What did your parents keep you from listening to/reading/watching?

[flamingyouth]

I am a child of the '70s and I recall my mom not letting me listen to "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer when it came on the radio. In retrospect, considering I hated disco, it's kind of funny. I was reminded of this when we were watching "I Love the '70s" over the weekend. :D

She also wouldn't let me read "Forever" by Judy Blume until I was "older," by which time I'd completely lost interest in Judy Blume.

Fenris' older brother wasn't allowed to listen to Danzig, but that may have been a measure of parental self-preservation...

[bahrbearian]

1. They let me read or watch what I wanted, but

they took away my Playboys,,I think it was my mom, but I'm not sure.

[babylonsister]

16. No, not the Playboys! Those articles... LOL nt

[Misunderestimator]

78. Hahaha.... Me too!! Seriously...

I could read whatever I wanted, until my father found a playboy magazine in my room. :) Still, no big deal, just went in the trash. Everything ELSE sucked back then, but at least I could open my mind to whatever I wanted.

[Lars39]

2. Nothing.

Read everything I could get my hands on, and I don't ever remember either
one of my parents censoring my tv viewing, whether it was Laugh In or the Midnight Special. :)

[babylonsister]

3. I have a lovely memory.

I was always encouraged to read-whenever, whatever. At the tender age of 11 or so, I went to a neighbor's home (kind of a lending library) and picked out 'The Diary Of Ann Frank'. The older owners of the library called me out on it by asking my mom if she thought it was too graphic/adult/unsuitable. My mom always stood up for whatever I read and did so then, and she was of German heritage.
I've always been grateful for the freedom I had to read and explore that way.

[qnr]

4. pr0n - now I feel deprived, when I wanted to be depraved. n/t

[last_texas_dem]

5. All I remember

are a few horror movies that my mom wouldn't let me see when I was like five or six and got into scary movies for a while- stuff my dad had on video- The Shining and Poltergeist come to mind. In retrospect I agree with her decision; I finally saw both of them a couple years ago, and am pretty sure they would have scared the hell out of me when I was a little kid.

In terms of music, they pretty much let me listen to whatever, but I don't think I listened to anything they would have found offensive anyway until I was in high school. Movies- pretty much the same thing... I think they were more worried something would disturb me than that it would "corrupt" me or something.

[Left Is Write]

6. My mom didn't want me to watch Three's Company.

[Hissyspit]

40. Maybe she had good taste!

:P

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. I snuck a read of "Forever", but my mother absolutely forbade "Flowers in

the Attic". Man,I had forgotten that. Oh, and Molly Hatchet was off limits. :hi:

[crispini]

8. oh, MAN, "Flowers in the Attic"

We passed that thing around in secret like it was contraband. I don't think any of our parents knew we were reading it because we all hid it. Wow, blast from the past! :thumbsup:

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. and the funny part is, when it got to the "sexy" part, I had no idea what

they were talking about, so the visual it put into my head is hilarious for me to this day. Somehow, I thought he had put "it" in her stomach. ;) :hi:

[Left Is Write]

11. I really liked the Flowers In The Attic series.

I'm not sure why. I read all of them, though, and no one tried to stop me.

[flamingyouth]

13. Funny, because my mom didn't know about "Flowers in the Attic"

I read all of those. But I was older when those came out. :hi:

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. I was 10 in 1980. Perhaps a bit young...but it didn't scar me...

I don't think. ;)

[Jessica]

9. They made me turn my head at that part in Dirty Dancing

when they ... you know. ;-)

[alwynsw]

12. Nothing at all.

Sometimes it's a blessing to have parents who are drunk out of their skulls within an hour of getting home.

[babylonsister]

15. Hell, what did they drink?

So you're saying they didn't care. That sucks. I'm sorry for that, but hopefully you read alot!

[alwynsw]

45. Let's just say that the "library" is in the basement.

The joists won't hold the weight on the ground floor.

[biscodawg]

17. NWA, beastie boys, but we listened anyway nt

[Kire]

18. ironically, Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" video

but I wore a Quiet Riot hat all weekend at my Family Reunion when I was 9

"Married... with Children" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" were off limits for a while, too.

In fact, for a while, Mondays were "no TV days", for no reason at all. I felt such shame when I turned on the TV on those Mondays.

