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My Husband Insists That It’s Fine for Our Girls to See Graphic Movies
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I have been married for 16 years. He is a hardworking professional and we are raising two daughters (ages 7 and 10) who are smart and sweet. For the most part, he is a loving and thoughtful guy, but we keep hitting a wall when it comes to our kids and media. We have very different points of view on media consumption as a whole and, specifically, what’s appropriate for our kids to see. If I had it my way, we wouldn’t even have a TV in our living room; my husband, on the other hand, has to have the biggest TV with the most amazing sound bar, etc. While I err on the side of caution, he doesn’t see anything wrong with a little sex, violence, and gore. He claims, “it’s nothing.”
My kids claim otherwise. Whenever they see something (however brief) that disturbs them, they tell me about it. For instance, they saw one moment of a preview for a scary movie, and the images were enough to spook my younger daughter for weeks. Most recently, my older daughter saw an old Western where a group of men grab a woman from a wagon, tear her blouse, expose her breast, and throw her to the ground. My daughter told me—with my husband present—that what she had seen had bothered her and that she couldn’t get it out of her head. My husband said, “It was nothing, she didn’t see anything, I turned it off.” My daughter and I talked about how it was just a movie, etc., but that kind of talk rings hollow when the topic revolves around the very real issue of sexual violence, not a make-believe psychotic clown in a sewer.
When I brought this up to my husband privately, he accused our 10-year-old of being “calculating” and doing this to “get him in trouble.” Of course, this led to a fight and him sleeping downstairs. I want him to protect our girls from this kind of stuff for as long as possible, but when I say this to him, he gets enraged at the suggestion that he doesn’t “take care of” his kids. He thinks because he works hard and makes a good living, that’s sufficient. Am I overreacting or being overprotective (both of which he accuses me of)?
—Protective Mama
Dear Protective,
You are neither overreacting nor being overprotective: You’re right to shield your children from violent images (and yes, of course, sexual violence in particular). Your husband is dead wrong, and I can’t tell you why he is determined not to protect the kids from this kind of harmful imagery—especially since it sounds as if he isn’t just being careless or thoughtless, but seems to feel there’s a sort of principle to be upheld. Is it possible he’s oppositional? Rebellious? That this is a big You’re-Not-the-Boss-of-Me statement?
Whatever is going on with him, it doesn’t sound like talking to him about this in the way you have been is going to make a whit of difference (and if my guess is right, it will only make him dig in his heels). You will not be surprised that I am going to recommend marriage counseling—it seems pretty clear to me that this is a problem between the two of you, and that it may be the tip of the iceberg. But in the meantime, since he refuses to get the message that nothing inappropriate for them should be on the TV when they are in the room, keep them out of the room. I would actually make it a rule: no playing in the living room when Daddy’s home. Maybe he’ll get the message that way.
Your daughters will be fine playing elsewhere. I recognize that it may be a challenge for you, particularly if the living room is a central room in your house where “everything happens” and if your husband continues to insist that there must be a TV in that room (and an enormous one, to boot!). But please do not turn this into an escalation of the power struggle that already exists between you and your husband, a “why should my daughters not be able to play in my living room?” scenario. And you might want to make that appointment for counseling sooner rather than later, because I am pretty sure he’s not going to like this rule any more than you will, and his calling you overprotective sounds like a trigger for you.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/parent-thinks-graphic-r-rated-movies-ok-media.html
My husband and I have been married for 16 years. He is a hardworking professional and we are raising two daughters (ages 7 and 10) who are smart and sweet. For the most part, he is a loving and thoughtful guy, but we keep hitting a wall when it comes to our kids and media. We have very different points of view on media consumption as a whole and, specifically, what’s appropriate for our kids to see. If I had it my way, we wouldn’t even have a TV in our living room; my husband, on the other hand, has to have the biggest TV with the most amazing sound bar, etc. While I err on the side of caution, he doesn’t see anything wrong with a little sex, violence, and gore. He claims, “it’s nothing.”
My kids claim otherwise. Whenever they see something (however brief) that disturbs them, they tell me about it. For instance, they saw one moment of a preview for a scary movie, and the images were enough to spook my younger daughter for weeks. Most recently, my older daughter saw an old Western where a group of men grab a woman from a wagon, tear her blouse, expose her breast, and throw her to the ground. My daughter told me—with my husband present—that what she had seen had bothered her and that she couldn’t get it out of her head. My husband said, “It was nothing, she didn’t see anything, I turned it off.” My daughter and I talked about how it was just a movie, etc., but that kind of talk rings hollow when the topic revolves around the very real issue of sexual violence, not a make-believe psychotic clown in a sewer.
