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Ella writes: We have a family Netflix account. I am 18, but every time I switch my profile to allow TV-MA (mature) shows, my dad changes it back. Please order him to let me watch all kinds of shows!
Nothing magical happens when a child turns 18. And that’s why your dad should have figured out years ago that you are a whole human being with a deep inner life who deserves respect and agency. He may argue, “My house, my rules,” but you can tell him that’s just what the Front Man would say about the Squid Game (a show you can watch now). If you have the means, you could buy your own Netflix account. But better to point out: The only thing his censorship has done is drive you to write to a weird 50-year-old fake judge. Is that what he wants for his little girl? You’ll both be happier if he lets go and trusts your judgment, as the actual law now requires.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/magazine/family-netflix-mature-shows.html
Nothing magical happens when a child turns 18. And that’s why your dad should have figured out years ago that you are a whole human being with a deep inner life who deserves respect and agency. He may argue, “My house, my rules,” but you can tell him that’s just what the Front Man would say about the Squid Game (a show you can watch now). If you have the means, you could buy your own Netflix account. But better to point out: The only thing his censorship has done is drive you to write to a weird 50-year-old fake judge. Is that what he wants for his little girl? You’ll both be happier if he lets go and trusts your judgment, as the actual law now requires.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/magazine/family-netflix-mature-shows.html
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Just want to point out that LW's dad does not seem to understand how to effectively set parental controls so as to keep his (now adult) child from unsetting them, which makes his actions both controlling and amazingly pointless.
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Part of growing up is finding a way to pay for your own things. This can become very difficult depending on the family, but I don't see anything to suggest that here. In LW's case, a part time job will generally be enough to pay the $8.99 per month for the cheapest Netflix subscription option.
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Does he get to tell his wife she can't watch TV-MA shows either?
Just like how LW would get a say on the settings if they had a Netflix account of their own
If LW paid for Netflix for the whole family, and then said that her Dad couldn't watch TV-MA shows, I'd say she was overstepping too.
In LW's case, a part time job will generally be enough to pay the $8.99 per month for the cheapest Netflix subscription option.
LW may still be engaged in full-time school. She might even still be in high school. While it's true that many students can work part time and go to school full time, it's a bit much for her to have to do so so she can watch an hour of grown-up Netflix at the end of the day.
Alternatively, she might be working part-time while going to school and saving up to leave home in which case, again, it's a bit cheap for her parents to nickel and dime her over the Netflix account just so... what, they can control what she's watching when they're not even in the room?
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He could do that, and then the wife would then have every right to tell her husband to stop being ridiculous.
LW has been going with a passive method of handling things by just changing the settings. They could try having a direct conversation with their parents about how annoying having to change the settings is, or they could just get a separate account. Both are fine options with positives and negatives, some of which you went into. I think getting an account of their own is less likely to backfire, though.
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If a child over the age of eighteen doesn't care to live by household rules any longer, they've got a variety of options available. But none of those options include "tell the fellow adult whose account you're mooching off how to handle themselves."
My eighteen year old is welcome to watch whatever media they like, that's none of my business -- but it's on their dime.
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Yes, ditto.
I think using setting controls to stop people aged 18 or older accessing mature content is only acceptable under extreme circumstances
eg to prevent someone who is currently massively struggling with anorexia from watching content that is clearly making them worse
or if your 19 old child keeps watching eg Game of Thrones violence in front of your 6 old child, despite repeated requests to watch it in their own bedroom with the door shut.
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That speaks volumes.
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I turned 18 the November of my senior year of college. I worked part-time as a regular babysitter, in no small part because any other job would have required my mother to drive me, something that had not gone well the one time I'd done it (minimum wage jobs are not known for letting employees leave at regular times). As it was, I walked a mile and a half to and from one gig. Getting a car would have eaten up any money I was making. Most importantly, I was focusing on getting into a good school so I could leave. I probably could have afforded $10 a month, but that wouldn't have been everything I'd have had to pay for, would it?
In my job, I see every day barely-adults who have spent their whole lives under "my house/my classroom, my rules," who are then suddenly cut loose, expected to handle getting a job, choosing classes, keeping track of a million deadlines, all while still relying on parents to fill out things like FAFSA forms and having their financial aid dependent on parents' income. Many just take right to it. Others, well, they flounder. A lot.
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It goes the other way, too: telling a fellow adult with whom you're sharing an account that they can only watch things you approve is at best controlling and imo by by its very nature sketchy as hell. even if you did contribute genetic material to their creation 18+ years ago.
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ETA: and it says a lot about you that you would describe parenting as "contributing genetic material eighteen years ago."
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Sure, but if you're going to be weirdly petty about the shared Netflix account when everybody in the household is an adult, and then use as your defense "I don't have an obligation" then that's going to definitely strain your relationship with your kids.
My mother is no longer capable of living independently. We're not obligated to provide her with the special add-on to her cable that allows her to get French TV, but what sort of terrible daughters would we be to say that?
And you may think that French news is not the same as TV-MA content, but I wouldn't block my mother from watching that stuff on Netflix either.
(This is a bit hypothetical, because mother surely provides more financial benefit to this household than the LW does, but let's imagine she was unemployed and we handled ALL the bills instead of MOST of the bills. That's hardly a bizarre situation.)
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But your mother might be able to access softcore pornography...in french! Quelle horreur! 😱
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Yes, it says that I understand that some parents are weirdly controlling of their adult children and need to step off the purity policing if they want to continue having a relationship with their kids in the future.
If you guessed that I'm a big proponent of chosen family over family of origin you are in fact not only right but damn right.
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* Which is very possible if you had to flee your family of origin, cults do tend to prey on people without much of a support network
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With chosen family behavior this controlling is usually seen as a red flag, y'know?
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The dad in this letter is nuts if he thinks he can stop his 18-year-old daughter from watching rated-R movies.