[RevolutionaryActs]

19. Nothing.

That I can think of anyway.

:)

[progmom]

20. My mom told me I was allowed to read Forever by Judy Blume, but...

...then I had to talk to her about it.

So I respectfully declined, then snuck a friend's copy and read it during study hall.

I didn't want to talk to my mom about sex when I was in 6th grade!!

[sundog]

22. that explains a lot about you

:P

[progmom]

23. Oh yeah?

Wanna fight?

[sundog]

24. it's on!

:nuke:

[progmom]

25. where did JJ go?

I feel abandoned.

[Dave Reynolds]

21. I had no restrictions,

when I got to high school they would even buy me beer.

[Gemini Cat]

26. I was encouraged to read anything and everything.

I was lucky. However, for some strange reason my parents wouldn't allow me to watch The Three Stooges on TV after awhile. It may have had something to do with the note my humourless first year teacher sent home to my parents.

[peekaloo]

27. No restrictions on those topics but my dad didn't seem to

want me socializing. Can I go to (insert name of friend's house/party/sleepover) NO. :shrug:

[politicat]

57. What's up with that?!? I had that, too.

Not allowed to go anywhere, talk to anyone, or do anything normal.

I now know that he was afraid that I would reveal he was abusing the hell out of my mother, and that whomever I told would tell HIS commanding officers, and dad would be subject to discipline.

Gotta love military families....

[sundog]

28. not much - I pretty much did what I wanted to do

[cedahlia]

29. Remember G.L.O.W.? (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling)

From the 80s? My brother and I weren't allowed to watch that. :-)

Also, I loved Madonna as a kid (1980s Madonna--when she was cool!) and I remember my mom wouldn't let me watch her "Open Your Heart" video...too racy, I guess?

She never kept me from reading anything, though, which was cool. And I loved both reading and music, so I would always read her Rolling Stone magazines when she was done with them. Which is funny, because some of the stuff I read in there was way more "adult" than GLOW or a Madonna video! I'll have to ask her about that next time I talk to her.

[Hissyspit]

41. I forgot all about that show!

[MrScorpio]

30. Nothing

No censorship in my house

[BigMcLargehuge]

31. My parents gave me open access to everything

I was blessed with open minded folks. My first record album, when I was six, was Kiss Rock and Roll Over. I learned to read on Edgar Allen Poe stories at 3 and a half. My mom took me to see The Exorcist when I was 8.

[flamingyouth]

34. Why does that not surprise me?

:D

Actually, it's funny, because the things I mentioned were the only ones I wasn't allowed near. My mother actually *read* the Exorcist to me one summer when I was really little (about 3 or 4) and my dad was up working in Alaska. :eyes: And a few years later I read The Amityville Horror.

So, Satan was a-okay in our home, clearly. :D

[BigMcLargehuge]

35. I laughed when I read you were prohibited from listening to Hot Stuff

My Dad brought that record home for us and used to listen to it at ludicrous volume on Sunday afternoons.

[juslikagrzly]

32. Nothing

lovely, benignly neglectful wonderful parents that they were!

[phusion]

33. Sex, Lies & Videotape

And they always fast forwarded through the erotic scenes in movies when I was watching.

Otherwise, I wasn't really restricted from anything.

[Lauri16]

36. Nothing

My Mom never stopped us from reading/listening/watching anything. Even if it was something that she didn't agree with. She always told my friends' parents...(the ones that didn't agree with her)...that she wanted us to form our own opinions of life and we wouldn't be able to do that by being shielded from half of it.

[Wat_Tyler]

37. My parents didn't keep me from watching anything.

In fact, my childhood was scarred by being forced to watch pirate videos of Alien and The Elephant Man.

[Fenris]

44. Did they use hooks to keep your eyes open?

A la A Clockwork Orange?

[Wat_Tyler]

61. Emotional hooks, Fenris.

I tell you, five year olds should not be watching the films of David Lynch.

