{"id":4837,"date":"2010-07-27T11:06:50","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T17:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=4837"},"modified":"2010-07-27T11:06:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T17:06:50","slug":"parental-apathy-or-permissiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/27\/parental-apathy-or-permissiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Parental Apathy-or-Permissiveness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEN WROTE: (Regarding a post from a reader named Jared)\u00a0I don’t know of any parent (that actually knows what the big M on the box means) who would let there kid play that. I’m 14 and my parents are unwilling to let borrow halo 3 from a friend even though I have call of duty modern warefare 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

GAMERDAD SAYS:<\/span><\/p>\n

Ok, that isn’t a question but I wanted to yank it out of a long buried article to make a point and to address the question hidden inside Ben’s post.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’d estimate based on experiences like when I spoke at the American and Mississippi Librarian conventions and when I’ve done PTA or other work, that roughly 20% or so of parents do not understand* or care at all about the ESRB ratings.<\/span><\/p>\n

* more likely haven’t tried to understand<\/span><\/p>\n

The parents who understand the ratings best are the ones who care the most. They genuinely want to know if a game can hurt their kids, they haven’t made up their minds about media being harmful.<\/p>\n

Most of my readers are the above.<\/p>\n

That said, the VAST majority of parents in America, I believe, either don’t care or don’t worry about R rated movies or M rated games. Either because they’re too busy, or they’ve given up on making video games a “battleground” with their kids, or they were raised watching grown-up movies as kids themselves. They figure “It didn’t hurt me so it shouldn’t hurt them.”<\/p>\n

My experience therefore is that the parents who I hear from most are the ones next-to-least likely to let their kids play M-rated games (the “least” likely are parents who already mistrust media) are a small but vocal number. Parents like yours Ben.<\/p>\n

Most parents, for whatever reason, let videogames join DVDs, Internet and TV. They don’t have time, or enough fear\/worry, to pay close attention. I don’t judge any parental decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEN WROTE: (Regarding a post from a reader named Jared)\u00a0I don’t know of any parent (that actually knows what the big M on the box means) who would let there kid play that. I’m 14 and my parents are unwilling to let borrow halo 3 from a friend even though I have call of duty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-askgamerdad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}