When I brought this up to my husband privately, he accused our 10-year-old of being “calculating” and doing this to “get him in trouble.” Of course, this led to a fight and him sleeping downstairs. I want him to protect our girls from this kind of stuff for as long as possible, but when I say this to him, he gets enraged at the suggestion that he doesn’t “take care of” his kids. He thinks because he works hard and makes a good living, that’s sufficient. Am I overreacting or being overprotective (both of which he accuses me of)?
—Protective Mama
Dear Protective,
You are neither overreacting nor being overprotective: You’re right to shield your children from violent images (and yes, of course, sexual violence in particular). Your husband is dead wrong, and I can’t tell you why he is determined not to protect the kids from this kind of harmful imagery—especially since it sounds as if he isn’t just being careless or thoughtless, but seems to feel there’s a sort of principle to be upheld. Is it possible he’s oppositional? Rebellious? That this is a big You’re-Not-the-Boss-of-Me statement?
Whatever is going on with him, it doesn’t sound like talking to him about this in the way you have been is going to make a whit of difference (and if my guess is right, it will only make him dig in his heels). You will not be surprised that I am going to recommend marriage counseling—it seems pretty clear to me that this is a problem between the two of you, and that it may be the tip of the iceberg. But in the meantime, since he refuses to get the message that nothing inappropriate for them should be on the TV when they are in the room, keep them out of the room. I would actually make it a rule: no playing in the living room when Daddy’s home. Maybe he’ll get the message that way.
Your daughters will be fine playing elsewhere. I recognize that it may be a challenge for you, particularly if the living room is a central room in your house where “everything happens” and if your husband continues to insist that there must be a TV in that room (and an enormous one, to boot!). But please do not turn this into an escalation of the power struggle that already exists between you and your husband, a “why should my daughters not be able to play in my living room?” scenario. And you might want to make that appointment for counseling sooner rather than later, because I am pretty sure he’s not going to like this rule any more than you will, and his calling you overprotective sounds like a trigger for you.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/parent-thinks-graphic-r-rated-movies-ok-media.html
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The 10 year old describes what she's seen and that she's upset, the husband calls her a liar and says she didn't see anything, that she's doing it to get him in trouble.
Who says that about a preteen?
Then he gets "enraged" about a parenting conversation?
LW needs to leave, because this situation is not going to improve. I suppose family therapy might help - but LW needs to secure safe housing first.
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That seriously concerns me, too.
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DUDE, SHAPE IT THE FUCK UP. BRINGING HOME THE BACON ISN'T YOUR ONLY ROLE AS A DAD.
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Why should the kids get kicked out of the common area because dad wants to watch his shitty tv? I'd take the tv and exile it and him to the garage. if he wants to watch things that frighten and disturb his young children, he can go do it elsewhere.
For the most part, he is a loving and thoughtful guy, but
But for this one extremely important way in which he demonstrates over and over again that he is in fact neither of those things.
ETA: I see the response addresses the "who has to make themselves smaller"/"who gets priority access to the living room" now and I think it's a shitty take.
If this man were in my house I'd be tempted to open up the shell of the tv and bust up the chipset inside. Of every tv that comes into the living room, while organizing a divorce.
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Giving daddy his own man cave/den/tv would fix the media choice problem/relaxing alone, but it would not actually fix the "he needs to be thinking about his kids' needs sometimes" problem.
And it certainly doesn't fix the problem where he reacts the way he does when he's called on it.
(It is possible, even likely, that the ten-year-old is in fact tattling on him on purpose in order to get him in trouble with LW. This seems like the type of household where that dynamic would happen. Still not 10-year-old's fault! Still daddy's fault for how he responds!)
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that's true. (also why I think, in the 'dad goes somewhere else' solution, that 'somewhere else' needs to be the objectively shittiest place on the property. if he chooses to absent himself from his parenting responsibility, he doesn't get to be comfortable doing it.)
(I loathe the entire concept of the man cave. it so often becomes 'place where dad goes because he's mad being a husband/father comes with responsibility that cuts into his leisure time' and a space/excuse for them to shirk household chores)
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how can this be a sentence from an advisor????? GAH
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Fuck you advice-giver. Fuck you so much.
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Having a job is generally good! However, it is not the same as actually being a parent. LW's husband is using his employment as an excuse to avoid parenting and gets angry when parenting obligations present themselves to him, such as when his children complain about seeing upsetting things in the media he watches. If he really wants to limit his parental obligations to his paycheck, then he can start by negotiating a particularly generous alimony arrangement with his soon-to-be ex-wife.
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