[Fenris]

68. What about "Dune"?

[Wat_Tyler]

79. No-one should be watching Dune.

[Hissyspit]

38. The TV show "Soap," because it had openly gay character, and 'adult'

situations. After a while, after we snuck views of it, she was watching it with us regularly. It was kind of silly of her to do that, actally, and rather inconsistent with her values. The show is SO tame by today's standards.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. My parents intercepted issues of Time magazine that had cover

stories about abortion, premarital sex, and homosexuality, when I was between the ages of about 10 and 14. It was futile, though, because those issues were on the newsstands. :-)

[datasuspect]

42. anything with "boobies"

actually, we were pretty much given free reign to explore libraries.

but when i was 11 and brought home books about nazi war atrocities and had nightmares, they told me, i should probably wait to learn more about some things.

i didn't listen to them. they had no problem with that. they just tried to contextualize some things better.

[lizzieforkerry]

43. I wasn't allowed to watch The Dukes of Hazzard or Three's Comp.

My mom thought they were too stupid and couldn't stand to listen to it even in the background (no TV's in our bedrooms!!).

[Fenris]

46. Well, my parents forbade me from reading my dad's underground comix.

One can see why, but I was curious, dammit! I mean, it was my dad who had a stack of comix (Crumb, Bill Griffin, etc.) which I was FORBIDDEN from reading. And he didn't really hide them. Sheesh. How else was I to learn about depraved sex and heroin abuse?

I was also, for a brief period, forbidden to listen to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral. I defy anyone to tell me a song with "I want to fuck you like an animal" in it is inappropriate for an 11 year old.;)

[flamingyouth]

47. And there was that X-Files episode

Which, BTW, totally creeped me out just the other night. :D

[Fenris]

50. I want the DVD!

:D

[flamingyouth]

51. I want the one with the flukeworm guy on it

:scared: :D

[grannylib]

48. Dad: forbade nothing. Mom: tried to keep anything factual about sex out

of our hands; considered it a manual and condoning sexual activity. Her idea of sex ed was some little pamphlet from the 50s that cooed about vague euphemistic shit and told you nothing. (Kind of like that "Mysteries of Marriage" pamphlet in "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge")

[fleabert]

49. I remember she didn't let me watch Basic Instint on TV when I was 17.

because it was originally rated R.

but she never stopped me from watching, listening, or reading anything else I can remember.

[donheld]

52. Everything

I grew up ultra fundimentalist. No TV, Rock and roll was evil, Movies were evil. There wasn't much those people approved of.

[dad]

73. Finally .. another EVERYTHING person

My fucking parents banned just about all music, tv, etc. that Iwas interested in. I remember my psycho dad ripping up an ELO poster to shreds that I had on the wall. MASH was my favorite show and I was not allowed to watch it. Sometimes I would stay at a friend's house just to watch something on tv. Always at school the kids would be talking about whatever show was on last night, I could never admit that my parents would not allow me to watch whatever show it was. Freaking Republican nutcases, they are probably loving life these days (havent had contact in years). Years later I finally soaked up all the MASH re-runs. And hypocritical of course. Funny thing is, lots of times I would come into the room and dad would be watching a 'banned' evil show .. and quickly change the channel. Christ, it is good 2B an adult!!

[Lugnut]

53. Elvis Presley

My mother said he was vulgar. She would only let us listen to the 45s she approved. The Everly Brothers were acceptable as was Ricky Nelson. :eyes:

[Not_Giving_Up]

54. Everything

No shit, they were fundies. If it wasn't Amy Grant (one of the few christian artists at the time), forget it. One church we went to tried to burn the rock music, but couldn't get a permit. The music was confiscated by the parents anyway.

He-man, She-ra, and Thundercats were all forbidden...they were demonic.

[cags]

69. Been there, me too.

[politicat]

55. The only thing I remember was a docuflick on child molestation.

One of those Lifetime-esque (before Lifetime), After School Special (Like Special Ed) Made for TV movies.

She didn't want me to see that one, and made me turn it off, just as it was getting interesting. Gee, mom, don't you think it might be a good idea for me to know about sexual predators, or am I supposed to learn that from Dad?

Other than that, I don't remember any real censorship, but I learned to keep my books/music/movies to myself really early because I read very early, and by the time I was in first and second grade, I was snagging whatever she was reading because I'd finish my library books in 2 or 3 days, and we only went to the library once every two weeks. At best. So I read Danielle Steele, V. C. Andrews, Harold Robbins (?), Barbara Cartland.... Lots of trash, but an occasional regency led me to Jane Austen, an occasional Victoria Holt led me to history, and well... now I'm far more selective.

