But what about the children? — VOICES for REASON

Tell people you’re against the FCC censoring the airwaves and without a doubt, the next question will be: But what about the children? Shouldn’t they be protected from content that’s unsuitable for them?

My usual response involves pointing out that parents bear the responsibility of policing what their children watch or listen to–and that the need to protect their children doesn’t give them the right to control what others say.

Ayn Rand made this point in an interview she gave in the early ’60s. (See the new book Objectively Speaking, a fascinating collection of her interviews.) But she also raised an interesting aspect I hadn’t considered.

Regarding salacious literature, nothing a child reads will ever corrupt him unless his premises have already been corrupted by himself, his parents or others. A parent does not control every garbage can in town for fear that a child might start eating tainted food, and the same principle applies to intellectual food.

The parent should see that the child does not read books the parent considers wrong for him–remembering always that even if the child does read them, either he will not understand them or they will not affect him.

This neatly refutes an objection you often hear when advocating parental responsibility, which is that parents can’t be present all the time: While it’s primarily parents’ responsibility to police what their children watch, they can’t control what Johnny watches at his friend’s house or when Mom and Dad go to sleep.

I take Ayn Rand’s point to be that the effect of this on a child’s development is insignificant. A child who has been raised properly, assuming he chooses to be rational, won’t be corrupted by occasional or accidental exposure to dirty words or bad ideas. He can, with the help of his parents, evaluate them as bad and discard them.

The challenge is not to shield children from salacious material–it’s to properly raise and educate them. And in any event, that challenge is no justification for censorship.