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Growing up I considered myself to be sort of cool (clearly I was delusional, but that’s a topic for another post). I was the only girl I knew in high school who could recite the lyrics to the album Quadrophenia by heart, I hung out with several different groups of kids (I preferred not to be tied to one clique) and, when I went to college, I partied with the best of them.

So how the hell did I become such a straight-laced, uptight mother?

Two words fully answer that question: my parents. Readers of this blog know I was raised with a wishy-washy mom and dad who spanked me one day and allowed me ridiculous freedom the next. I had no solid boundaries and no consistency (the one topic on which they remained completely intractable was boys).

What you may not know is how egregious my parent’s judgment was at times. Let me give you a little taste. When I was 9 years old, my parents took my brother, who was 12, and me to a drive-in movie. Mind you, the nightly showing featured R-rated films (did you catch my age? I said I was 9), but my parents’ logic was that we would “fall asleep in the back of the station wagon” while they enjoyed the show. What were the movies that night, you ask? Well, it was a double feature, the first being Mandigo, a story about a slave owner whose wife makes her move on the hot, young African-American slave, and the second was The Longest Yard. (I’ll pause while you contain your simultaneous laughter and horror.) Both movies had incredibly inappropriate content for a child my age (as if the R rating alone wasn’t an indication). Even my brother was too young for those racy or scary scenes. I remember peeking over my mom’s shoulder and witnessing sexual content unbelievably shocking for my little eyes in Mandigo, and when The Longest Yard came on, I saw a horrifyingly violent clip of a man burning to death. (The images were so outrageous I remember them clearly to this day, 33 years later. Don't get me started about how I felt when they did a remake of The Longest Yard a few years ago.)

When I told my friend J about our little family outing, she laughed and said, “Have you ever asked your mom about that night?”

“No,” I said, still laughing myself at the absurdity of what I saw. “She would either deny it or say she didn’t know any better.”

As a mother, I do know better, which is why I am the kind of parent I am now. I am one of the rare few who doesn’t allow her 4-year-old and 7-year-old to watch Hannah Montana or High School Musical (What? I'm supposed to trust that company just because it's Disney? Uh-uh. Disney killed off Bambi's mother and releases movies in which women are constantly rescued by a knight in shining armor. Clearly it exercises judgment akin to my parent's). Although those are G-rated shows and movies, I personally feel the content is too mature for my girls right now (as I said in a previous post why should my elementary school-age daughter see 16-year-olds make out?). That said, I am also completely open with them about sex, and have even had “the talk” with them on a few occasions (click here, click here, and click here to read those posts.) I just want them to experience things when their minds are able to comprehend what they see, and I don’t want the horrible images of something inappropriate to scar them as they did me.

My reluctance to let them see movies ahead of their age has recently become an issue for me. A friend of Lily’s invited her over to a movie night for her birthday. I e-mailed the mom and asked which movie would be shown. “We haven’t decided yet,” she said. “Any ideas?”

I wrote back and politely explained my position. I also said I didn’t want my situation to influence their decision since it was their daughter’s birthday and it should be her choice. “We’ll probably just show something G-rated,” she said. I sighed when I read and felt like a massive loser for having to explain that even G ratings weren’t good enough. I wanted to know the content. “I’ll nail down a choice and let you know,” she said.

I hate feeling like this kind of mom – the one who appears to be too strict and is a party pooper. I apologized to the mom if I was making it difficult for her but I bet she was rolling her eyes at my concern (as I do when I think people are being overly sensitive). I know High School Musical is a far cry from Mandigo, and I also know a quick kiss on the lips is nothing like what I saw that night in the drive-in. Nonetheless, these are my children and I want to raise them the way I want, regardless of peer pressure or how I look in the community. If it means my kids don’t run around trying to kiss boys in second grade, all the better.

Thoughts? Feel free to post a comment or vote in the latest poll.
Photo by Ayhan YILDIZ, courtesy of stock.xchng