I remember watching the exorcist with her when I was about 10, and being rather dismissive of the plot... and pulling out the bible to check references. It just didn't scare me.

Did I understand her books entirely? Yes, and no. I had to puzzle some words out, and our dictionary really got a workout, but I'm pretty sure I got the concepts down pretty quickly.

Yes, I was a weird little kid.

[gmoney]

56. I don't know... they kept it from me!!

How should I know what they kept me from listening to/reading/watching? If they succeeded, I didn't see it, and if I saw it, then they failed.

"It's times like this I wish I'd listened to what my mother told me..."

"Why? What did she tell you?"

"How should I know? I wasn't listening!"

[Doohickie]

58. Not much, actually

In fact, my dad had a drawer full of Playboy. I have to admit to taking one out from the bottom of the stack on occasion.

}; )

[Lorien]

59. Nothing

I'm also a child of the '70s, and my parents were hippies. :-)

[RoyGBiv]

60. The Day After

I was a bit too serious as a child, worried openly and graphically about nuclear war, and my mother felt that me watching this movie might truly make me snap.

I saw it anyway. She found out about it after the fact but of course couldn't do anything to change it. I didn't snap, I don't think. :-) But, I was more freaked out than normal for awhile. Nothing in the movie went beyond my imagination; in fact, I considered it rather mild. But, visuals do things to the mind that mere imagination without graphic context do not.

[xmas74]

71. Now my mom did let me watch that.

We were living near Whiteman (the base that is destroyed in that movie) and she told me that if I were ever a bad girl that would happen to everyone around me.

I still remember the line "There is no Sedalia" (a local town that I lived very near-that scared the crap out of me and I think that it scarred me for life).

[ghostsofgiants]

62. Until I was about 11 my mom wouldn't let me watch The Simpsons...

So I would always watch tv in the basement and change the channel really quickly when she would come down. It came on (and still does actually) CBC every day at 5:30, and CBC is right next to PBS, so I could always get away with it quite easily.

Haha, sorry, nostalgia trip there.

[tammywammy]

63. Stephen King

I'm an avid reader, and I think in 7th or 8th grade I asked if I could read one of my mom's Stephen King books (she has all in hard back). She said "No, they're too scary for you."

To this day I've never read Stephen King. I'm a wimp watching the movies, so I really do think they're too scary for me.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

64. Just MTV. That's all. Everything else was cool. n/t

[InvisibleTouch]

65. Jaws

I remember being about 7 or 8 years old when that movie came out, and I was dying to see it. I was rooting for the shark, of course. And my parents absolutely refused to let me go see it, thought I'd find it gruesome and traumatizing. (Nothing would have been further from the truth - in fact, the truth was that they were creeped out by it, not me.) Since I felt that I could make my arguement better in writing than verbally, I wrote a long letter to them listing all the reasons that I should be able to go see this movie. It was my first-ever persuasively-intended opinion piece.

They were impressed enough with my essay. Sadly, it didn't work.

But now ... now I stay up until all hours, watching anything I damn well please. Ha! :)

[imenja]

66. The Exorcist and Lenny Bruce

I was also prohibited from associating with dykes. I had liberal hippie parents. Nice, huh?

[Reverend_Smitty]

67. Nothing really...

I was an only child + my parents were divorced, you do the math!

[HEyHEY]

70. hmmmm..... nuthin.. I had free reign

[xmas74]

72. I could read what I wanted

because they never could catch any of it. Music-Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop". I remember they bought me the album and then heard everyone talking about what the song was referring to. They took my album away from me. They hated every last bit of metal that I wanted to listen to- a distant cousin of my mother's dubbed me a copy of Appetite for Destruction(which I played to death, on low volume w/ my ear to the speaker praying my mother would never hear it).

Tv and movies were another matter. My mother made out a weekly tv schedule and we were allowed to watch only the programs that were on the list-nothing else. Movies-she had to screen them first and then decide if we were allowed (but The Day After was used as a lesson in my house for what happens to naughty little girls).
I remember sneaking into a "R" rated movie at the theater at the age of 12. It was Stand By Me and I got caught. I went on a date when I was 16 to an R rated movie (can't remember which one). I was grounded for 2 weeks. When I was 17 I moved out. First thing I did-watched every slasher movie that I could get my hands on.

