Last week I was at a friend’s house. While we chatted in the kitchen, someone in the living room was blasting music — everything from “shake ya bum bum” to “coller la petite.” I felt uncomfortable for two reasons: most of the songs were sexually explicit, and my children and my friend’s child were running around and catching glimpses of those videos.
After a while I couldn’t ignore it anymore, so I walked into the living room and asked the visitor politely, “Is that music appropriate for children?” I didn’t want to accuse him directly, but his response—that the kids weren’t even paying attention to the videos featuring scantily clad women—angered me. It wasn’t my house, so I couldn’t insist he stop. Instead I called my kids back to the kitchen.
I love good music, but why is so much of today’s popular music saturated with sexually suggestive imagery and vulgar lyrics? Why are hit songs so often centered on sexual themes, glorifying behavior that promotes poor values and harmful impressions?
How can an adult sit in front of children and play videos that show women exposing parts of their bodies that should remain private? How do people dance along, nodding in approval, to songs that are unapologetically explicit? What are we shaping our culture into when these messages become normal?
Children learn by imitation. If you expose them to provocative videos and explicit lyrics, they will pick up gestures, words, and attitudes they don’t yet have the context to understand. So when they mimic what they see and you then complain about their behavior, that response is unfair. Kids copy what is in front of them.
If your goal is to help build a better environment for the next generation, consider the content you choose to play. Avoid vulgar music at home, especially when children are present. Great beats and catchy hooks don’t justify promoting songs that don’t inspire positive or constructive behavior.
I still enjoy music—good, well-crafted songs—but I make a conscious choice about what I listen to and what I expose my children to. A simple personal guideline I follow is: I won’t watch or play anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable watching if a moral role model I respect were sitting beside me.
