentioned. I think her campaign was totally wrong). No one standard can be imposed, in my opinion, and no individual should get to choose for everyone else what is and isn't suitable for their kids.
(As a random aside I have a theory that it's almost impossible to censor your child's reading once they hit fourteen. It's just too easy for them to get their hands on their own reading material by that age, as you mention).
Great, thought-provoking post
I was a precocious reader as a young child. When I was about 10 I read the beginning of one of my grandfather's books before he realised what I was doing, and then promptly took it away and told me it wasn't suitable for kids to read. At the time I was deeply offended, and distraught because I had been immediately engaged with the story – a man is hanged and a woman cuts the head off a chicken, sprays the blood around and curses everyone for killing him. REALLY exciting stuff for a 10 year old! The story stuck in my head for years as 'that book I never got to read.' Imagine my hyperventilation-with-excitement as years and years later I picked up a copy of Ken Follets Pillars of the Earth and realised it was my beloved, never read chicken blood curse book
And reading it years later I'm sooooooooooo glad my grandfather didn't let me read it at 10, it would have damaged my psychologically I'm sure of it. So the point to my long comment here is I think that you have to take the mind and maturity of the child into consideration and be discerning. Sometimes I think about how I wouldn't let a child watch scenes from a film that I would let them read however, and I wonder about the whole rating system and why it is that books have evaded this scrutiny. Interesting.