[Withywindle]

74. Nothing at all.

I know I read the really raunchy Burroughs and Ginsberg and Henry Miller stuff before I was really old enough to understand it (junior high), but my dad was just glad to finally have someone else to discuss it with!

(And glad I could. If I hadn't turned out to be really into books and against censorship I think my parents would have drowned me in a sack.)

[Solly Mack]

75. Nothing was banned

there were things she wanted us to read and watch...so we did..often because we "had" to but we always ended enjoying it. Anything else was really up to us...course, she expected us to be able to explain "why" we wanted to read or watch something. I know she thought book banners were complete idiots.

She loved rock, jazz, swing, and the blues. ..all kinds of music really- she wasn't too fond of metal though.... still, no bans on music for genre or lyrics. I could listen to anything....

She would voice when she thought something lacked artistc merit or social merit...but she never said "you can't..."

[Freebird12004]

76. My second stepmother confiscated my books by Freud

I was going to do a paper on his works during my senior year in high school.

She also burned my copy of Parrish.:grr::mad:

To say the very least - the lady was a jerk!

[SarahB]

77. I didn't have a lot of restrictions.

However, there was kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy. I doubt when I was 12, my mom would have too comfortable knowing I read her copies of Fear of Flying and The Joy of Sex, so I didn't say anything about it, but they were still on the bookshelf regardless. Judy Blume was nothing. I remember getting a Ms. magazine pamphlet on birth control for teens handed to me. Funny thing was that she seemed surprised when she learned I actually had sex by 15. Oh well, at least I was informed and responsible. :shrug:

[purji]

80. the three stooges

Mom thought we would poke each others eyes out or something.

[noonwitch]

81. My mom made me take "Forever" back to the library/no 3 Stooges

I checked it out again the next day and hid it under my bed.
We were not allowed to watch "The Three Stooges" when we were little kids. My mom didn't want us to start hitting each other with whatever implement was handy. She said she had visions of us picking up rolling pins or frypans and beating the daylights out of each other.

Incidentally, she let me read "The Thorn Birds", which was worse, because it's about a pedophile priest, who falls in love with a child, waits for her to get old enough to have sex with her, yet also makes a deal with the child's wealthy aunt to strip her family of their inheritence so that he can use the money to become a cardinal. He then has sex with the girl when she is in her early 20s, impregnates her, and dumps her to go back to Rome. My mom found this "romantic".

I had to beg her to take me to see "Animal House" at the theater, even though we had HBO and were allowed to watch whatever we wanted to on it. I was 14 and figured out a few months later that no one ever asked for id to get into R rated movies at that time.

[MountainLaurel]

82. Nothing, pretty much

My parents were pretty apathetic about the whole parenting thing (too busy trying to keep my brother and I from killing one another, or in my bro's case, himself). My father took me to see movies like "Do The Right Thing" and "Empire of the Sun" when I was in my early teens. I grew up listening to Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, and Cheech and Chong. I learned to read looking at a medical encyclopedia with pictures of genitalia and Readers Digest Condensed books. My mother gave me free reign at the library, and I learned all about the joys of puberty from 25-year-old books (I grew up in Appalachia, and our library was waaaaay underfunded.)

Interesting, considering that I was attending a fundie church for much of my childhood.

:shrug:

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

83. National Lampoon, and rock magazines

We could watch any TV, and listen to any music (late 60s/early 70s). But those teenybopper rock rags like 16 and so on - for some reason they drove my parents nuts. Apparently they were "garbage." They would search our rooms just to snoop and confiscate contraband, but they never found my magazine stash hidden inside the lining of a heavy old coat that I had opened under one arm for the purpose. I was always very proud of that hideyhole.

The other verboten item was NatLamp. I started reading it when it first came out, but it escaped their notice until I left the issue with the Frazetta cover lying around the living room. When I got home from work that night, it was nowhere to be found and my mother was in her trademark silent angry mode, a sign that you had done something wrong but it was up to you to figure out what. I guessed it was this:



:D

[flamingyouth]

84. Very clever!

I guess you're lucky you didn't grow up in Miami, or else that would have been rather suspicious. :D