by Debbie Todd

Created on: November 03, 2009

Most adult cartoons (such as Family Guy, South Park, etc.) are aired on TV channels at night. Children should really be in bed at that time. It is up to their parents to make sure that they are in bed. It is also up to parents to monitor their children's TV viewing and make sure that children do not watch programmes that are unsuitable. Just because a programme is a cartoon does not make it suitable viewing for youngsters. In fact, I would go so far as to state that many programmes, soaps included, should not be watched by young children. However, the main responsibility for monitoring the programmes that children do watch lies with parents, not television broadcasting companies. Most adults who watch comedy shows would not dream of allowing their children to watch them, so why are they quite content to allow children to watch adult cartoons? These are animated comedy shows with content that is not suitable or appropriate for children.

I have always really enjoyed watching South Park - I find it hysterically funny and it makes me laugh out loud. When this programme first became popular I was doing voluntary youth work, working for the most part teaching pottery to children under the age of eleven at the youth club that my 8 year old daughter attended. I would be really shocked to hear the kids I was working with discuss that week's South Park programme and I would always tell the children that it was a comedy show for adults and that it was not really appropriate viewing for them. I always interacted really well with the youngsters I worked with and none of them resented me stating this opinion - I think some of them probably tacitly agreed with me that they should not be watching the programme. I certainly did not allow my own daughter to watch it and was horrified that other parents of young children would allow their children to do so.

When my children were young, they were not really allowed to watch much television at all until about the age of five or six, it was always closely supervised by me. Neither of them were allowed a television of their own in their bedroom until the age of ten or eleven and, even then, there were rules about which programmes they were allowed to watch. No soaps until about the age of 13 or 14. My youngest daughter would actually police herself in this respect. She would come out of her bedroom to tell me that the programme that she had been watching was over and that a soap (or some other programme that she knew I considered unsuitable) was about to begin. Although most of her friends were allowed to watch soaps, she accepted that she was not allowed to do so and would alert me to make sure that I did not inadvertently let her watch them. It was nothing to do with when her bedtime was - bedtime was flexible and both of my children would be allowed to stay up quite late to watch a good nature documentary or (if there was a tournament on) a snooker match - which they both enjoyed. Indeed, I have actually let them stay up until very late on school nights to watch a snooker final that went on for hours!

However, I do believe that watching programmes that are inappropriate for a child's age group can lead to poor behaviour, growing up too fast and an acceptance and use of crude language. I believe that parents should closely monitor their offspring's television viewing in order to make sure that the TV is a useful tool for entertainment and education.

Learn more about this author, Debbie Todd.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.