issues of censorship

Ok, we all know that, in America, censorship is frowned upon.  This is the land of the free, am I right? Freedom of expression, freedom to look shit up on google, freedom to supposedly critique the system we are living under.  Sometimes though, as a parent, I often find myself wondering how free we really are, or more accurately, how free our children really are, to make their own choices and be who they truly are, and I find myself in an odd place regarding censorship.  Namely, I am the person doing the censoring, it feels like, on my child’s behalf.

This sounds counter-intuitive, right?  Because I want my kids to be strong individuals and decide for themselves who they are, what and who they like and don’t, what their opinions are on everything.  But, I often find myself trying to hide from them mainstream cultural ideas as much as possible (and believe me, if you’ve tried this at all, you understand how damn impossible it really is).  I often find myself wishing I could hide them away on some kind of farm or commune out in the country surrounded by like-minded people only and keep the mainstream culture at bay AT LEAST until they are teenagers and capable of approaching these things with more of their brain mass intact.  Right now, they are walking magnets of cultural information and they absorb EVERYTHING they see.  And, though you think as a parent you have the greater influence so it doesn’t matter what they see around them, that’s just not the case.

For instance, and this is just a small example of what I’m talking about, we try not to buy too many toys.  We try not to let too many gender-biased toys into our house, and we try to emphasize using imagination to play and entertain themselves, connecting with people (mainly each other and us at this point) and low technology.  I can keep them out of stores, theoretically, though this isn’t really the case.  I can keep them from watching tv advertisements because we don’t have a tv.  This is probably the biggest one.  But I can’t keep them from noticing that the kid down the street has a bright pink Barbie hummer powerwheels with built in speakers that they cruise up and down the block on.

You see?  I really don’t have the power to keep them from being aware of what advertisers want them to want, because if the kid down the street has it, they know it exists.  And they want it.

The genius of marketing.  We live in a competitive society.  They know that.  So all they have to do is reach one or two kids on your block, and, by our nature in this competitive society, we want to buy our kids the latest and greatest too.  Because that shows that we’re successful, right?  If our kids have all the latest kids clothes and kids toys, that means we are living the American dream, am I right?

This post might be a bit discombobulated and that’s because my thoughts on this issue are not really organized or coherent, but it takes up a lot of my thoughts these days anyways, so I wanted to share it and I don’t think I’m probably alone.

I have this deep gut reaction to get out.  To keep my kids away from the mainstream culture, to protect them from gender bias, conspicuous consumerism and materialism.  Yet there is really no place to hide.  And I can only change the words in Ruth’s Berenstein Bears books so many times when they talk about how much sister bear likes pink and hopscotch and jump rope while brother bear likes video games and hates mushy love stuff.  I look at Ruth and I can just SEE the neurons connecting…in ways that are not good.

The other day, I was lamenting to Greg about how Joel wants to wear “girl clothes” everywhere, which I really could give two shits about, but other people comment and give quizzical looks, and treat him different, I shit you not.  He said, “just get gender-neutral clothes for them both.”  Which sounds great, except, there ARE no gender neutral clothes.  There are only boys clothes and girls clothes and if you are a girl, you wear one thing and if you are a boy, you wear another.  It is a real problem.

What is a parent to do?  I deeply believe in telling my kids the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I tell them about death.  I tell them about childbirth (lord KNOWS ruth knows more about the process than most grown adults do at this point), I tell them about sex (ruth not joel, but he’ll get there), I tell them about everything under the sun.  But I find myself in this forced censorship role when it comes to girl vs. boy things.  When it comes to gender roles and expectations.  When it comes to society’s obsession with buying MORE and NEW and BIG and BETTER, which is harder than you think and really takes up a lot of time and energy.

Anyone want to buy some land and start up a commune with me?